He’s won three Stanley Cups and an Olympic gold medal, and if he doesn’t play another game, he’s already, after just 12 years, in hockey’s Hall of Fame. And still Martin Brodeur has something to prove.

For as long as he’s been the man in goal for the New Jersey Devils, he’s had Scott Stevens leading the defense in front of him. And now, as the Devils enter the playoffs and a first-round meeting with the Philadelphia Flyers, Stevens, recovering from a concussion suffered in January, is not there. And there’s no guarantee he will ever return.

If the Devils, who start the playoffs at rival Philadelphia on Thursday, are to defend their championship Brodeur has to prove that he can not just backstop what has been for a decade the NHL’s best defense, but also carry it. He has to show he can carry his team and steal games.

It’s a tall order for anyone, and not really a fair one. Goalies don’t win Cups all by themselves. If they did, Dominik Hasek, winner of six Vezina Trophies as the game’s best goalie, would have a ring for every finger of both hands. But Hasek never won a Stanley Cup during the prime of his career in Buffalo, because the Sabres weren’t good enough. Only when he went to Detroit did he get his ring.

Brodeur’s statistics were almost always better than Hasek’s – the New Jersey goalie is the only netminder of the modern era to register two successive seasons with a goals-against average less than 2.00, the only goalie with four 40-win seasons, the only goalie with nine straight seasons with 30-plus wins and eight straight with 35-plus, the only goalie to record seven shutouts in one postseason.

But Hasek was always said to be the best. And, when Hasek temporarily retired two years ago, Patrick Roy of Colorado held that title.

The lack of respect Brodeur got was shown in the last two Olympics. In 1998, Roy started for Canada and Brodeur was a backup. In 2002, Pat Quinn, the Canadian Olympic coach, started the Games with Curtis Joseph in goal instead of Brodeur. Only when Joseph was less than scintillating did Quinn see the light and install Brodeur, who won Canada it’s first gold medal in decades.

That Olympic gold finally started to turn things around for Brodeur. Winning his third Stanley Cup last spring finally started to convince people maybe it wasn’t all Devils’ defense that made him great.

And this year, with Hasek back, but injured for much of the year, and Roy retired, Brodeur, who won his first Vezina Trophy last year and will probably win his second this year, has finally inherited the distinction some say he should have been granted years ago –- the game’s best goalie.

So, just when he’s got the title, he now has to prove it he deserves it. He has to make up for the absence of Stevens and the Devils’ sporadic offense.

He has to win the Cup, by himself if necessary.

At least that’s what some people think. They’re the ones who think Brodeur, who has gotten to 400 wins at a younger age than anyone in the history of the game, isn’t as good a goalie as he says he is. They’re the ones who think the only reason he has done anything is because he plays behind the best defensive team of his generation.

The people who say this most frequently are fans of the Rangers, who still think their guy, Mike Richter, was better than Brodeur or anyone.

Part of the problem is style. Richter and Hasek were reflex goalies, guys who didn’t always play the angles perfectly and were dangerous to themselves when they tried to handle the puck, but who flopped and sprawled in the goal, stopping pucks with lightning flashes of gloves, stick, and skates.

Brodeur’s problem is that he has always made it look a lot easier than guys like Richter and Hasek did. And he made it seem far less stressful than just about everyone else, including Roy, who was always talking to his goal posts and twitching his neck and otherwise acting as if he could explode in front of you on the ice at any moment.

But those other goalies live in fear. Like left tackles in football, they are motivated by the terror of failure. It’s not about beating the other guys, it’s about not getting beaten by them. They have nightmares about giving up soft goals. And if playing goal weren’t so much fun, they wouldn’t do it.

Brodeur has no fear. To him, playing goal isn’t life and death, and giving up a goal isn’t a reason to jump off a bridge, or, at a minimum, to drink every bar in town dry, as many old-time goalies viewed it.

He’s motivated by the thrill of stopping the other guys, not the fear of being beaten. Wins, he’s always said, are the most important stat a goalie has, and he’s gotten 400 of them at a younger age than anyone in history.

Others may be better reflex goalies and better at flopping and butterflying. But no one plays the position better than Brodeur. One of the reasons he is so successful is because he’s rarely out of position. He takes away the net, kicks rebounds into the corners and away from the front of the goal, and handles the puck better than any goalie alive. His greatness is born in technique and hard work.

In his 12 years, he’s already in the top 10 in career wins, playoff wins, playoff shutouts, regular season shutouts, and goals-against average. If he plays another seven years –- not unreasonable for a 31-year-old who shows no signs of slowing down, he’ll go out as the career leader in wins and shutouts. Three more shutouts in the playoffs will make him the all-time leader, and the only record that will be hard to get at is Patrick Roy’s 151 playoff wins, 68 more than Brodeur has.

But it’s not impossible. But to do it, he’s got to keep wining, and this year he has to do it without Stevens. This year, he has to prove that he really is what his statistics say he is -- the best in the game.

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