Ilya Kovalchuk

Don't look now, but the New Jersey Devils are picking up steam in the Eastern Conference.

Winners of their last three, New Jersey has finally felt some traction underneath their spinning tires as they climb the slippery Eastern Conference leader board. 

Approaching the mid-point of the season, the Devils have a lot to look forward to in these next few weeks.

Maybe some home cooking was all the New Jersey Devils needed.

That plus a goalie switch, two shorthanded goals and three shootout scores.

Returning to the Prudential Center in Newark after a four-game road trip in which they went 1-3-0, the Devils rebounded from a 3-0 deficit to top the Ottawa Senators, 5-4, in a shootout Thursday night. 

The season has just barely begun and the New Jersey Devils are already starting to make the beginning half of last season a distant memory. It has been beaten to death, the disappointment and gruesome play that plagued the Devils early in the 2010-2011 season so there is no sense in rehashing painful recollections of a season past sans playoff competition.

The New Jersey Devils find themselves without a head coach for the third straight year and fourth time in the last five seasons.  Jacques Lemaire retired after the last game of this past season, leaving the Devils for the third time.  He had replaced John MacLean on December 23, 2010 to begin his third tenure as coach, which lasted 49 games.  This followed his second tenure which lasted the 82 games of the 2009-10 season.

The Devils coaching history, which is pretty lengthy is as follows:

It was a very unlikely scenario for the New Jersey Devils to make it into the playoffs this year after the enormous hole they had dug for themselves. 

The Atlanta Thrashers have officially been eliminated from playoff contention for yet another season.

It is difficult for Thrasher fans to fight back their disappointment and now consider what will come next for the team.

The Thrashers missed the playoffs because of several factors some are obvious and others not so obvious.

One of the obvious reasons is that they did not win enough games to qualify for the postseason.   

Well, the playoff outlook for the New Jersey Devils is looking bleak to say the least at this point of the season.  Even though they are not mathematically eliminated, they are essentially hanging on by a thread.  The Devils must win their last nine games and would still need a little help from other teams to ensure the Sabres, Hurricanes, Thrashers or

The Devils played at the Continental Airlines Arena (originally known as Brendan J. Byrne Arena) in East Rutherford, NJ from their inception in 1982 through the 2006-07 season before moving to Newark, NJ in the plush new Prudential Center.  There were tons of memories in the old building, ranging from the obvious (three Stanley Cup championships and four Stanley Cup Final appearances) to the not so obvious (334 club - Jan 22, 1987. 

Saturday, March 12 marks the first of 30 days remaining in the NHL regular season. With an entire month of hockey still to be played, the race in both the Eastern and Western Conferences is reaching a boiling point.

As of press time, all 30 teams are still eligible to make the playoffs, with roughly 25 of them still charging towards a bid for a best-of-seven series. So if you're just tuning in, are a late bloomer, or just decided to order the Center Ice half-season package, these are the 30 games you'll want to watch for the final 30 nights of the NHL season.

The NHL is a better place when the player’s personalities come to the surface in times of high emotion.

Whether winning or losing, when emotion shows through, the fans will care more.

It’s the players who seem indifferent that the fans seem to not associate well with. When the team should be mad at its performance, the star player should be mad as well.

A player who keeps a steady perspective on the game and doesn’t get emotional at either the highs or the lows may seem to not care to an avid fan.