327 replies to this topic

[CarpathianForest]

carpathianforest's comment is even more dumb when you consider that peverley never went UFA.

He was traded. Whatever, who gives a sh$t. Still doesn't change the original point.

When Zajac returns the only way the lines should be:

Parise-Henrique-Clarkson
Kovalchuk-Zajac-Tedenby
Elias-Zubrus-Sykora
Janssen/Boulton-Carter-Pelley

IMO. Palmieri needs to stay in Albany this season and be called up on an as needed basis.
Josefson, I'm not sure how long he's out, but he's still pretty green. He may need some time in Albany.

Edited by CarpathianForest, 27 November 2011 - 02:13 AM.

[CarpathianForest]

This is silly. Most of the league's best players have to make due with linemates that might not be a perfect match. Kovalchuk's lack of goal scoring this year has nothing to do with who he plays with - it's all about luck, and he simply hasn't had it yet (6.9% shooting). Throughout his career he's always had a near 1/1 correlation between goals/assists, and so far this year he's 4/9. That tells me his linemates are just fine, and it's a matter of him finding the back of the net that's a bit off.

During the second half of last year when he started scoring in bunches, noone batted an eye because that's the type of player he is.

Sorry, but Kovy can't generate offense with any Tom, Dick and Harry. Guy doesn't create that much on his own. Why do you think he has the most amount of giveaways this season? He needs chemistry and there really hasn't been anyone to help him with that except for Zajac. This idea that he's some sort of lone superman dynamo is absurd.

[Amberite]

Sorry, but Kovy can't generate offense with any Tom, Dick and Harry. Guy doesn't create that much on his own. Why do you think he has the most amount of giveaways this season? He needs chemistry and there really hasn't been anyone to help him with that except for Zajac. This idea that he's some sort of lone superman dynamo is absurd.

Actually Kovalchuk DOES create that much on his own. If you've been paying attention, his career-long MO has been taking everything on himself, and one of the biggest concerns people had when we signed him is if he could integrate into the more team-first mentality that the Devils employ. In fact, last year he took a lot of flak for trying to pass when he should have shot, in an attempt to force himself into our system.

[Mitico12]

I find it hilarious that people in the forum are still sticking up for Kovalchuck. He looked like he didn't even want to be on the ice right before Larrson scored his goal. When he's on defense (granted he's a goal scorer) he literally has the look on his face of
'I don't give a fvck what happens.' If you people don't agree or can't see it you're either in denial or you're a fvcking idiot.

True. Kovalchuk's facial expressions say it all. Kovy's version of Prozac is scoring goals. He needs to score in order to be happy...making a good defensive play or playing the PK well isn't good enough...

We're in for trouble if his scoring drought continues...

He also may be jealous that Henrique has more goals and points than him....

[CarpathianForest]

Actually Kovalchuk DOES create that much on his own. If you've been paying attention, his career-long MO has been taking everything on himself, and one of the biggest concerns people had when we signed him is if he could integrate into the more team-first mentality that the Devils employ. In fact, last year he took a lot of flak for trying to pass when he should have shot, in an attempt to force himself into our system.

Kovy doesn't create that much on his own if a good opposing coach knows how to shut him down. His problem is is that he takes too much on himself to create the offense. He can't do that. That's why he continually gives the puck away when trying to bring it into the offensive zone. Just stand him up and, bam, turnover. He needs a good set up man. Zajac was the best we saw last season. Hopefully DeBoer puts them together again. No one else works.

[Amberite]

Kovy doesn't create that much on his own if a good opposing coach knows how to shut him down. His problem is is that he takes too much on himself to create the offense. He can't do that. That's why he continually gives the puck away when trying to bring it into the offensive zone. Just stand him up and, bam, turnover. He needs a good set up man. Zajac was the best we saw last season. Hopefully DeBoer puts them together again. No one else works.

Come on, have you ever even watched Kovalchuk before he came to the Devils? He's made a career off of creating his own offense and opposing coaches have never been able to shut him down completely. You need to realize that Kovalchuk's style leads to turnovers and failed 1-on-1s, but it also only needs to succeed once or twice a game to suddenly create space and allow himself or his line to score a goal. This is what makes him successful, but it can also make him frustrating to watch if you're expecting him to play a patient, grinding game.

As for Zajac, sure, there's always a chemistry aspect, even when you're talking about Kovalchuk. But the reason why he's only scored 4 goals this year has nothing to do with his linemates. Just take a look at the amount of shots he's getting per game. Playing with Zajac may give him a few more points over the course of an entire season, but you're not talking about any drastic change.

Edited by Amberite, 27 November 2011 - 03:16 AM.

