NEWARK Oscar Klefbom Jersey , N.J. (AP) As five years of hockey frustration ended for the New Jersey Devils, players embraced, raised their sticks to salute their long-suffering fans and just imagined what the future held.The New Jersey Devils are back in the playoffs for the first time since 2012, knowing they have a shot at the Stanley Cup, like 15 other teams after clinching a postseason berth with a 2-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night.No tee times this year. No vacation. The real hockey starts next week.”There’s certain moments in your life and certain moments in a season that you want to be able to celebrate,” Devils coach John Hynes said. ”This is one of them. It’s a significant accomplishment for us to be able to get ourselves back into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.”What the Devils did this season was remarkable. They finished last in the Eastern Conference with 28 wins and 70 points.Their win over the Maple Leafs was their 44th of the season and gave them 97 points with a game to go in the regular season. Patrick Maroon did most of the important work against the Leafs, setting up second-period goals by Pavel Zacha and Miles Wood to provide the margin of victory.After that http://www.officialoilers.com/authentic-adidas-ryan-nugent-hopkins-jersey , it was just a matter of holding off the playoff-bound Maple Leafs, who pushed in the third period.Keith Kinkaid, the mainstay in goal since the end of January, made 31 saves as the Devils won their fourth straight and extended their points streak to eight games (7-0-1). He preserved the lead with a stop in close on Auston Matthews with just over seven minutes to playHe called the final 10 minutes stressful and exciting.”The fans were into it,” he said. ”That’s an unreal atmosphere out there. You hear how loud they were. Everyone is battling. Everyone is back-checking. Everyone is doing all the little things and we’re a really hard team to play against when we do that.”When the final horn sounded there was a sense of accomplishment. A cheer went up when the Stanley Cup logo and the Devils’ logo were shown on the overhead scoreboard.Center Travis Zajac skated behind defenseman and captain Andy Greene and hugged him. It’s been a long five years for the only two holdovers from the 2012 team that lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Kings.”We’re a group that doesn’t give up,” Greene said. ”We are relentless. We play for each other. We play hard for each other.”The Devils also earned this spot, going 10-2-1 in its past 13 games.William Nylander scored on a power play in the first period for Toronto to ice his second straight 20-goal season. Frederik Andersen was outstanding Ryan Strome Jersey , making 37 saves, including saves on breakaways by Taylor Hall and Michael Grabner in the big second period.The loss was only the fourth in 13 games (9-4) for the Maple Leafs, who will face either Boston or Tampa Bay in the first round of the playoffs.”They are a good team,” Toronto defenseman Jake Gardiner said. ”That’s as close to playoff hockey as we are going to get right now. That was kind of us last year, fighting for a spot to get in. They played hard. They played well. They didn’t give us too much.”New Jersey, which is currently the first wild card in the Eastern Conference, will have to wait for its playoff opponent to be decided.While the Devils had the majority of shots for the first 27-plus minutes Womens Wayne Gretzky Jersey , they fell behind 1-0 when Nylander scored from the right circle 12 seconds after Nico Hischier was called for tripping.Zacha didn’t tie the game until 7:55 of the second period. He won a puck along the boards in center ice, worked a give-and-go with Maroon entering the Toronto zone and beat Andersen with a shot from the left circle just under the crossbar.Maroon, who was acquired in a trade deadline deal with Edmonton, did all the work on Wood’s 18th goal. He fended off Nazem Kadri carrying the puck from in front of his bench, all the way behind the net and then came out the other side and found Wood alone in front for a slam dunk.NOTES: Matthews extended his point-scoring streak to eight games with an assist on Nylander’s goal. … The Devils won the season series 2-0-1. … Hall’s nine-game points scoring streak and four-game goals run were snapped. …. There were four penalties in the game.UP NEXTMaple Leafs: Host Montreal on Saturday night in regular-season finale.Devils: End the regular season at Washington on Saturday night.— Edmonton fired Peter Chiarelli on Wednesday in an indictment of his roster moves in three-plus years as general manager, with the Oilers in striking distance of a playoff spot during another losing season.The team announced Chiarelli’s abrupt dismissal in the aftermath of its third consecutive loss. Edmonton has lost 12 of its past 16 games going into the All-Star Break. The Oilers are 14-14-2 since firing coach Todd McLellan and replacing him with Ken Hitchcock.CEO Bob Nicholson will oversee hockey operations and the search for Chiarelli’s replacement. Nicholson said at a news conference in Edmonton that Keith Gretzky will assume GM responsibilities for the time being, including the point role ahead of the Feb. 25 trade deadline.Nicholson said the Oilers Aaron Ekblad Jersey , who are three points out of the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, still believe they can make the playoffs but won’t sacrifice the future to try to make quick fixes. He said the organizational decision was made this week to fire Chiarelli, who was told at the second intermission of a loss Tuesday night to Detroit so he could quietly leave the arena.Nothing else about Chiarelli’s tenure in Edmonton was quiet. He was hired in 2015 after the Oilers won the draft lottery and selected star Connor McDavid. He was heralded as the right executive to get the Oilers back to respectability.They’ve made the playoffs just once in McDavid’s three seasons despite him putting up 329 points in 258 games, leading the league in scoring twice and winning the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP.“There’s something in the water here in Edmonton that we don’t have right,” Nicholson said at the news conference. “And we got to get that figured out.”Chiarelli is the second GM to be fired this season. The Philadelphia Flyers dismissed Ron Hextall in November and named Chuck Fletcher his replacement.Nicholson said Hitchcock will remain coach for the rest of the season as Edmonton tries to close the gap and qualify for the postseason with 32 games left.Moves made by Chiarelli along the way contributed to the Oilers struggling for much of the first four seasons of McDavid’s career. Chiarelli traded 2010 top pick Taylor Hall to the New Jersey Devils one-for-one for defenseman Adam Larsson. Hall won the Hart last season and led the Devils to the playoffs.He signed Milan Lucic to a $42 million, six-year contract that now appears to be unmovable. The big winger has 96 points in 214 games with the Oilers, including just five goals this season.And he traded 2008 first-round pick Jordan Eberle to the New York Islanders for Ryan Strome Aleksander Barkov Jersey , who he sent to the New York Rangers earlier this season for Ryan Spooner. The Oilers put Spooner on waivers Monday.Chiarelli was expected to give the woebegone Oilers steady leadership with McDavid. He won the Stanley Cup with the Bruins in 2011 but made similar personnel mistakes in Boston, most notably a failed trade of Tyler Seguin to the Dallas Stars that contributed to losing his job.Edmonton had missed the playoffs in nine consecutive seasons before replacing Craig MacTavish with Chiarelli. A trip to the second round of the playoffs in 2017 looked like the start of success, but the Oilers finished 17 points out of the final playoff spot in the Western Conference despite McDavid putting up an NHL-best 108 points to win the Art Ross Trophy.Last summer, Chiarelli did little to improve the roster around McDavid.The result was 11 losses in their first 20 games that led to the firing of McLellan and later a series of reactionary moves. Beyond the Strome for Spooner deal, Chiarelli sent 24-year-old forward Drake Caggiula to Chicago for bottom-pairing defenseman Brandon Manning. This week, he signed goaltender Mikko Koskinen to a three-year contract extension worth $4.5 million a season.