Zach drops the gloves

Devils left wing Zach Parise was involved in the first fight of his NHL career in the third period of tonight's 2-1 overtime win over the Tampa Bay Lightning at Prudential Center.

Parise also scored a goal, but fell an assist short of a Gordie Howe hat trick (goal, assist, fight). He drove to the net on Patrik Elias' winner with 57.9 seconds left in overtime, but never touched the puck on the play, so he didn't get an assist.

"I wish," he said.

Elias' goal was his third in overtime this season and the 14th OT winner of his career, moving him within one of the NHL record shared by Mats Sundin and Jaromir Jagr. Elias tied the NHL single-season record by scoring four OT winners in 2003-04. The Devils have won six games in OT this season and he has either scored or assisted on the winning goal in five of them.

Parise's fight came 3:47 into the third period against Tampa Bay defenseman Dan Boyle. Parise actually inadvertantly started the altercation by kicking Boyle's left skate out from under him in the right corner.

"If I did, I didn't try," Parise said. "I wasn't trying to slew foot him or anything. I was just going for the puck. We got back in front of the net and he tried to slew foot me and he got me in the face, so it just escalated from there."

Parise said he had not been in a fight since midget. "First and probably last for a while," he said. "I don't see it happening again anytime soon. It was all kind of a blur when it happened...It was fun. Something you've got to do."

Although Boyle pulled his jersey over his head, Parise handled himself pretty well. Both players landed some punches, but no big blows.

"I was proud of him to batlle like that," Devils coach Brent Sutter said. "It just the way Zach competes and plays. He never backs down and I thought he handled himself very well."

On a night when the Devils took back first place in the Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division, there was some bad news. Defenseman Colin White sat out the third period with what he called, "general upper body soreness." White said he had the wind knocked out of him on a hit into the right corner by Tampa Bay's Junior Lessard with 6:19 left in the second period.

White finished the period, but did not return for the third. Neither White nor Sutter were sure if he would make the trip to Toronto for Saturday night's game.

Comments

[Jim]

Don't lose any teeth, tough guy! ;)

[DanT]

great work zach!!

[Devs4Life]

Good for Zach to step it up like that. Too Bad he didn't get the Gordie Howe, then i could have seen him get a regular Hat trick(Devs 4 Habs 0) and the GH. Hope Whitey feels better. I think we secured our victory once Scott Stevens got on camera! Maybe we should do that more often, that seemed to work.

[perry]

hey TG,
sections 106 and 107 were emptied out tonight. i remember the last time the rangers visited, they were having trouble with leaks in those sections. do you know if that was the case tonight?

ps - whoever controls the televisions for the press up in the cat walk, can you tell them to change the one all the way to the right back to the fsny feed instead of what's on the jumboscreen? hahaha

[Ben M.]

wish i could've seen the parise fight. but was evacuated from my section (106) for a gas leak.. what a mess that was.. very angry about that nonsense..

[Devs4Life]

was that why they blocked off the area near the goal bar?

[Brodie30]

Did Boyle get Parise with the butt end of his stick? I thought that was what I saw at first and then he got the misconduct and figured that was the case (obviously instigating does the same). But since no one said anything afterwards, I think maybe it was just the glove. If he did, hopefully it gets looked at. I was screaming for the 'Gordie' the minute I saw the gloves drop.

[jules]

A gas leak? I heard that a worker burned a pizza and the sprinklers went off.

Anyway, I'm glad for the win, but they'll have to give a better effort in Toronto. Major props to Sutter for the Rupp-Zub-Zajac line. I thought they did well, even though they did score. Hopefully that experiment will continue.

Good on Zach for sticking up for himself, though it wasn't much of a fight. Too bad Boyle couldn't just pull off Zach's shirt too...just saying.

By the way, was anyone else greatly amused that Deb Kaufman replaced Al tonight? For all those involved, well done!

[ALEXNJD]

I don't know why Devils decided to take in OT. Maybe they were saving energy for tommorows game. Salvador played more time in 3rd because White was't there and he looked pretty good. Also I think Rackunec had a good game.

[stoonbora]

I love that Zach fought. I was watching on TV, and had turned away for a moment when the fight started, so I wasn't sure who it was at first. I was going through in my head who was all on the ice and Zach was the last person I thought would be fighting!