[CarpathianForest]

I haven't had the opportunity to watch as many Devs games this season, but it would be hard to argue that Kovalchuk's style of play leads to any offensive opportunities for his linemates. They're too busy deferring to Kovy on the shot.

[mmajeski06]

That was a frustrating one...really just sucks how it ended.

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

Haven't people learned yet what Kovalchuk brings? He's a defensively-challenged sniper that will reliably put up 40+ goals a season. Even last year, in which he started abysmally and the team floundered for half a season, he put up 31 goals. This season he's shooting at 6.9% which is non-sustainable and he's still at an almost point-per-game pace. As Tri said, when he suddenly starts scoring goals in bunches, noone will make a peep.

Kovalchuk is much greater than the sum of his "visible" parts and it shows in the production of his lines and the points he's generating even when he's not scoring goals. The sooner people realize that he's going to be floating around for half the game and making high-risk-high-reward passes, the sooner most of you will stop bitching and focus on other aspects of our team.

Some problems:

We haven't seen him be a reliable 40+ goal scorer HERE yet.

In 125 games as a Devil, he has 45 goals and 55 assists for 100 points. Dating back to last season, it's 35 goals and 38 assists in 98 GP, with a -30 rating. No matter how one chooses to spin it, this is not what ANYONE was expecting when the Devils re-signed him. His offensive production this season (13 points in 17 GP is NOT a PPG pace BTW) is even less impressive when you factor in the insane amount of minutes he's been logging.

I don't know how anyone can't be disappointed with Kovy to this point. Even if you wanted to be incredibly diplomatic and say that his good moments and contributions are about a wash with the bad ones, I think we were all expecting a much better ratio of good-to-bad than that.

Everyday I hope it will get better with him, I really do, and I know that every last Devils fan, from the Kovy fanboys who will bendover backwards to make new excuses for him to his harshest critics are united on that front. But God I hope I see it soon, because he is becoming harder to take by the game.

[Steven M.]

Some problems:

We haven't seen him be a reliable 40+ goal scorer HERE yet.

In 125 games as a Devil, he has 45 goals and 55 assists for 100 points. Dating back to last season, it's 35 goals and 38 assists in 98 GP, with a -30 rating. No matter how one chooses to spin it, this is not what ANYONE was expecting when the Devils re-signed him. His offensive production this season (13 points in 17 GP is NOT a PPG pace BTW) is even less impressive when you factor in the insane amount of minutes he's been logging.

I don't know how anyone can't be disappointed with Kovy to this point. Even if you wanted to be incredibly diplomatic and say that his good moments and contributions are about a wash with the bad ones, I think we were all expecting a much better ratio of good-to-bad than that.

Everyday I hope it will get better with him, I really do, and I know that every last Devils fan, from the Kovy fanboys who will bendover backwards to make new excuses for him to his harshest critics are united on that front. But God I hope I see it soon, because he is becoming harder to take by the game.

+1

This is what I tell other people as well when asked about him. I really, really want to like him, and see him thrive. We all do. But it just has not been happening...

[LucifersDog]

Be happy Marty played well.

[Marv4Life]

It's been nearly two years and Kovy STILL hasn't been used properly. Holik said it best: you need to find chemistry with him. What's the point of signing a guy for 100mil if you're not going to build around him? You need a top center and you need a PP quarterback. And stop trying to make him something that he's not. He's a sniper not a playmaker.

[EdgeControl]

with about 2+ minutes left in the second period kovy had his pocket picked once again which led to a break, he fell down on the ice near the bench and stayed there looking down for a few seconds before climbing over the board. dont know if he is hurting, exhausted, or disgusted. probably all 3

[Triumph]

It's been nearly two years and Kovy STILL hasn't been used properly. Holik said it best: you need to find chemistry with him. What's the point of signing a guy for 100mil if you're not going to build around him? You need a top center and you need a PP quarterback. And stop trying to make him something that he's not. He's a sniper not a playmaker.

Except that Atlanta had neither of these things for most of the years that Kovalchuk was there. He played with Marc Savard, who was not considered anything when he arrived to Atlanta, for a year and a half. Okay, so I will grant Savard is a top center. Then he played with Todd White, Rich Peverley, and Nikolai Antropov. Fine players, all of them, but I wouldn't confuse any of them for a #1 center.

Let's see about a power play quarterback - top scoring defenseman on Atlanta from 03 on:

03: Yannick Tremblay
04: Frantisek Kaberle
06: Jaroslav Modry
07: Greg De Vries
08: Tobias Enstrom
09: Ron Hainsey
10: Tobias Enstrom

Would you consider any of these guys besides Enstrom a top offensive defenseman? Of course not.

