Red Wings Again Are Bedeviled : Hockey: New Jersey’s 5-2 triumph leaves it one victory away from sweeping “embarrassed” Detroit in Stanley Cup finals.

All that remains to be settled after three games of the Stanley Cup finals is where the New Jersey Devils will hold their victory parade--and whether the parade route ends in Nashville, Tenn.

So thoroughly did the Devils stifle the Red Wings’ offense and spirits in a 5-2 rout at the Meadowlands Arena Thursday, Detroit’s Scotty Bowman ranked it the low point of his Hall of Fame coaching career.

Bowman, who has coached six teams to Cup championships and has reached the finals 10 times with four clubs, was drained after watching his players put up so feeble a struggle.

The Devils built a 5-0 lead midway through the third period and shut out the Red Wings until Sergei Fedorov and Steve Yzerman scored on power plays in the last 3:03, making the final result what Bowman called “a good publicity score” but providing little reason to believe the Red Wings can erase the Devils’ 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. Only the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs have rallied from a 3-0 deficit in the finals to win the Cup.

The defense Bowman had so carefully choreographed all season was shredded by the Devils, who on Saturday have a chance to win their first championship in what might be the franchise’s final game in New Jersey before a possible move to Nashville. A fifth game, if necessary, would be played Monday in Detroit.

“I was embarrassed; humiliated, actually,” Bowman said. “I have lost and won a lot of games, even the first year I was in the league with the St. Louis Blues, but we were never humiliated and embarrassed like we were tonight for two periods. A lot of players would give their eyeteeth to take a shift in the finals. It’s totally unacceptable. . . . It was an embarrassment to the National Hockey League.”

It was also a credit to the Devils, who had goals from five players and held Detroit to only 12 shots in the first 40 minutes.

After Martin Brodeur’s desperate lunge kept Kris Draper’s rebound attempt from going over the goal line at 3:30, the Devils seemed to take heart and picked up the offensive pace. Bruce Driver, one of the team’s senior players, started the romp with a blast from five feet inside the blue line during a power play, at 10:30, and Claude Lemieux strengthened his bid for most valuable player honors by scoring his 13th playoff goal, a blistering shot that darted through Mike Vernon’s leg pads at 16:52.

Neal Broten’s 30-foot slap shot through a screen at 6:59 of the second period drew roars from the sellout crowd of 19,040, and Randy McKay’s close-in shot at 8:20 inspired chants of “We want the Cup.” It also sent Detroit goalie Mike Vernon to the bench.

“It’s not that the guys on the other side are not working, not trying,” Devil Coach Jacques Lemaire said. “I give my players credit because they were in their faces all the time. . . . I think it’s our best game . . . in the playoffs. I don’t recall any game that was even close to this.”

Draper agreed that the Red Wings haven’t played anywhere near the form that brought them the Western Conference title and the NHL’s best record this season.

“No one can be happy with what we’ve done in the first three games,” he said. “Now’s the time to look in the mirror. Now’s the gut check, fellas.”

Draper blamed the loss on his failure to put the puck past Brodeur and give the Red Wings an early lead in the first period.

“That has to be a goal for us, for myself. It changed the way things went,” he said. “I had a feeling I let the guys down. That’s as good a scoring chance as you’re going to get.”

The Devils, who will get four more chances to win one game, were surprisingly calm in their locker room. The Red Wings, who will get one more chance to prolong their season and will have to fight the odds to earn more after that, were grim.

“I’m not stupid. I know what’s going on,” New Jersey right wing John MacLean said. “We know one more win and we win the Cup. That’s fine and dandy. But we haven’t won anything yet. We get the fourth win and I’m sure I’ll be a better quote.”

Said Detroit defenseman Paul Coffey: “It’s a mountain and it’s pretty damned high.”

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Stanley Cup Notes

The Red Wings have a seven-game losing streak in the finals. In their previous appearance, in 1966, they won the first two games from the Montreal Canadiens but lost the next four. . . . The Devils have scored first in 15 of their 19 playoff games.