Martin Brodeur made a mistake that a man his age should never make: He counted the candles.

He was celebrating with his family one night before turning the big 4-0 — he was booked for what turned out to be another party on his actual birthday — when he noticed the blaze atop his cake wasn’t quite the inferno he expected.

“I was a little disappointed,” the Devils goalie said. “There were only 20 or something, so they only went halfway on the candles. Couldn’t find a big enough cake, I guess.”

He laughed. For most mortals, turning 40 means collecting your gift-wrapped packages of Depends and Geritol, then waking up after a night of partying with six words running through your aching head:

You're too old for this crap.

Brodeur? All he did was win another playoff game. The 4-2 victory in Game 4 will not go down as his most memorable, since for most of this one it appeared the Flyers had decided to give him a night of R&R as a special gift.

Still: The win gives the Devils a 3-1 stranglehold on the second-round series, and it adds another line in his growing Hall of Fame biography. Brodeur became the first goalie in NHL history to appear in a playoff game in his teens and his 40s.

Mull that one for a few seconds, because it is the definition of longevity. Few professional athletes reach their 40s before retiring. Fewer still can perform at an elite level if they do.

Here is Brodeur, one victory away from the Eastern Conference Finals, making a glove save on Father Time’s breakaway.

“You go out and you compete against players that are such a young age,” Brodeur said. “I’m more than twice the age of (rookie defenseman) Adam Larsson. I mean, you kind of shake your head a little bit.

“But you’re able to play at a level when you’re having fun and you’re able to compete in a league you always wanted to play, and still be able to keep going. For me, I don’t take anything for granted. I appreciate every moment, especially this year. It’s been awesome for me.”

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For him. And for his team. This series is unfolding like an infomercial for Devils hockey. Sure, they had every reason to expect to beat the Flyers, but to dominate them like this?

There was a point in Game 4 where the shots were 27-7. The score was still tied at 2, thanks to a Flyers power-play and short-handed goal, but at even strength the Flyers looked so overmatched you wondered how they made the playoffs, much less knocked out the high-powered Penguins in the first round.

This victory was a statement for the Devils’ defensemen, long regarded (and rightfully so) as the weakness of this team. Not only did Marek Zidlicky set up the first Devils goal and score the second one, but he and his fellow blue-liners made the Flyers forwards earn every inch of space in the offensive zone.

The win felt stolen from a 2000 highlight reel. Postseason win No. 106 for Brodeur looked like so many before it — he steered away the few meager Philadelphia chances in the third period, then enjoyed the adoring chants of “Marty!” from the Prudential Center fans.

Look, Brodeur is not the goalie he was back then. Every time he lets in a borderline goal — and there have been a few in these playoffs — the cries from the critics are predictable.

He’s washed up. He’s done. A fan in the Wells Fargo Center in Philly actually waved a sign at him with a rocking chair on it, and Brodeur had to admit, he chuckled when he caught sight of that one.

But the milestones keep coming. He recorded his 650th win in March, but admitted the moment was a little weird. He doesn’t have anybody to pass on the all-time list any more. He’s just lapping the field.

“The older you get, you’re definitely a little more appreciative of them, but I think the big ones are past,” he said then. “There’s not much I can really do that’s going to be really, really special because I’ve done it to a certain extent. I’m just kind of compiling numbers to make that next guy really work for it.”

The wins this time of year, however, are different. A run deep in the playoffs for the first time since 2003 will silence the critics that Brodeur merely has been padding his statistics late in his career.

He won his first Stanley Cup when he was 23. Could he add one at 40? The Devils are a long way from that, and birthday boy (ahem) Brodeur was more focused on a different celebration.

“I had a couple of my buddies surprise me — I saw them in the stands,” Brodeur said. “They flew in, so hopefully we’ll have a few laughs tonight.”

The rest of us middle-aged mortals can only hope he’ll at least feel sore in the morning.

Steve Politi: spoliti@starledger.com; twitter.com/StevePoliti