Triumph
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Posts posted by Triumph
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16 minutes ago, titans04 said:
Hughes is hardly your average 18 year old, the kid was talked about and highlighted for how many years before he was drafted # 1. Congrats if you only had him down for 40 points because I believe you're in a really small minority. Time will tell and certainly haven't given up on him just confirming I sometimes see what MB3 noted after seeing him last night.
I don't think you know a whole lot about how 18 year old players typically perform. They do not come into the league as stars very often - Crosby and McDavid did. Hughes is on pace for less than 40 points - this would be the 12th best season in points per game by an 18 year old in the last 15 years.
Jack Hughes will be a star player.
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15 minutes ago, NJDevils1214 said:
The things he is doing are impressive at any age at this level of competition. It is actually more impressive at his age. My expectations for Hughes were for him to look good, show flashes of his potential, and not get hurt this year. So far he has done that and hopefully it stays that way.
I feel like a broken record having to say this over and over -- The entire team is under-preforming. You can't put that on the doorstep of the 18 year old rookie or toss him in and expect him to excel the same way he would if the team was playing well as a whole. You can't really put all that on the doorstep of any one player. The entire team is a sh!t show from the staff down to Brett Seeney.
Right - I expected Hughes to come in around 40 points and that's where he's at. I feel like people who aren't impressed with him haven't watched enough 18 year old players - yeah, Hischier looked better, but Hischier's first season came mostly as the center for who would turn out to be the league MVP. Hughes has been moved all around this lineup and finally seems to be having some success with Boqvist and Simmonds - that line should stay together.
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2 minutes ago, Daniel said:
Some day you’ll have to return to Planet Alpha Nebulon and regroup.
John Hynes has been in the league for more than four years, and has nothing but a track record of failure. The team started to disintegrate in the third period of the first fvcking game, which anyone with two eyes and functioning brain cell would notice. Yet the coach who does not know how to win is still here almost two months later and the results are exactly the same and Ray has no plan for a replacement, or if he does, it will likely be someone even worse then him (Kowalsky or Neassardine) if that were ever possible, but somehow it is. In the meantime, he will be trading his best player for pennies on the dollar because of said incompetent coaches at the same time he hopes to get his replacement in the draft, but won’t have to pay him for a while.
Ray Shero is a fraud. A fake tough guy.
Taylor Hall has been bad this season - I don't think he's the Devils' best player this year, nor do I think the Devils come out that far behind on a Hall trade if this is Hall's best performance. If it's not and Hall is just dogging it, so be it, but he does not appear to have the speed or power that he had in his MVP season.
I mean I also think Shero is a fake tough guy but so are most GMs.
Obviously firing the coach after the first game is a smart move, and something Shero should've considered. That way he wouldn't be a fraud. See, i can do this too, it's fun.
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4 minutes ago, Daniel said:
Since Ray and Josh Harris only know how to tank, I suspect that they’ll let this go on for a while. What other information would you possibly need to tell you John Hynes is not an NHL coach. That’s why he’s still here.
You really can't see anything except as a dichotomy, can you?
In order to fire the coach, the GM needs a replacement - he doesn't exactly have a simple one at hand, as I doubt anyone on staff will be taking over as head coach. There's people in the organization who've been head coaches. Regardless, whether the person is in the organization or not, It still takes time to set that up, plus the GM would likely want to give the new coach at least a practice before they play a game. There's not a great stretch for a coach firing upcoming - there's either Sunday, Wednesday after next, and then probably the time after that would be the Christmas break.
They're not tanking. Jesus christ. They didn't spend all this money this offseason to fvcking tank. Get a grip.
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6 minutes ago, Daniel said:
It’s time to come to grips with the fact that Shero can wheel and deal to his heart‘a content, but he does not know how to build a winning team. He’s a fraud, just like the loser coach he will not fire.
We used to be a proud organization.
I thought you stopped watching this team way back in October.
Firing the coach doesn't fix all of the issues. It will be done if things continue on this course, obviously.
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The thing I don't understand about what the Devils are doing is that they have so much team speed even with a hobbled Hall and yet they constantly look slower than other teams. Hughes was skating well tonight - almost no one else was. Hall's line got cratered and that's just not something that should be happening very often.
The Devils started off okay but then you look up at the shot board and it's 1-1 through 8 minutes in the 1st. A team with this much firepower should not routinely go long stretches without putting up shots on the opposition's net. I'm tired of the dump-ins by defensemen, or the D carrying the puck at all through the neutral zone unless their intent is to enter with possession - this team is not built for dump and chase and it is not going to win that way. But then there's the issue that the forwards can skate but the defensemen cannot - Subban is at best an average skater who is kinda slow turning, Vatanen, Greene, and Butcher are slow, Mueller has maybe average speed, and even Severson skates well but isn't a burner. Pushing the pace forward probably leaves things exposed on the back end.
For the lack of non head coaches on the staff, there are two Devils scouts that have recently been NHL head coaches - Peter Horachek and Claude Noel - maybe Shero considers one of them as an interim coach.
