His $900G of two-year bonus money already secured, the Cup-clinching hero is ready to start flexing his scoring muscle, and his right knee.
Jason Arnott is lagging behind his A Line mates in scoring in the playoffs, but that could change soon. The Devils’ No. 1 offensive center says he’s feeling well enough to start barging around the rink, whether at the Meadowlands last night against Pittsburgh, or in Denver against the Avalanche in the Stanley Cup finals.
There was still the matter of beating the Penguins once more before advancing to the finals, a task the Devils hoped to accomplish in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final last night.
And while Arnott was singlemindedly focused on last night’s chance to finish off Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, the rest of the hockey world remembers his performance in last year’s final, when he led the team to its second Stanley Cup by leading it in scoring, 4-3-7 in six games, including the overtime winner in Game 6.
Arnott sat out the first 18 games of the regular season unsigned, forcing Lou Lamoriello to sweeten the pot on his two-year, $5.1 million offer. Arnott signed that deal, but not before negotiating a bonus clause that brought him $450G per season if the Devils accomplished three benchmarks of making the playoffs and winning rounds over the the two seasons.
Those bonus triggers were reached when the Devils ousted the Hurricanes and then the Maple Leafs in these playoffs, so Arnott will earn a total of $6 million over the two years of his deal, achieving the $3 million figure he sought.
Now he’s ready to start improving on the 11 points he totalled in the first 16 games of postseason, having even missed the crucial sixth game against Carolina.
“I have to be a big strength on our line, get in the corners and get there first,” Arnott said. “I have to try to keep plays going and make some room for those two to operate.”
“Those two” would be Petr Sykora and Patrik Elias, his linemates for some 2 ½ years. Sykora entered last night one goal behind Joe Sakic’s nine atop the playoff leaders, while both were tied for second with 17 points, behind Milan Hejduk’s 20.
“I just try to understand what they’re doing,” Arnott said.
While the Devils’ game plan has been to force opposing defenses to open up by dumping the puck deep, also allowing the Devils to pummel those defensemen, Arnott says his line went overboard in that direction earlier in the playoffs.
“We tried to dump it too much,” Arnott said. “It was tough because we went through a stretch of chipping it in too far.
“The other team just kept throwing it out. They made the easy play by just getting it out, and we weren’t doing much.”
Those days are behind them. Elias entered last night with a team record nine-game point streak, with Sykora right behind at eight.
Last night, the Penguins were expected to try to put a checking threesome on the A Line, probably using Aleksey Morozov, Kevin Stevens and Wayne Primeau to try to slow the express.
“We put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else does,” Arnott said. “Any time we go on the ice, we have it in our heads that we want to score.
“That’s tough, because we’re always playing against one of the best lines, so we have to think defense. It makes it even tougher when they put top checkers against us.”
Not much had worked for the Penguins in this series. They had been outscored 5-13 in the first four games of the series, and Lemieux and Jagr were each looking for their first goals.
Coach Ivan Hlinka put the two together for Game 4 in Pittsburgh Saturday, and the result was Martin Brodeur’s second straight shutout.