They should have played until they had to call another one because of darkness.
After 5-on-5 and 4-on-4, they should have gone to 3-on-3, then 2-on-2, until eventually it was just Martin Brodeur and Henrik Lundqvist tipping their masks to each other as the ovations swelled.
But that’s sort of what happened, regardless. Neither goalie blinked until Patrik Elias, the eighth shooter of the shootout and 114th of the game, scored a goal as clean as a regular-season classic demanded over Lundqvist’s glove for a 1-0 win.
Six years ago, not only would this have ended in a physically and emotionally exhausting tie, but it would have been appropriate.
After the very best games, somebody always says, “It’s a shame somebody had to lose,” and indeed before the lockout, hockey was a sport where on some nights nobody had to.
Frankly, we still dislike the shootout, hate that four players on each team are called upon to decide a game normally played by 17 on a side, hate that the most effective and beautiful thing in the sport, the pass, is removed from the equation to decide a game.
The whole thing was contrived so that after 2 ½ hours and God forbid not one second more, a winner can be produced and Versus can go to bull-riding.
The goalies have become too good for the shooters, most of which have no clue where to go and, even if they do, can’t pull it off.
The joy of the rare penalty shot has been muted by generic shootout after shootout, all the while the last 10 minutes of regulation suffer from the reward of one point if you can just get it to overtime.
So there would have been nothing wrong with a 0-0 game last night because, before they became extinct, they were both unusual and usually as compelling as last night’s game.
Two great rivals played hard and well, while history’s probable greatest goalie needed a record 107th career shutout to beat a probable all-timer himself.
But even a shootout hater has to admit that on this night, it added something.
If the goalie who lost found losing fair and appropriate, that’s good enough for me.
“You need a winner,” said Lundqvist.
“You fight for 2 ½ hours, you don’t want to just go home. It’s just frustrating to lose it, that’s all, because we did a lot of good things.”
A lot of them were done by Lundqvist at the expense of Zach Parise once the Devils cranked it up in the third.
Trying to find 14 points difference between the conference-leading Devils and sixth-place Rangers was like the two teams trying to find open ice for much of the game, the big shot totals not a reflection of the actual chances.
Still, it was tremendously entertaining long before Parise, the Devils’ first shooter, zigged, zagged and thought he saw an opening on the stick side until Lundqvist threw up his waffle board.
Also before the clever Gaborik, the Rangers’ third shooter, almost slid a little changeup between Brodeur’s almost not-quick-enough feet.
So just when you thought it couldn’t get any better than the first 65 minutes, it did.
Unfortunately, the shootouts aren’t all nearly this good.
But of course neither are 99 percent of regular-season games.