After first-round exit, are Devils due for changes?

NEWARK, N.J. - "I need a nap."

Jacques Lemaire, his ears all but bleeding from pounding his head against the wall, couldn't take any more.

Not last night, after his wonderfully talented Devils, uninterested in his message, heedless of his words, exited the playoffs at the hands of the Flyers.

He's a 64-year-old with superb credentials, including making the Devils winners for the first time, in 1995. They begged him to return and reinvent them in their former image.

Lemaire and his terrifying slap shot won eight Stanley Cups as a player with Montreal, then got two more with the team in its front office before he began standing behind benches. As such, he expected his instructions to be followed exactly, especially by the team he was hired to teach how to win playoff series after losing first-round series the past 2 years.

He instructed them to play simply, and tough, to fire pucks and follow, to play with discipline and selflessness. Lemaire was ignored, it seems. And so, the Devils, losers last night, 3-0, are done in five games, their third straight quick finale.

"This happens when you don't have everyone believing in what you have to do to win," Lemaire said. "We didn't play playoff hockey."

He was eloquently eviscerating afterward . . . but not to the men who failed him.

His team scoreless at full strength the last three games, toothless on the power play, Lemaire was done preaching to heathens deafened by their own arrogance.

"I didn't talk to them," Lemaire said. "When I'm upset, I can't talk to players."

He was upset. Seething, angry, mystified and frustrated, asking himself, "Why did I return when they don't listen?"

With the series even after two games, Lemaire saw the fissures. He knew, after 15 years at this job, the fissures would become cracks, then craters, swallowing whole the Devils' hopes.

"I thought, as the series went on, we would correct that. We didn't," Lemaire said. "There were little things. Battles here, battles there. A sharpness of the individual. Being really positive on everything. When you try to change certain things, you have their look that tells you they understand and they want to do it."

He paused, defeated.

"There was a little lack there."

So, where do they go now?

They switched coaches in the offseason; Brent Sutter took the fall for the first two playoff collapses, resigning and landing behind Calgary's bench.

They added a rental star, Ilya Kovalchuk, who now is a free agent they are unlikely to re-sign despite Lemaire's professed appreciation and Kovalchuk's professed satisfaction with the team.

They got a very good year out of veteran goalie Martin Brodeur.

And they finished 2-9 against the Flyers overall this season, a team they used to own.

Who gets the blame?

The mercenary? Kovalchuk finished with two goals and four assists, but might actually have cost himself money with his frenetic, though lusterless, play. He never was integrated into the Devils' system.

The old goalie? Brodeur never played the way he used to, but, at 37, nobody really does. He's under contract for two more seasons.

The newish arena? The Prudentail Center was as lifeless as the Devils' power play.

The old/new coach? After all, if he's great, doesn't he have the charisma to make them obey?

Apparently not. On the power play, for instance, Lemaire asked them to execute in a certain manner on the point.

"We had a way to do a thing at the blue line," he said. "We did it once."

The power play was 0-for-8 last night, 4-for-32 in the series.

"I asked a guy why we didn't do it," Lemaire said of the power-play strategy. "I didn't get an answer."

These Devils lost to a Flyers team that, for the last three games of the series, played without the discipline that saved their season, a team unable to adjust to the tightly called tenor set early in the series. Then, in the last two games, needing tight and focused play, the Devils lost their discipline late.

Last night, trailing, 3-0, they took 6 minutes of penalties in the second half of the third period. In Game 4, also down three goals, they took 6 minutes of penalties in a 10-minute span near the middle of the third period.

They lost last night to a team that played without Jeff Carter and Simon Gagne. Both broke bones in their feet in Game 4.

The Devils had hoped some magic might save them; Lemaire's experience having led other teams back from 3-1 series holes; their comeback from a 3-1 deficit in 2000 against the Flyers.

They hoped in vain.

That 2000 team was cast from the old Devils template. That team was built from within, core players home-grown, from the back to the front, with a defense constructed to highlight Brodeur in his prime.

This franchise was a far different franchise a decade ago. In just a few months, this team might not look anything like itself, either.

It's an exhausting proposition, as Lemaire acknowledged, walking away:

"I want to sleep," he said.