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I’m worried about Blackwood. I can’t believe he let in 1 goal.

If you don’t hold the fact that he was the 6th overall pick in a deep draft over his head, Zacha is turning into a pretty good two way 30-45 point player, which you need. It’s just maddening because he does show flashes of brilliance and you want so much more. You also don’t particularly want to spend a 6th overall pick on a poor mans Zubrus.

Lafreniere reminds me a bit of John Tavares. Lafreniere has more bite and physicality to his game, but the offensive tools are a dead ringer to Tavares for me. Byfield reminds of Eric Staal in his prime, big center with loads of skill and a great shot, though I find Byfield to be quicker than Staal was. Byfield is a tough one to gauge in terms of comparables because of how complete he is, not a lot of guys that have every tool like Byfield does. Mats Sundin is another that comes to mind, but I'm cautious in comparing him to one of the better Euros of all-time. Lucas Raymond has a lot of the same playmaking attributes as Claude Giroux, fantastic hands, excellent vision, and can really burn too. His edgework is excellent; not as gritty as Giroux, but that honestly might just be something he inherited from playing in Philly. Tim Stützle honestly reminds me of Taylor Hall. Fantastic skater, great hands but more often uses his skating to beat defenders, excellent passer, and can really shoot the puck. Marco Rossi, and some of you are gonna kill me for this, reminds a bit of prime Scott Gomez (I'm talking the 84 point version of Gomer). Smooth and quick skater with quite possibly the best vision and passing ability in the draft, reads the play really well and is a zone entry beast. I think Rossi's skill level is higher than Gomez's was, but broad strokes, his game has looked similar to me. For Jamie Drysdale, I like Kris Letang; 4-way skating ability and a really good offensive brain with a high skill ceiling. Anton Lundell I liken a bit to Henrik Zetterberg, good two-way player with fantastic hockey sense and playmaking ability. Alexander Holtz is a little reminiscent of Daniel Alfredsson, gifted sniper with all-around skill and skating ability. Perfetti is a little tricky for me to pin down, because he has aspects that remind me of a few different players; his shot (and particularly his release) is very Matthews like, but he's on the smaller side and his skating ability is roughly average. Joe Pavelski might be a decent comp, but I think Perfetti's puck skills project better than Pavelski's. Quick on the lone goaltender worth 1st Round consideration, Yaroslav Askarov is a dead ringer for John Gibson for me, minus the right catching glove. The movement, poise, stance, hockey sense, it all screams Gibson to me.

Some good coaching wouldn’t hurt...

Who among us doesn’t ask this exact question every day?

What`s wrong with you, guys. Zacha isn`t a flash, isn`t real decent 6th pick. But he was picked by devs, he wasnt chose to be pick. He play like 7-9 forward with decent pk minutes. He has salary of 7-9 player. He must be 8-10 in points and he is 5-10. He did his job. Did rantanen or barzal better with us? Ofcourse. But we picked Zacha and Zacha has Zacha`s salary. Copp, M Karlsson from SJ, Kerfoot, Compher, Sissons +\- age, +\- salary, pts per salary. Hall needs less games for 25 pts than Zacha. So what? Hall had 3xZacha`s salary. Every day same song "Zacha... just kill our expectations" How dare he. The man who play with corpse Wayne and the smartest guy Wood. With 2.2 KK in his pocket. May be this team really need in couple of decent guys in two first lines and couple of decent defensmen? No. 3-4 line player is guilty in all of sins. Did Jay Pandolfo was bad with his decent pk minutes and poor points?

Unfortunately that will always be held over his head, which is a shame because he had no control over who picked him where. If he was picked 24th or something I think most would be fine with his development. I mean jeez he's playing with Wood and Simmonds and chipping in a few points. I'm also not entirely sure Barzal or Rantanen would have developed the same way that they did if their rookie years were with the 2016 Devils. Yes I do still think they'd turn out better than Zacha regardless though.

Domingue definitely was capable of letting in 5 and losing this game. I think his forum nickname should be Cinco, after his favorite number of goals to give up. In other news, 4 minutes of excitement got the job done, it was like the 9th grade all over again lol.

Trade Simmonds now,during the game....

Lots of talk about Zacha, he seems to be actually finding some consistency. I am still not willing to give up on him.

WHY CAN'T WE EVER GET A GUY LIKE THAT?!? .... wait....

Cinco Domingo

Haha, I sent my dad a text on how pathetic the offense was against the worst team in the league about 30 seconds before our first goal. He just tuned in 10 minutes later at 4-1 and texted me back wondering what game I was watching.

The things he’s good at have been on full display at times this season, his skating, perfect passes that his teammates don’t bury, and his shot is actually even better than I thought it was. This team is hard enough to take right now, please go away with your hysterical overreactions.

Nice photo, but I can't help but think it looks like the town in Willy Wonka when the elevator crashes through the roof and they're over top the city and all the buildings have red roofs.

I'm sorry to hear that. It's a gorgeous campus and setting for a game. We drove through several years ago to see chapel (I'm an architect) and swung by the stadium. I've always thought the NHL was missing an opportunity by not doing a game at Folsom Field in Boulder. That would make for the perfect winter aerial shots.

And our coach is still a dude named Elaine lol.

