Devils Hold Off Panthers

Florida
Panthers

"It's never easy," Brodeur said. "We always make it hard on ourselves. We've been through a lot the last couple of months and it's going to take a while for us to be solid for 60 minutes. It will take a lot of work and confidence and we're trying to get there."

Scott Stevens, Petr Sykora and Sergei Brylin scored in the first period and rookie Scott Gomez also scored and Martin Brodeur made 20 saves as the Devils won the series opener.

Mike Sillinger, Rob Niedermayer and Peter Worrell scored for Florida. Worrell was hit over his head on March 10 by Devils' Scott Niedermayer, whose 10-game suspension is now over and he will return for Game 2.

"Playoffs are too important to worry about something like that," said Worrell. "The only thing we can worry about is he is a good hockey player and he's going to come back in the next game and help their team out."

"To start off the game, I have never seen a group of guys more nervous in the first period in many many years," Florida coach Terry Murray said. "They were standing around watching the other team coming at us and playing. The mistakes we made and the decisions we made were very very costly."