NEWARK, NJ - The Devils offensive woes continued at home on Friday night at the Prudential Center. New Jersey managed just one goal on 35 shots against Wade Dubielewicz as the New York Islanders prevailed 3-1 in Newark.

The Islanders managed just a paltry 16 shots on net and did not record more than six in one period. However, New York got goals from Blake Comeau, Kyle Okposo and an empty-netter from Trent Hunter.

The tilt feature a little bit of everything. Three fights, a disallowed goal and a penalty-filled second and third periods.

Comeau would tally first just 4:46 into the opening frame after curling at the left circle and firing a wrister past Brodeur through the screen of Richard Park. The goal was Comeau’s seventh of the season.

The Devils got a goal of their own later in the period on the power play. Travis Zajac scored his 14th goal of the season stuffing home the rebound of a Brian Gionta shot and the game was tied at 1.

The second period was a parade of players heading to the sin bin which included two fights. After Mike Rupp was whistled for hooking, David Clarkson managed to take Bill Guerin off the power play as the two of them scrapped in the corner. Arron Asham would later take on Islanders rookie Matthew Spiller with Asham scoring a decisive takedown.

Kevin Weekes also briefly replaced Martin Brodeur in the second period while Brodeur was off getting a skate repair done. Weekes faced one shot in about two and a half minutes of ice time. Weekes was greeted with a cheer when his name was called by the public address announcer and again when he left the ice.

“That’s always nice,” said Weekes with a grin. “But I think [the cheer] was for Marty and he is who he is. We’re very fortunate to have him on our team.”

The third period saw the Islanders finally break the tie when the rookie Okposo scored his first career goal on an off-speed shot that fooled Brodeur and found the back of the net. Brodeur noticably reacted quicker than the shot came to him on the goal.

“Yeah, the puck hit off my top forward’s stick and deflected it,” said Brodeur. “Its unfortunate but you have to be able to bounce back from that.”

Trent Hunter would add an empty-net goal late in the third period which also featured Rod Pelley engaging in his first career fight with 6-foot-5 forward Josef Vasicek.

“It was a bit of a battle off the draw,” said Pelley of the fight. “We went down the ice and I don’t even really remember what happened.”

When asked if he’d been given lessons he laughed and said “No, no one’s given me lessons, I’ve just been kind of watching what Ash [Arron Asham], Rupp and Clarkie [David Clarkson].”

However, those light moments are unable to detract from the team’s offensive woes.

“We’ve definitely got to be more timely with our goal-scoring,” said Gionta. “We had a couple chances back-to-back that we could’ve buried them with the chances we got but couldn’t get it done.”

“We’ve got to score goals. It’s a problem, you can’t win every game 1-0, for that matter we can’t win games 2-1 because we’re not even scoring two goals a game. We’ve got to find ways to score goals.”

The Devils have no time to look back with Pittsburgh next on the schedule on Saturday night.

“We’ve got to win tomorrow,” said Madden.

Notes: Okposo’s first career point came on Comeau’s first period goal. When pressed for details after the game Rod Pelley said that his last fight was in Lowell against Los Angeles Kings prospect Brian Boyle. Patrik Elias and Bryce Salvador both missed this game with injuries. Karel Rachunek was once again a healthy scratch.

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