Joe Thornton (1st overall) put up 3 G and 4 A in 55 GP as an 18-year-old rookie. Brendan Shanahan (2nd overall) put up 26 points in 65 GP (just 7 goals, in a much higher-scoring era) as an 18/19-year old rookie. Nicomo mentioned the Sedin Bros. I'm sure that I can dig up other examples of very high picks who didn't overwhelm initially...I can't worry about Hughes just yet. Especially since we can see that he does have some nice skills. And not like Kakko is tearing it up for the Rangers in his first season.

So his parents, both his grandmothers, and you?

I hate guys like that. What d!cks!!

Doesn't feel like that's really in the cards for him, but I'm not really asking for that either. Actually, I'll happily settle for what he's done over his last 21 GP (4 G, 8 A, and can pitch in with some points on special teams). He went 6 games without a point in that sample, and that's OK...if you're going to be a 40-45 point player, those droughts are to be expected...I just don't want him to disappear for what feels like weeks at a time. Throw in some consistency, and I won't have any beefs with him if that's the player he is going forward.

The bolded was a joke. It wasn't a literal comparison. I would think most would've realized that an actual "meant-to-be-taken-seriously" Zacha to Hall comparison would've been an absurd one to make. I don't ever bring up when Zacha was picked. That's water under the bridge. I'm far more interested in how he can be a consistently effective player for the Devils going forward...and it doesn't have to be as an offensive superstar. If he can become a steady 40-45 point guy (he's currently almost there, based on his current season pace) who can provide some nice intangibles and cut down on his maddening moments, I'll be plenty happy with that. But I need to see that for a longer sample than he's managed so far. There's been too many encouraging teases from him (all the way back to his first full season in the NHL) for me to start believing that this must be the time that he's fully turning the corner. But it would be awesome if he is.

LOL

Yeah, it’s really hard to get excited about single digit goals and 25-30 points out of a 4th year player. It’s nice he doesn’t look totally awful, but the fact that he’s tied for 5th in scoring is more an indictment of the team, than it is anything impressive by him. It’s entirely possible he could still break out at some point but I sure as hell wouldn’t bet on it.

Especially when the games stop counting. Wake me when Zacha has one of these stretches when it isn't second-half twenty points out junktime.

I patented the phrase “flashes of adequacy” to describe when Pavel plays well. 7 points in 7 games is great. 6 goals in 55 games, not so much.

Well, to be fair, he now has the same scoring stats as Hall did as a Devil... ...just took him 22 more games than Hall to get there. 7 points in Zacha’s last 7 games, but we’ve seen these surges before. Did notch his 100th and 101st career points tonight. But yeah, I have a hard time getting too excited about yet another tease.

Yup he’s killing it. He’s got basically the same scoring stats as Wayne Simmonds. A lot to be excited about.

I was at the game tonight. Quiet crowd for the first two periods and rightly so. So the first two periods my hat was facing forwards. Then I decided to put it backwards right before the 3rd period. And poof! 4 goals in 4 minutes!😀

At least that 3rd period was fun. 4 goals in like 4 minutes. Fun to get a home win at least

And ofc Daniel goes MIA when they score a few lol

Dano is definitely lurking the board. He literally brought up the Sedins like 5 minutes after I did lol

But he was right about Shero never firing Hynes and ownership never ever letting Shero go. Oh wait...

Getting shutout against the worst team in the league. With 5 Powerplays. No excuses, they're not finishing tonight. Anyone want a goal? Go fvcking get it.

Back in the day, my grandma used to say, as we would be finishing up a family meal and there was still a little food left “Anyone want that? It’s between you and the garbage!” I’m going to the game on Sunday. Anyone want my PK Bobblehead? It’s between you and the garbage.

Someone with editing skills really should put together a Subban bloopers reel for this season. Plenty of material.

You’re the absolute worst. MIA when they win a couple games, and you then show up to post garbage like this when they start to struggle a bit.

Go back under your bridge.

He’s been playing pretty well lately. Anyone saying he’s been “invisible” is only scoresheet watching.

Bratt has been so frustrating lately. In a perfect world he’s not on the top line.

@DevsMan84 they did give out banners...

Yeah, there’s a difference between liking him, and not wanting to trade him for peanuts, and considering him untouchable. You named the only guys who should be. Although, it would take a lot for me to be ok with trading Ty Smith.

Physical tools, sure. Hockey IQ and work ethic? I haven't seen enough of that to really come to that conclusion myself.

I am offended. It’s just ASSUMED he meant me??? Highly offensive.

First and second periods were ugly (especially when the Devils were on the PP). Felt like it was going to be a 2-0 loss (with Detroit getting an empty netter). Didn't see that dam bursting the way that it did. Was quite the pleasant surprise. And yeah, Detroit is really really bad. Devils are now 12-8-5 in their past 25. Detroit's won all of 14 games for their SEASON. And on the 12-8-5 note...would really be kinda fun to see if the Devils can finish strong, even flirt with a .500 point% for the season (seemed like a pipe dream when the team was 9-17-5), but probably going to be very difficult to do with Cinco Domingo figuring to get a fair amount of starts. Oh well...that is what it is. If nothing else, Cinco can provide that completely random solid effort when you least expect it. You just have to sift through a lot of rough starts to get them.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON LOL

Recognise this guy? Absolutely outrageous!!!!!

Yup, it works both ways like that. Everyone gets an opinion, even if it’s stupid.