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This game was weird in that the Devils came out in the first period with their legs but not their hands. They just could not complete a pass or do anything but dump the puck in, largely ineffectively. Then Grzyleck hits a miracle shot - Blackwood's probably got to have that one but I'm not sure, he was covering almost the entire net and Gryz managed to hit the one open spot - and then they get a 2 on 1 and the game's almost over. Blackwood let in 2 soft ones after that just to make us remember Cory Schneider's last few years here.
That 2 on 1 that Marchand and Pastrnak had - those are the kinds of plays the Devils should be making. They have the ability but not the confidence. To pull up on a 2 on 1 as the Bruins did and create space for themselves - the Devils have been burned too often by making the unsafe play that they're just not likely to try this sort of thing.
Nice to see Gusev again having a good night. He looks almost night and day from the player we saw when he was healthy scratched. There's still some errors with reading the play in the D zone and up the ice, but he's getting looks in the offensive zone.
Subban's not the problem with this team. Didn't have a great night, hasn't contributed a whole lot offensively, but he makes plays on the outlet no one else on this team can.
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I can't remember any right-handed catching goalies in my Devils' lifetime, and I can't remember any right-handed catching goalies remaining in the league. I know there's one I'm not thinking of still kicking around somewhere who isn't Domingue, but it's less common than it used to be.
EDIT: H-R says Mike McKenna was a right-catching goalie. It also says Domingue isn't, so who knows what it knows.
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1 hour ago, HellOnICE said:
I wonder what the end game here is for Cory. Clearly, he needs to play in order to get his sh!t in order, at this point- likely to become tradeable even at a retention. So, we can put him down in the A, but is that a place where you can really build your new reputation? If anything, he gets brought back up to NJ and they only play him sparingly around Blackwood -and this is assuming Dominuge doesn't win the back up job...so now what? How can Cory assemble any body of work that would be even bring up the possibility of a trade partner?
Is it possible that Cory can move on loan to the KHL, Swiss or SHL for the rest of the year, if he has a starting job there? Is this even a thing?
It's possible that Cory could be loaned to one of those leagues, but he would have to agree to it, and I really don't see the upside - he's 33 years old and has been playing in North America his entire career.
The goal is not to build up Cory's value but to let him get starts somewhere and hopefully work on what's wrong with his game. A buyout is pretty much inevitable - trading him at 50% retention is unlikely to be anything anyone is interested in unless they are sending a really atrocious contract back.
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10 minutes ago, NLinfante said:
The dexterity (idk, handed-ness?) of the players is far more important on the power play wings of a 1-3-1 than it is 5v5. Hall is a great player and he even looks lost on the left flank of the PP. His only play is cross ice to Hughes because he's not a huge threat to shoot from the wing right now.
At the NHL level, every day players are at least capable of using their backhand to catch a break out pass as a winger, but on the PP it's different. At lower levels, it's supremely helpful to have lefties on the left wing and righties on the right for just this reason, the breakout. We know Mike Babcock is obsessive with this regarding his defensemen too. On the PP, though, Hall's left handedness on the right side slows down his ability to make plays, even if only be milliseconds. Unfortunately, that's the difference between scoring and not.
I don't buy this for the very simple fact that in 17-18, he played over there with great success. He has typically not been a huge producer on the power play, perhaps he was not the focal point of past power plays, but in 17-18 they put him over there and he had his best numbers and the Devils' power play was also pretty decent, which is the more important thing.
He's also shot plenty from over there. I think Simmonds being where he is is not necessarily helping - Simmonds used to play in the left wing corner on the Flyer power play, but that doesn't really work with how the Devils have it set up right now. But even still, Palmieri is sometimes an option for him from there, as are Simmonds' tips.
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Fire Hynes
in Hell
I think the players are executing what Hynes wanted last night, at least until the tying goal - he might've liked to see more offense in the third, but if they weren't going to give up any chances either, I'd probably take that as an outcome. There was also a rough stretch in the 2nd period where Ottawa had the Devils pinned, but the Devils didn't take a penalty.
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8 minutes ago, jagknife said:
Not looking for one timers, but more of the get the puck and then wire a snap/wrister top shelf like he did so often in 17-18. And he did a lot of that from the right side. To me, he looks incredibly awkward on the left, as if a lot of the passes handcuff him, then he has to get back to the strong side of his stick to get it moving again. The team as a whole is slow to move the puck on the PP The past few games and teams are getting more and more aggressive towards the puck carrier. I think if we’d move hall to the other circle, his ease of shooting, again not one timers, should open some space as teams have to account for a faster shot from him. Just my take.
He played both sides that year - I've looked at some highlights from that year and he was on the right sometimes and on the left other times. I like him better on the left given that they have Hughes to play the right side now, but I agree he looks awkward over there.
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40 minutes ago, sundstrom said:
i thought they were dead after about 15 minutes in the first. again - no energy from anyone in Newark.
The Devils controlled the play at the beginning of the 2nd, too. I don't have a shot count, but they were +6 Corsi between the beginning of that period and around the halfway mark. Natural Stat Trick rates that period of the game as having around +1 expected goals for the Devils as well.
