The Devils have a serious dilemma as they try to replace the man who has stood strong in goal for them for so long.
Martin Brodeur, through 15 years in the New Jersey Devils nets, has become like a score-clock or a beer-hawker.
You go to the rink and those things are simply there. To the point where you only really take notice of them if, for some strange reason, they're not working one night.
Well, Martin Brodeur, the old photographer's son from Montreal, won't be working for a while. He is injured, which at least answers one question for us: he is human, after all.
"I made a save, just extended my arm real quick, and felt a pop," he said Tuesday in a conference call. "I even kept playing for a couple of minutes afterwards…"
Goaltending styles have changed but Brodeur's never did. Pads grew but not Marty's.
Guys who aren't half the goalie Brodeur is - from Jose Theodore to Nikolai Khabibulin - signed huge free-agent deals and showed up on our TV screens in new colours, with a new number and a new paint job on their mask.
But not Marty, who settles for $5.2 million US a season from Jersey GM Lou Lamoriello when he could have had eight or nine million had he worked the market.
We don't know yet if that pop was the sound of the New Jersey Devils playoff aspirations bursting. But what we do know for sure now is that tendon snapping loose marks the first serious injury in one of the remarkably resilient careers of any great National Hockey League goalie.
Brodeur has played in 70 or more games in 11 of the past 12 NHL seasons and had played every single minute of the Devils season up until he was hurt in Game 10 Saturday night in Atlanta. A 2-0 loss to the Buffalo Sabres Monday was the first time in 57 games that he didn't start and only the 21st time in his career that he didn't dress for a game.
The four-time Vezina winner is eight wins short of tying Patrick Roy's all-time record for wins by an NHL goaltender at 551. Now, that marquee chase will shut down until February or March, denying the NHL brass a bit of feel-good news that comes in handy when you're the NHL.
"Hopefully I'll come back healthy and with enough games to be able to reach it this season," he said. "But right now that's way outside my thinking process."
The injury: The distal bicep in Brodeur's left catching elbow, where a tendon has become unattached from the bone. The prognosis: surgery, eight weeks of rest and immobilization of the arm, and then an unknown period of rehab before the first-ballot Hall of Famer can get back into the New Jersey crease.
He'll miss 10 weeks for sure, and possibly more, considering how important a left elbow is to a goalie's game.
"It's something [where] you expect my knees are going to go. My groin, my stomach… I didn't think a bicep could be such a big factor. It's not something I would expect to hurt," he said.
So what do the Devils do?
Well, no one in the East will throw Lamoriello a life raft, but there are two clubs in the Western Conference with spare goaltenders. Both are finishing off contracts this season, the perfect scenario for Lamoriello.
In Chicago, GM Dale Tallon is eating a $12.375 million cap hit with his two goalies: Cristobal Huet, who just signed a new four-year deal at $5.625 million per, and Khabibulin, who is on the final year of a deal that pays him $6.75 million annually.
Tallon would love to move Khabibulin, but of the last six games the 'Hawks have won, the big Russian has been in goal for four of them.
It's not much different in Edmonton, where Dwayne Roloson came into the season as an insurance policy behind starter Mathieu Garon and young Jeff Deslauriers. The problem is, head coach Craig MacTavish has cashed that insurance policy in earlier than expected, and Roloson has won two straight after the Oilers lost five in a row.
New Jersey has had a long line of anonymous backups during Brodeur's reign, but it appears Kevin Weekes will finally be the one who gets to play more than one game in a row.
"I believe he'll be fine," Brodeur predictably said. "Kevin has been such a great sport along the last season and a half, him not having action but still being involved in the team."
Weekes joined the Devils last season, and prior to Brodeur's injury had played just 373 minutes in 10 games with New Jersey.
Whatever he does, or whomever ends up playing the pipes in New Jersey, this season will seem odd.
The Devils without Brodeur in net?
If we must, I guess.