• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Langenbrunner scores twice as Devils edge Senators

Nov 18, 2006 - 3:09 AM EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey (Ticker) -- Linemates Jamie Langenbrunner, Zach Parise and rookie Travis Zajac teamed up for three goals to lift the New Jersey Devils to a 3-2 victory over the Ottawa Senators.

Langenbrunner scored twice, Zajac matched his season total with three assists, and Parise had a goal and two assists.

Langenbrunner scored for the third straight game. He has 14 career two-goal efforts but never has recorded a hat trick.

"I don't know if I've had a hat trick since pee-wee (hockey)," Langenbrunner joked. "Maybe my last game of my career I'll get one."

Martin Brodeur made 15 saves but was denied his 84th career shutout by Chris Neil with 14:22 remaining in the game. Daniel Alfredsson made it a one-goal game with 8:31 left.

Langenbrunner scored from the top of the crease after Parise redirected Zajac's centering feed to open the scoring 2:29 into the contest.

"Travis was in the corner and I just saw Jamie coming in from the side," Parise said. "If Jamie wasn't there, it would have been a pretty bad play. They would have been coming right out of the zone, so it was kind of a lucky deal."

"Not many guys can do that in the NHL," Zajac said of Parise's pass. "I found it pretty easy to play with those guys. They make a lot of room for me. It's definitely fun."

Langenbrunner tacked on another on the Devils' first power play with 52 seconds remaining in the first period. Zajac began the play with a pass from the left corner and Parise got it across the crease to Langenbrunner, who put it in from close range on the right side for his seventh goal.

Parise tied Brian Gionta for the team lead with his eighth goal to make it 3-0 just under seven minutes into the second period, beating Ray Emery over the glove with a backhand shot.

"It happens once in a while," Parise said. "You throw three guys together and they seem to compliment each other well."

"We're on the same page," Langenbrunner added. "We're going in the same direction. When you get three guys around the puck, it's hard to defend."

Emery finished with 20 saves for the Senators, who lost for the eighth time in their last 10 games.

"We all want to win," Emery said. "It's disappointing to lose the way we have to start the year. But it's that much more incentive to turn it around."

Brodeur made four saves that thwarted quality scoring chances in a 10-minute span of the second period. He redeemed himself for his performance against Ottawa on October 21, when he allowed six goals in an 8-1 drubbing and was lifted in the second period.

Brodeur finally was beaten in the third, when Neil redirected a slap shot from the point by defenseman Andrej Meszaros for his sixth goal. Alfredsson netted his fifth goal with a wrist shot from the left of the slot to make it 3-2.

"We had our chance to take them out of the game late in the second, we had tons of good chances and Emery made some good saves," said Brodeur, who gave up three goals in a 90-second span of the third period in Tuesday's 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers. "What I liked about that situation was we really calmed down after the second goal and played our best defensive hockey in the last eight minutes."

The Senators matched a season-best effort by going shorthanded just once, but only had a pair of power-play opportunities themselves.

"In the third, everyone got it together and we had a chance to get a tie out of it at least," Ottawa coach Bryan Murray said. "We tried to do very difficult things against a trapping team like New Jersey. We tried to make up a two-goal deficit in a hurry and it never works like that."