Kovalchuk IS a playmaker, it's the most underrated aspect of his game, and it's something we didn't see very much from him last year. He's still shooting plenty. The pucks will start going in for him.

Edited by Triumph, 27 November 2011 - 10:37 AM.

[njdevsftw]

We haven't seen him be a reliable 40+ goal scorer HERE yet.

In 125 games as a Devil, he has 45 goals and 55 assists for 100 points. Dating back to last season, it's 35 goals and 38 assists in 98 GP, with a -30 rating. No matter how one chooses to spin it, this is not what ANYONE was expecting when the Devils re-signed him.

Did you ever stop for a minute to think about why his sudden lack of production "randomly" occurred at the exact same time as he changed clubs? He reliably put up 1 point pr game playing for a far inferior team 8 years running in Atlanta, yet is unable to sustain that same production here. did you consider for a moment that this phenomenon might have other reasons then Kovy randomly starting sucking/not caring. Could this in fact be related to his new environment somehow? Be it coaching style, linesmates, his role on the team, playing RW instead of his natural LW etc etc..?

In an interview with Kovy last year after the MacLean debacle, he clearly stated that he was glad the RW "experiment" was over, and hoped it would never happen again. And yet here we are a few months later, back with him on the RW.

It's been nearly two years and Kovy STILL hasn't been used properly. Holik said it best: you need to find chemistry with him. What's the point of signing a guy for 100mil if you're not going to build around him? You need a top center and you need a PP quarterback. And stop trying to make him something that he's not. He's a sniper not a playmaker.

Completely agree with this. It's truly puzzling how they sign a point-pr-game $100M LW sniper and then put him on a line with mediocre players or on the RW and expect his production to go unchanged.

While Kovy can and will produce points pretty much on his own, he will certainly perform better if he has a quality playmaker on his line. He's played with quality players like Savard, Heatley, Hossa and Kozlov in the past. The Devils should be able to match the talent of Kozlov at least with Elias or Zajac. He's to easy to shut down if he's out there with JJ/Palmieri in my opinion, as it's so obvious where the shot is coming from. Most of the time a line like this will result in him trying to become the playmaker instead of the finisher. (And while he's an excellent passer, that's not why we brought him in.)

Edited by njdevsftw, 27 November 2011 - 10:55 AM.

[Amberite]

Some problems:

We haven't seen him be a reliable 40+ goal scorer HERE yet.

In 125 games as a Devil, he has 45 goals and 55 assists for 100 points. Dating back to last season, it's 35 goals and 38 assists in 98 GP, with a -30 rating. No matter how one chooses to spin it, this is not what ANYONE was expecting when the Devils re-signed him. His offensive production this season (13 points in 17 GP is NOT a PPG pace BTW) is even less impressive when you factor in the insane amount of minutes he's been logging.

I don't know how anyone can't be disappointed with Kovy to this point. Even if you wanted to be incredibly diplomatic and say that his good moments and contributions are about a wash with the bad ones, I think we were all expecting a much better ratio of good-to-bad than that.

Everyday I hope it will get better with him, I really do, and I know that every last Devils fan, from the Kovy fanboys who will bendover backwards to make new excuses for him to his harshest critics are united on that front. But God I hope I see it soon, because he is becoming harder to take by the game.

Sorry but when the guy is shooting at 6.9%, which is less than half of his career percentage, and has 4 goals, it tells me that by rights he should have at least 8 right now. I'm not going to fault a guy on bad luck. He's PLAYING at a point-per-game pace this year, even if his actual stats are a bit short. You may find that to be flawed logic, but there it is.

As for the rest, in his first season with us he put up 27 points in 27 games. Last year, NOONE did well under MacLean, and once Lemaire took over, he was back to his normal pace. Make no doubt about it - Kovalchuk IS a point-per-game+ player, even on this team, even out of his normal position, even with "mediocre" linemates.

Again, the problem is that everyone here expected Kovalchuk to be some sort of messiah that would be this all-around perfect player. I also think many people set an unrealistic expectation of the offense that he brings, expecting him to dismantle the opposition defense on every shift. Everyone got caught up in the hype of getting one of the most sought after UFAs in NHL history. Kovalchuk is not Crosby, he's not even Ovechkin (although lo and behold, even he can have some problems as we're seeing). People need to get it through their heads that even the best forwards in the league make tons of mistakes, have off nights, and just simply aren't going to create offense on every shift they're out. I would think people would realize that after having seen Parise play for so long.

Edited by Amberite, 27 November 2011 - 11:00 AM.

