Scott always free to share Lou’s stage

Making Scott Niedermayer an exception has been the rule for Lou Lamoriello, so it comes as no surprise the Devils general manager authorized the ceremony in Newark last night in which the, well, exceptional defenseman’s No. 27 was retired, even though he had skipped out on the Devils to sign as a free agent with Anaheim during the summer of 2005.

“If he was a different personality or if he had left just for more money, then I don’t think this would be happening,” Martin Brodeur told The Post before the No. 27 banner joined Scott Stevens’ No. 4 and Ken Daneyko’s No. 3 high above the Rock’s ice surface — on which not one of three ever skated in a Devils uniform.

“But the circumstances under which Nieder left were unique,” Brodeur said. “I don’t think there were ever any hard feelings between him and Lou or anybody in the organization.”

Niedermayer left for less money, $6.75 million per for four years, after Lamoriello had offered him the then NHL maximum contract of $7.8 million per for pretty much as long a deal as the home-grown Devil desired. Niedermayer left in order to team up on the Ducks with his younger brother, Rob, with whom he won a fourth Stanley Cup in 2007 before retiring after the 2009-10 season.

Back in the day, when the Devils played at 16W, the Exit of Champions, and won three Cups in nine years from 1995 through 2003, Lamoriello ruled with an impatient iron fist. Those who went on the open market found the doors for a return to the Meadowlands closed. The GM waited for no man.

Except that Lamoriello, whose team had lost Scott Stevens to a career-ending concussion midway through 2003-04, waited two weeks for Niedermayer in the wake of the settlement of the 2004-05 lockout while the competition constructed their rosters; he waited, hoping against hope the Devils’ red would be thicker than blood.

Lamoriello waited until Aug. 4, and then, when he got the word from Niedermayer and with the best alternatives no longer available at that late date, the GM leaped before looking in trying to fill the massive hole created by No. 27’s defection.

Within hours the Devils signed Vladimir Malakhov, by then an apathetic relic, to a two-year, over-35 contract worth $3.6 million per that was the first in a string of horrendous free-agent acquisitions that would be debilitating under the hard cap while also strangling the treasury.

“Waiting like that for that decision was definitely tough; it kind of messed up things and it was chaotic here for a while after that,” Brodeur said. “But I can understand what Lou was thinking, just like Nieder’s leaving can’t erase all the things he accomplished for us.”

The fault line in New Jersey’s dynastic run can be drawn on Jan. 7, 2004, the day Stevens played his last game. But the departure of Niedermayer was nearly as great a milestone in the franchise’s decline.

“We sure could have used him here for all the rest of those years,” said No. 26, Patrik Elias, who certainly will become the first Devils forward to have his number retired (“I would like to think so,” he told the Post) when it’s time. “It was just a pleasure playing with [Niedermayer], practicing with him and sharing the locker room with him.

“He left, but we all understood why and nobody can say that he does not deserve this night.”

That includes Lamoriello, who has always made the exceptional No. 27 an exception within his rule.

larry.brooks@nypost.com