[FTC]

TG, make sure you purchase a fanny pack so you don't lose your passport this time.

[Jon]

Don't know if I missed this or not but any updates about the quality of the ice? I remember reading a little while ago the ice company came in to check out the computers. Did they find out what was wrong with the computers and did they fix it? Players have any comments about it lately? Still waiting to have the best ice in the nhl

[Frisby]

I had to do a double take to make sure that was Parise dropping the gloves. I don't think it was necessary as far the game goes, but it was probably good for him to get some frustrations out. It doesn't matter that he didn't get an assist on the game winning goal, we all know he was the decoy that made it posible.

[Matty Bucks]

Yeah, Rachunek played well tonight. What's up with our power play? 4 minutes in the 2nd period and nothing even close to a goal? Eff. We need to improve on that.

[mikeford]

I have to respectfully disagree with Frisby here, I think it was 100% necessary. A guy suckerpunches you in front of the net, you have to react. Zach is lucky the ref caught the whole altercation and not just the retaliation, as often happens, but even still I would've absolutely lived with Zach getting the instigator for that if the ref missed the suckerpunch. Guys gotta stick up for themselves in a case like that.

[Sean]

Any chance Weekes gets the start tonight? We only have 14 games left and the last stretch run is almost entirely divisional teams. Brodeur needs at least 2 games rest before the playoffs. He played well last night, but we have some huge games coming up.

[NJD26]

I've been on the rest Marty more bandwagon but he's been outstanding since mid-November so it seems pointless to worry about it till something goes wrong.

I just hope Sutter really does know how to manage Marty's workload between games if he's not going to rest him in a game itself, so far it seems like he has done that pretty well.

[Devilswede]

Marty isn't getting any rest before the playoffs, no point in debating it. Maybe, and just maybe Weekes will get one more start before the season is over, but that's about it for him. He's been a good teammate, but you gotta feel sorry for our backups.

Karel Rachunek was just outstanding last night, just like he was against Toronto. I was amazed to see that he was our most defensively solid d-man out there. Hopefully he keeps playing like this. It seems like he took his benching the right way and learned from it. That's the kinda attitude you want to see from guys.

I hope Whitey is OK, because I don't really want to see Greene or Vishnevski out there at this point. But it's nice to know that we have the depth at D like we do. We questioned the amount of d-men earlier, but those 9 d-men don't look so bad now do they with Martin and White out with injuries.

[TG]

I'm pretty sure it's Marty tonight. There's no skate this morning, so I can't check on that, but I'd bet on Marty playing.

I made it to Toronto safely. I switched to a 6:30 a.m. flight because there's supposed to be bad weather in NJ/NY and here and made it fine. Unfortunately, I had to get up at 4:15, which was not fun. I still have my passport so far.

[JJ]

I was very impressed by Rachunek, it's nice to have a player change your mind about them. He's been tagged with the "defensive liability" label but glad to see him have a couple of really good games. If he keeps this up I would like to see him paired with Salvador when Martin comes back. That would give us 3 pretty solid pairs heading into the playoffs.

[JJ]

Tom, nice Ovechkin/Crosby piece today, but if they face each other in the first round, doesn't that mean the Devils lose the division? For shame. :)

[TG]

That would probably mean that the Penguins win the division, but they could also slip to sixth in the East and Washington could end up as the third seed if they catch Carolina for first in the Southeast Division.

[Dana B]

i've been waiting for him to drop the gloves for a while and i miss it when he finally does!
anyone know where there's s vid?

[Hoosier]

I'm sure hockeyfights.com will have it later today or tomorrow.

[Shari]

Karl R, has been playing well lately and last night He saved the day at least 4 times. John O has also been playing well too, I like the way Salvador has played, I was not so sure the first couple of games but I'm hoping that He will be really solid once He gets more used to things. I had to wipe My eyes last night to make sure that I was not seeing things, Parise dropping the gloves? good for Him for not taking any crap out there, but how the Hell did He lose His clothes? that was funny, (thank God He didn't get hurt)His first fight and it's one for the memory books. I'm hoping that Whitey didn't break a rib or something from getting creamed in the gut. I'm wondering given the way Brookbank and Rach are playing, who comes out when Martin and Whitey come back. Someone should have thrown a couple of dollars on the ice for Parise. LOL.