EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. ? Martin Brodeur doesn’t start many playoff series being considered the second-best goalie.

He apparently doesn’t plan to leave the Stanley Cup finals that way.

Brodeur got his second consecutive shutout, Patrik Elias and Scott Gomez scored second-period goals set up by the seldom-used Oleg Tverdovsky and New Jersey seized a 2-0 finals lead with a defense-driven 3-0 victory Thursday over Anaheim.

Brodeur tied Dominik Hasek’s 2002 record of six shutouts in a playoff year with his second in a row and, just as in a 3-0 victory in Game 1, barely was challenged.

The Ducks had only 16 shots, including just two in the Devils’ decisive second period, and have only 32 in two games.

Brodeur is the first goalie to start the finals with consecutive shutouts since Toronto’s Frank McCool had three straight against Detroit in 1945, a series the Maple Leafs eventually needed seven games to win.

“What’s important is we’re winning,” Brodeur said. “You’ve got to be excited about starting the series like this.”

Especially considering Anaheim’s Jean-Sebastien Giguere was the hot goalie going into the finals and was considered the favorite for the Conn Smythe Trophy. Apparently, Brodeur took that as a personal challenge.

“You want to be the best out there,” Brodeur said. “Jean-Sebastien really proved that he belonged here and he’s playing so far really well. We’re getting really good goals on him. But definitely it’s really an incentive to beat the best goalie that’s playing right now.”

New Jersey's Martin Brodeur is congratulated by teammate Jeff Friesen. Brodeur earned his second consecutive shutout, and Friesen scored in the Devils' 3-0 victory Thursday over Anaheim in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals in East Rutherford, N.J.

Remarkably, the key to the Devils’ victory, just as in Game 1, were players obtained from Anaheim in a trade for Petr Sykora last summer. Jeff Friesen had two goals in Game 1 and another in Game 2, and Tverdovsky’s playmaking turned Game 2 New Jersey’s way.

The Devils, suffocating the Ducks with a trapping defense that gives up shots as grudgingly as some teams give up goals, go to Anaheim for Game 3 Saturday with a lead that has almost guaranteed the Cup in the past. New Jersey is going for its third Cup since 1995.

Of the 28 teams to sweep Games 1 and 2 at home in the finals, only one — the Chicago Blackhawks, against Montreal in 1971 — has not won hockey’s biggest prize.

“It’s definitely easier to go all the way to California (with a two-game lead),” Brodeur said. “I think we discouraged them a lot by playing solid defense.”

Anaheim’s problem right now isn’t just winning, but scoring. The Ducks knocked off the rust that was evident in Game 1 following a 10-day layoff and were visibly faster and more physical in Game 2. The trouble was, that didn’t translate into good scoring chances.

Again, the Ducks’ biggest threats — Paul Kariya, Sykora, Adam Oates — were practically invisible. Kariya had no shots and has only one in two games.

“It looks to me like they’re doing to us what we did to two teams before us,” Ducks coach Mike Babcock said. “They’ve got everybody jumping, no matter what line or what matchup, and they’re a hungry, hungry team.”

New Jersey's Scott Gomez, left, celebrates a goal against Anaheim goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere. The Devils topped the Mighty Ducks in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals, 3-0, Thursday in East Rutherford, N.J.

Babcock also said the Mighty Ducks “had no emotion again,” and he might make changes for Game 3.

Tverdovsky, so deep in coach Pat Burns’ doghouse earlier in the playoffs that he was scratched for eight of the last nine games before the finals, created both Devils goals in the second period simply by throwing the puck on the net from the right point.

With the teams scoreless early in the second period, just as they were in Game 1, and Sykora in the penalty box for holding, Tverdovsky’s pass caromed off Ducks defenseman Kurt Sauer as he became tangled with New Jersey’s Grant Marshall in front of the net and caromed to an unguarded Elias for a tap-in at 4:42.

Before last year’s trade, Elias and Sykora formed two-thirds of the ‘A’ Line, with Jason Arnott, that led the Devils to the Stanley Cup in 2000.

Tverdovsky was playing mostly because of Burns’ hunch he might be motivated by opposing his former team.

Apparently, he was.

Just over seven minutes later, Tverdovsky shot the puck toward the net from above the right circle and it deflected off Gomez’s knee and past Giguere — only the second goal by Gomez in 18 playoff games. His two assists in the period were one-quarter as many as Tverdovsky had in 50 regular season games and doubled his playoff points total.

By now, the rare sellout crowd in Continental Airlines Arena was serenading Giguere with the chant “Marty’s better,” and, at least for two games, Brodeur has been that.

In the Western Conference finals against Minnesota, Giguere had three consecutive shutouts before allowing one goal in Game 4.

Now, it’s Brodeur that’s got a shutout string going. And if the 2-0 lead wasn’t comfortable enough for Brodeur, Friesen added his third of the finals with a seemingly harmless backhander that eluded a screened Giguere at 4:22 of the third.