In a tight hallway adjacent to the Devils’ locker room inside of the Wells Fargo Center, the sounds of industrial machinery took hold 2½ hours before the puck dropped for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. The grating of a portable sander. The sharp shrill of a buzz saw.

The visual is jarring to the layperson, though not unusual in the NHL. A $100 million franchise cornerstone lacquering the blade of his stick with black spray paint. The first-line center sanding the final quarter-inch off the top of his stick.

It was a snug space the Devils had transformed into a high school shop class. Players, reminiscent of carpenters, biding time in their pregame rituals — perfecting their sticks in preparation for that night’s game.

This is how hockey players work off the minutes until they can skate, fine-tuning their most treasured tools and soothing their minds.

Routine bordering on superstition transposed as dedicated handiwork. A window to feed their neurosis for the perfect stick.

There is no right and proper way, no archetype to adhere to, so each fiddles and fixes until intuition tells him he’s arrived at the right point. There is no science, it’s all art.

“There’s so many guys, they’ve all got their own different little things they do to their sticks,” center Adam Henrique said. “Whether it be shaving it down, cutting it a different way, curving it more, heating up the blade, there’s a million different things you can do. You gotta find what’s comfortable for you.”

Center Travis Zajac has taken off that final fraction on the nub so many times that he can eyeball the length out of memory. His sticks are kept thin on the handle, though to no particular measurement — only that they feel just right on the ice.

Henrique can feel the difference down to the centimeter.

“You try to get it the same every time,” he said. “I notice the smallest little difference. When it’s off, it drives me nuts.”

And the grunt work? The steps that put them in harm’s way as they deal with hand-held torches and blades that can spin at more than 1,000 rpm — its danger is dismissed with nonchalant shrugs. They would have it no other way than to do their own craft work — as they have been since playing in the juniors and minor leagues.

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“What could go wrong?” Zajac said.

“I haven’t had any injuries from it yet, so knock on wood it stays that way.”

Left winger Zach Parise doesn’t mess around with his sticks anymore. He found his ideal in a sporting goods store in Minnesota in his second year in the NHL. It was manna from hockey heaven.

Now, he has taken the process out of his hands and handed it over to Easton, the company that makes his sticks. Parise relies on them, almost obsessively, to get it right. The height, the grip, the stiffness of the blade — it all comes game-ready. He’s outsourced it so long that he doesn’t remember the specifications of his order anymore.

“They know by now what I like,” he said.

In contrast to Parise’s relatively minimalist take is winger/center Dainius Zubrus’ compulsive approach. He’s the butt of many jokes as no Devils player hesitates to nominate him as the most maniacal in the locker room.

Zubrus’ mad-scientist act can sometimes take up to two hours, by Zajac’s estimate. First he heats up the sticks, curving it so, before stepping on it to test it. That stick then goes into an ice bucket to cool off so the curve stays. Next, Zubrus measures up the lie and compares the stick with his previous ones. The length and the curve change from month to month or year to year, but at that period they have to be the same as the one before it, and he does the knob himself, before finally applying the tape.

Zubrus said it takes him 20 minutes to do two sticks, but he can take six sticks out at once for warm-ups to find the right one, though he’s not against reusing a stick from game to game.

“Well, I do spend a little more time than other guys, so I think that’s why they have fun with it,” Zubrus said. “But I’m waiting for sticks that will be less maintenance to arrive. Once that happens, hopefully my timing on the sticks will be a little less.”

The reason for all the machinations, all the hours spent with OCD-like obsession, are not always just to get the flawless stick. It’s also to get the right mind-set. Sometimes its value is found in the comfort it provides.

So surreal that their confidence can be as fragile as the inches-thick graphite of their sticks.

“Honestly, it’s all mental,” Zubrus said. “In your head if you think you’ve got a good stick, then you can do certain things you probably can’t. And you can’t then you’re sometimes blaming your stick, a lot of times maybe it’s hands.”

Either way, he’ll be working on his stick again — trying to make it right.

Mike Vorkunov: mvorkunov@starledger.com; twitter.com/Mike_Vorkunov