[njdevsftw]

Except that Atlanta had neither of these things for most of the years that Kovalchuk was there. He played with Marc Savard, who was not considered anything when he arrived to Atlanta, for a year and a half. Okay, so I will grant Savard is a top center.

Kovalchuk IS a playmaker, it's the most underrated aspect of his game, and it's something we didn't see very much from him last year. He's still shooting plenty. The pucks will start going in for him.

The PP units in Atlanta had ELITE talents like Heatley/Hossa as well even though they may not have had a top tier D-man QB, there was plenty of creativity on the ice. And most importantly, there were other serious offensive threats that could shoot the puck, so it wasn't just a case of shutting down Kovy to defend successfully.

[NJDevs4978]

Sorry but when the guy is shooting at 6.9%, which is less than half of his career percentage, and has 4 goals, it tells me that by rights he should have at least 8 right now. I'm not going to fault a guy on bad luck. He's PLAYING at a point-per-game pace this year, even if his actual stats are a bit short. You may find that to be flawed logic, but there it is.

As for the rest, in his first season with us he put up 27 points in 27 games. Last year, NOONE did well under MacLean, and once Lemaire took over, he was back to his normal pace. Make no doubt about it - Kovalchuk IS a point-per-game+ player.

Again, the problem is that everyone here expected Kovalchuk to be some sort of messiah that would be this all-around perfect player. I also think many people set an unrealistic expectation of the offense that he brings, expecting him to dismantle the opposition defense on every shift. Everyone got caught up in the hype of getting one of the most sought after UFAs in NHL history. Kovalchuk is not Crosby, he's not even Ovechkin (although lo and behold, even he can have some problems as we're seeing). People need to get it through their heads that even the best forwards in the league make tons of mistakes, have off nights, and just simply aren't going to create offense on every shift they're out. I would think people would realize that after having seen Parise play for so long.

lol at Kovy having bad luck for a year and a half here. Even if you want to arbitrarily give him eight goals, that STILL pro-rates out to only 30 for a season. CR's point still stands, he's been anything but a reliable 40-goal scorer, he's come in at about 30 last year and his pro-rated pace two years ago and this is no longer a small size sample. If he's only going to be a 30-goal, 70-point player then he'd better cut out the nonsense or at best he winds up being a wash. And you expect much better than a wash from a guy with his talent and contract.

As far as the bolded lol, give fans a little more credit than that. We weren't expecting 100-point seasons, we were expecting something resembling the numbers he put up in Atlanta with an improved awareness in the defensive zone since ostensibly we were going to teach him the finer points. Neither has happened, other than under Lemaire and Kovy certainly isn't doing much to prove he can excel under anyone other than Lemaire this year.

In an interview with Kovy last year after the MacLean debacle, he clearly stated that he was glad the RW "experiment" was over, and hoped it would never happen again. And yet here we are a few months later, back with him on the RW.

Yeah except he refuses to play RW and winds up shadowing Zach all over the ice as if he was Claude Lemieux sticking to Cam Neely in the '95 playoffs. I agree he shouldn't be at RW ever but he deserves culpability for not even trying to assimilate. Look at Elias, he played left wing for much of his career, went to center without a peep and is doing very well there too.

Edited by NJDevs4978, 27 November 2011 - 11:08 AM.

[Amberite]

lol at Kovy having bad luck for a year and a half here. Even if you want to arbitrarily give him eight goals, that STILL pro-rates out to only 30 for a season. CR's point still stands, he's been anything but a reliable 40-goal scorer, he's come in at about 30 last year and his pro-rated pace two years ago and this is no longer a small size sample. If he's only going to be a 30-goal, 70-point player then he'd better cut out the nonsense or at best he winds up being a wash. And you expect much better than a wash from a guy with his talent and contract.

As far as the bolded lol, give fans a little more credit than that. We weren't expecting 100-point seasons, we were expecting something resembling the numbers he put up in Atlanta with an improved awareness in the defensive zone since ostensibly we were going to teach him the finer points. Neither has happened, other than under Lemaire and Kovy certainly isn't doing much to prove he can excel under anyone other than Lemaire this year.

Last year he played half the season under MacLean, in which NOONE did well under and Kovalchuk openly expressed relief when he was replaced. Those few months are the basis for your "30-goal, 70-point" argument, and if you're not willing to accept that, I can't help you.

And actually, I'm not going to give fans on this board more credit than that. Most people WERE expecting 100-point seasons. Worse still is that people were expecting him to suddenly become a different player than he was in Atlanta, especially in regards to the defensive game. I'll admit that I had some hopes like that also, but you need to have realistic expectations, and most people here simply don't.

[Jerrydevil]

This notion that the team is using Kovalchuk wrong is the worst excuse-making for a "star" player.