EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The boys wouldn't come to Martin Brodeur Bobble Head Night? This was trouble. They used to be the kids playing floor hockey in the hallway between the press room and the elevators, Anthony, and the twins, William and Jeremy, living for these nights at Continental Airlines Arena. Suddenly, the Brodeur boys are seven and six years old and emboldened by a world of play dates and practices, leaving one of the sport's great goalies resorting to gimmicks to make the biggest save of the season.

	PATH TO GREATNESS
	Devils goalie Martin Brodeur is on pace to break several of Patrick Roy's regular-season goaltending records. Statistics for Brodeur and Roy are listed below (through Nov. 28), with Brodeur's projected totals should he play as long as Roy:
		Current	Proj.	Roy
	Team games	729	1,374	1,374
	Games played	609	1,148	981
	Wins	335	631	522
	Shutouts	56	*106	61
	* - Terry Sawchuk holds the all-time shutout record of 102. Ed Belfour is tied with Roy as the current active leader.

"I used to get up in the morning and they were asking, 'Did you win?'" Brodeur said. "And now I'm saying, 'What's wrong with you guys?' So I started this thing where I have them put a prediction on a piece of paper. There's a dollar each game for whoever gets it. They're all excited. They think it's the best thing in the world."

Brodeur has to laugh: If they're taking his greatness for granted within his own house, what chances does he have outside of it anymore? If Brodeur isn't one of the most under-cherished stars in the National Hockey League, he sure is within the Metropolitan New York market, where his name is never near the top of the conversation about the areas greatest athletes, its best champions. He has a chance to break an endless parade of regular-season and playoff records at 30 years old, leaving Devils president Lou Lamoriello to say, "It's almost inconceivable when you sit down and think about it."

Martin Brodeur, 30 years old. Who would think he's still so young? It's been seven seasons since he swept the Detroit Red Wings in the 1995 Stanley Cup finals, a championship that cemented Brodeur as one of the game's rising superstars. Now, Brodeur plays for history. He's plays against Dryden and Roy and the ghosts of the game's best ever.

After the Devils lost Bobby Holik to the Rangers last summer, there was a mistaken premise that they had lost too much to remain a legitimate contender in the Eastern Conference. This wasn't true. Under Lamoriello, they turned back into a stout, defense first team, building everything around their one truly indispensable talent, Brodeur, who has been voted the Devils MVP by his teammates for seven seasons running. They've had the glamorous A-Line, Hall of Fame defenseman Scott Stevens and the indomitable checking forward, Holik, but these Devils are still fighting for the first in the Atlantic Division for one indisputable reason: Martin Brodeur.

If Lamoriello is loathe to market his players, they pay the price with a measure of anonymity within New York. Despite his two Cups, the lowest goals-against average in NHL history and a claim as the only goalie in history to deliver six straight 35-win seasons --- nobody else had more than three --- he's still a fairly forgotten face here. Even the Devils billboards around Northern New Jersey, which use Brodeur to sell tickets, offer him wearing his mask.

"That's who I am, the goalie of the Devils," Brodeur said. "The masked man."

	“	He's got that big presence. A marquee player needs to do that for his team --- to take the pressure away, so everybody else can play more at ease. You have to handle that load. ”
		— Martin Brodeur on Jason Kidd

His place in history matters to him. He has 335 regular-season victories, including 11 this season. And the way Brodeur loves to play, the way he takes of care himself, there's no reason to think someday he won't be chasing his childhood idol, Patrick Roy, and his all-time victory records. He watches his two defensemen, Stevens and Ken Daneyko, push toward 40 and sees himself playing well past his 5-year, $40 million contract he negotiated himself with Lamoriello at the start of last season.

"I'll still be young when it's up," he said.

Between now and then, Brodeur stays forever a student of sporting greatness, studying Jason Kidd the way he did Roy as a boy growing up in Montreal. For the NBA Finals, there was Brodeur sitting courtside, watching his YankeeNets brother deliver the a forlorn franchise to unprecedented success.

"It's important when you want to achieve things in your own career to take a look at other guys and how they lead their teams," Brodeur said. "When I go to the Olympics, and All-Star games, I sit back and watch what other guys are doing. You look at Kidd's stats a lot of players are able to put the same numbers out there. It's what he does. It's way he puts everyone around better. When you see it live, you see it more.

"He's got that big presence. A marquee player needs to do that for his team --- to take the pressure away, so everybody else can play more at ease. You have to handle that load."

Every season, every night, Brodeur does it for the Devils. Coaches can come and go, Holik can get ridiculously rich with the Rangers, the A-Line can break up and the boys can stay at home, but the Devils are still contenders for one relentless reason: The goalie, Martin Brodeur. He's 30 years old. And he still has more to do.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.