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Devils coach: “I really felt we would respond like this”

Out of context, the New Jersey Devils’ 4-1 win against the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 2 shouldn’t have been that surprising. After all, the two teams split three defeats each in their six matches in the regular season. The victory wasn’t surprising, but the way they won it kinda was. The Flyers went flat while the Devils were relentless in their Game 2 triumph.

That took some of us off guard, but not Devils coach Peter DeBoer, as he told Tom Gulitti.

“I really felt we would respond like this,” DeBoer said. “It’s not more than I expected. It is what I expected.”

New Jersey showed great poise in shaking off what most of been a frustrating, scoreless second period to eventually make good on their momentum in the third. The Devils generated a 12-2 shot advantage in the middle frame but Ilya Bryzgalov held them at 1-0. That didn’t throw them off, however, as they exploded to a franchise-first four-goal third period to win the game.

Not surprisingly, DeBoer was pleased with the way they shook off that irritation.

“Bryzgalov made some big saves for them early,” DeBoer said. “We just felt we had to stick with it and that resiliency finally paid off.”

David Clarkson scored the big pay-off goal (the 2-1 tally that was the eventual game-winner), but the Devils power forward gave captain Zach Parise much of the credit for that resiliency.

“It starts with a guy like Zach,” Clarkson said. “We didn’t give up, we kept battling and when we came in the room between periods, we said to each other, ‘Let’s keep going. Let’s keep working’ We did that and we were successful.”

DeBoer totally saw it coming, too.