(My Sportsbook) - The folks in attendance at the Meadowlands Tuesday night saw what we'd be in for if the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers would be lucky enough to face each other come playoff time.

Unfortunately, it appears as if the Rangers will make that impossible by missing out on the postseason for the sixth straight year.

So Tuesday might be all we have.

The two clubs went toe-to-toe with one another for three periods and overtime, as Petr Nedved's power-play goal late in regulation lifted the Rangers to a 3-3 tie with the Devils at Continental Airlines Arena.

Tom Poti and Brian Leetch also scored for New York, which is 2-1-1 in its last four contests. Mike Dunham finished with 33 saves for the Rangers, who are 0-2-2 in their last four at New Jersey.

Jamie Langenbrunner scored twice for the Devils, who are 2-0-1 in their last three games. Brian Gionta also lit the lamp, while Martin Brodeur made 23 stops in the tie. New Jersey is 3-0-4 in its last seven meetings with the Rangers.

"You forget where you're at in the standings when you play the Rangers," Brodeur said. "It was a playoff atmosphere. We played with a lot of emotion."

With 4:28 remaining in regulation, Nedved took a feed from Jamie Lundmark and chipped the puck past Brodeur on the power play for the equalizer. It was Nedved's 22nd goal of the season.

Both goaltenders made an all-out effort between the pipes in overtime to keep the game deadlocked. Dunham made three stops in the extra period and Brodeur turned away two, including a save of a one-timer from Pavel Bure.

"They're fighting for their lives," Devils defenseman Ken Daneyko told the Newark Star-Ledger "They're a better hockey team than they were. Right now they need every point they can get. And we're trying to catch the [conference- leading] Senators, so it's too bad we didn't get two points. We snuck up one point closer to them, but it would've been nice to pull to within two points."

UP NEXT

The Devils will visit the Islanders on Thursday to begin a stretch that has them on the road for four-of-five. They'll host Washington on Thursday.