Triumph

Henrique should be watching the wingers because that's where he belongs long-term. I'm hoping they'll see that by training camp next season.

 

It is not surprising that not playing with Kovalchuk and Parise means Henrique's point totals are down.  He's just not that great with the puck.  It would not surprise me if Henrique's 1st season represents a career high in points.

Not to mention beating the Rangers.  I'll lose 2 spots in the draft if it means keeping those idiots out of the playoffs.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think the fact that our future is not exactly bright combined with the fact that other teams will offer him more money....

 

Why would you think the Devils don't have the money?  That's all they have.  Tons of cap room.  The idea that Lamoriello doesn't pay players is 10 years out of date. 

 

Most of the best teams in the league do not have cap room.  The Devils not only have it, they don't have any irreplacable players going UFA in the next 2 years after this one.

Life per Triumph

 

1- use numbers to try to backup a point or a prediction

 

2- when it fails, blame luck

 

This adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.  (and neither does my pointing it out, but you do this a lot and it's annoying)

 

The shots have to come up a little, but if he gets stopped, they do come up a little.   That's the life of a garbageman, goalie kicks out his pad to stop your shot, instead of getting 1 goal on 1 shot, you get 0 goals on 2 or 3 shots slamming it into his pads.    He's still 23, we'll see what happens next season.   But I like what I see from him scoring-wise.    And let's be honest, on this team if you sit around waiting for someone to get you a goal, it ain't happening unless you play with Patty.

 

Not really buying this explanation - plus Henrique is a center, how many garbageman centers can you think of?  I agree if he's moved out to wing he should end up with more shots and more goals, but predicting anything based of this 'garbageman' persona you've constructed for him over X number of games - it doesn't seem likely.  

NHLPA has argued against a 10 minute overtime - sorry folks, you won't see it, ever.

 

Shootout is a good solution to an unsolvable problem - hockey games don't often have a winner after 60 minutes.  It showcases skills that players take years to develop and hardly ever get a chance to display, both for shooters and goalies.  It adds an interesting strategic element to a game often lacking in that department (whereas football and baseball you can routinely ask a fellow watcher, what would you do here if you were manager/coach, hockey really has none of that except at the micro level).  And it gets rid of the tie, an unsatisfying end to the majority of hockey games that ended in ties.  On occasion you'd see a great game where both teams had their chances and couldn't make it happen and the tie was justified, but most of the time the game oozed to a slow dribble and stopped at an arbitrary time.

 

The NHL erred by not making the point system 3-2-1-0, but given that the Devils take full advantage of this by playing extremely low-event hockey in an attempt to get as many 3 point games as possible, I can't be all that upset about it.

Tri, what are your thoughts about Henrique at wing. Let's say this Lok kid is good...

 

Henrique-Lok-Kovy

 

or reverse wings. What kind of potential does that have, IF that's maybe a pipe dream thought Lou is having with that trade.  High risk/reward.

 

I like it.  Use Elias-Zajac-Clarkson against the toughs, give the Henrique-Loktionov-Kovalchuk line a lot of time in the offensive zone, then have a third line with Zubrus, Josefson, and Butler.  4th line CBGB.  If you want to use CBGB against the other team's 2nd line, as DeBoer (insanely) did in last year's playoffs, go nuts.

You're overdoing with the numbers a bit on this one...I simply dared to mention that Josefson's +/-, in relation to his teammates', raises a few eyebrows.  I never intimated that it was the end of the world or something that should have us all terribly concerned, based on the small sample size, and I also said that I don't think it he is entirely to blame for it.  And though I respect the numbers you've put up here, I maintain that it's not all about bad luck when it comes to -4 in 6 GP scenarios...unless you've watched EVERY case where that's happened, you can't say with 100% certainty that it's ALWAYS due to rotten luck.

Okay, so maybe there's an instance when in 6 games, a player throws the puck into his own net intentionally 4 times; I agree that I haven't seen that nor have I decided to check if that has ever happened.  If it did, I bet it's on the 1983-84 Penguins' game tape.  Aside from that, there are always enormous chance elements in everything that goes on during a hockey game.  A player missing a check and it leading to a goal isn't a -1 on his head - it's a team game.  The goalie could have stopped the shot - goalies stop most shots.  They stop more than 50% of shootout attempts.  Beyond the goalie, one of his teammates could have bailed him out.  It's these events repeating - constant missed checks, turnovers, etc. that result in negative shot differentials and aside from cases where players beat the percentages, minuses.  My point was that no NHL player has ever deserved a -4 after 6 games - either his team isn't shooting well when he's on the ice, or his goalie's not stopping enough pucks.

Tri, all I said was that Josefson was a little behind of where he was expected to be.  Yes, I think the games he missed last year set him back a little bit...not a ton, but a little bit, as far as development goes.  At the very least, he has shown he can play at the NHL level.  Again, hopefully he stays healthy, as he's already going to lose 34 games this season of development time at the NHL level.

You're not really understanding.  Josefson isn't 'showing he can play at the NHL level'.  He's on the first unit on the PK.  For forwards 21 and under, he's near the top 10 of ice time per game.  That's why I think the idea that he's 'a little behind where he was expected to be' is ridiculous.  The Devils expected a guy they drafted in 2009 would be playing in all situations 15 minutes a game in 2012-13?  I'm sure they hoped that, I have a hard time believing they expected better.

Nice win.  Devils played horribly in the first but bounced back in the final 2 periods.  Some luck on the Clarkson goal and the penalty shot didn't seem entirely deserved but wow has Kovalchuk become money on those plays.

Love Josefson getting 17 minutes.  Tedenby got stapled to the bench after his terrible point coverage + penalty - that seemed inevitable.  It was fun when he wasn't in the doghouse though.  Matteau - 3 shots again, makes some nice reads in the offensive zone, but in the defensive zone he needs work.  It's going to be a tough decision but I think he will be sent back.  Still, unless he regresses, won't be that hard to pencil him in on next year's team.

In other news, Rob Niedermayer was hired as assistant to the assistant trainer.

Nah, Scott'll do well - he's smart, he wears glasses off the ice.

Whether it's fair or not is irrelevant, just that they have no right to be taking it as an 'insult' when they wound up on the long end of the exact same percentage in the last CBA.  So I guess they were insulting the owners offering 57-43 at the end of the last CBA?  The NBA's first offer was even worse than that lol.

I mean first offers are first offers, and no one cares about them today.  But the NHL is making record revenues - I'd be a little insulted if I worked somewhere that was making record profits, in part because of my work, and they offered me and everyone else there 20% less money.  But that's business, I don't think anyone cares about it now.  

If it's so ludicrous on their end, they should realize that's how the end of the last CBA looked to the owners.  But it's telling you think even 57-43 for the players isn't 'fair'.

No percentage is fair.  When you cut percentages like the NHL has, what you end up doing is forcing small market teams to spend beyond their means while big market teams rake in money.  And you put out of reach that money that the big market teams rake in - money they want to spend on players.  And of course they don't want to just give it to other teams in revenue sharing - it's theirs!  They earned it!  (By enforcing a municipally-funded monopoly such that competitors can't enter their market w/o buying a franchise and paying exorbitant fees)

The owners signed every single one of those contracts that were so unfair.  The players did not compel them to do so.  I don't understand how you don't understand this - the percentage of revenue that players ultimately got in 2004 were the owners and GMs doing and theirs alone (beyond, of course, the CBA put in place which allowed the owners to do that).

Honestly feels like Albany should consider firing Kowalsky at this point.  No excuse for this much talent being unable to string together wins.

I do blame both sides, I just don't like when people look at this negotiation solely as the players being 'bullied' or the owners being obstinate. Both sides are equally culpable, especially since there's no reason beyond greed for this lockout. In '04 the system was broken. The system is not broken now, not when you have an #8 seed winning a Cup and then Minnesota throwing around $200 million for two players and Nashville matching the ridiculous Weber offer sheet.

I have no idea how you can write these sentences in the same post and not have the 'aha!' light come on.

Larsson in particular just doesn't belong in this league.

The owners lose, but the players lose more.    Replacement players are a gimmick and more of an 'fu' to the players.   I don't honestly believe they would go that route.   But  the NHL unfortunately does not have the impact the NFL has, etc.       That said, they can recover quicker because they have a smaller, but hardcore fan base.  Fans are pissed.   But once games are back on, they will return very quickly.     The casual fans, less so... but then again, the casual fan really has less impact in hockey than it does in any other major sport.

The owners should just play hardball, get what they want and stop this nonsense of trying to do it over a couple CBA's.

Sigh.  Replacement players don't work, that's why they won't go that route.  They didn't work in the NFL, and they wouldn't've worked in MLB.  The players ARE the game.  

The NHL has clearly gotten into a pattern whereby they lock out the players, make a bunch of demands, then realize that they totally underestimated themselves and the market and again they have to return to the drawing board.  And that's why I can't get behind this - it's utter horsesh!t.  Sure, the players can't stay at 57% of revenue, I think we all know that.  However, it doesn't mean that all the money that the players give back end up in the pockets of the 6 most wealthy teams, whose wealth largely comes from government subsidies of arena costs and artificial market protections, and that's where it will mostly end up.  The smaller markets will lose more because of a lockout - their hold on their fanbases is already tenuous - while the big markets have got plenty of corporations and wealthy fans willing to pony up.

The NHL is in this mess because it underestimated how popular its game is.  I bet they never thought they would even hit the 57% revenue threshold, or that the players would vote for the 5% cap inflator every single year.