38 minutes ago, jagknife said:What are your thoughts about moving Hall to the right circle and letting in be the shooter he is supposed to be? I think he’s neutralized completely in the left circle, no one is afraid of him and, aside from feeding Hughes here and there, he isn’t making smart decisions either.
As for coaching, I bitched last week that the coach adjusts, and yet, as you pointed out, they were flying and he pulled back on the reins. I will never understand what goes through Hynes’ head with this team. You have a squad that cannot close out tight games at home, let the dogs loose and bury a team. But no, he goes conservative and their little a$$holes pucker and the of course choke, this time to quite literally one of the worst teams in the game, especially with the number of injuries they had. That was an old days expansion roster they played last night and they were dominated when it mattered.
Hall is not a shooter. If you want him to take one-timers, he is not your man - he rarely attempts one-timers (imo, could be wrong on this) and is bad at them when he does. He's a hard player to use properly on the power play because his main skill is using his speed to cause defenders to be out of position, and this is just not something that good power plays are traditionally built on. The Devils found a way in 2017-18 to use this to their advantage but haven't found it since.
I don't attribute the team 'going conservative' to Hynes per se - that's the system he has them playing, but he obviously couldn't be happy with the way the 3rd period was played. I don't think he changed anything significant during the game - it's something that happens in the course of a game, generally - teams that are ahead tend to play safe. This was just incredibly safe, and then when the game got tied, they just lost their way.
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They came out really well - scored the first goal, almost got the second immediately after, shift after shift in the Ottawa zone. But after about midway through the second period they just played defensive hockey the rest of the game, pretty much - a few shifts in Ottawa's end but not a whole lot, and Ottawa finally came to life at the end of the 2nd period. Then through the third, they were playing a solid road game at home, gave up a few chances but nothing incredible, then one goes in, then they just folded. I don't think the Devils had a scoring chance for the rest of the game after Ottawa tied it, and Ottawa had 3 good looks.
PP1 is built around Taylor Hall and he's not performing. They're not giving him the right opportunities - he should be closer to the blueline, probably - but he has been bad there all year.
Hynes (and ostensibly Fitzgerald) have this team playing a tight-checking game. They're doing okay at it, but they're not generating enough offense. They're not forcing enough turnovers in the opponent's end or in the neutral zone.
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2 hours ago, SterioDesign said:
See that's what i hate the most about it lol
How pretentious stats people get thinking they know more than you or that if you don't agree with them that you're just dumb.
The way some talk its CLEAR that they never played the sport or at least not at a level where it's serious
Baseball. darts, curling... fine that can be all about stats cause it's so black and white. Hockey has so much nuance that you just can't translate everything to numbers. It's simply impossible.
edit: if you guys are SO damn knowlegeable you'd have some sort of counter argument better than "you're ignorant". When you rely on insults it means you lost
I don't have a counter argument because you have been here for 6 years and you have chosen to remain totally ignorant. I can go find at least 3 times I've rebutted your original point on this since 2014 and you still spout the same bullsh!t. You don't have any idea of what you're talking about and you think you do - there's really no countering that level of ignorance. People can disagree with these things in an educated fashion - they can learn about these things and ask questions that indicate thought. You had one response to this the first time you saw it - 'hey wait a minute this treats every shot equally and they're not!' and that's the thing you have been pounding on the for the last 6 years, posting it here as if it's some kind of revelation. No fvcking sh!t, dude. Yes, that's what Corsi does. It still is a meaningful measurement of how hockey teams are doing when context is taken into account. There's things that are trying to take into account the quality of shots also, by measuring pre-shot passing and where a shot is taken from. Unfortunately the pre-shot passing stuff isn't quite systematized yet, but it's something people are tracking. People have objections to Corsi and they're trying to improve it. It's still meaningful, whether you want it to be or not.
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54 minutes ago, SterioDesign said:
these stats based on shots on goal will always be incredibly flawed cause it's qualifying all "shots" as the same metric/quality and compiling them.
Let's be clear if one shot is from Ovechkin in circles vs a unscreened wrister/dump in from Andy Greene from the blue linen is like comparing apple and oranges.
Then you can make the best setup play, crazy tic tac toe highlight of the month play just to miss the post by half an inch.. in the stat worlds it's like nothing happened.
You have been talking about this stuff for 5 years, you have been saying the same thing for 5 years, and you still have no idea what you're talking about. Still.
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Gusev was unplayably bad. Yes, he can score some goals, but there was absolutely no way that he would have a positive impact on the team going forward with that sort of play. I especially enjoy the same crowd who is like 'Hynes teams always get penned in their own zone and can't get out' are like 'Play Gusev more' - Gusev could've established residency in the defensive zone in the first 3 weeks of the season. He could not get out with possession if he wanted to.
What I'm seeing from Gusev the last few games is encouraging. He's a below-average skater so it's extra important that he knows where to be on the ice, otherwise he's going to be useless outside of the offensive zone, and he was so bad in the early going that he couldn't even really get in to the offensive zone. We're seeing him make better decisions in the defensive and neutral zones.
Beau Bennett could've been an effective 3rd/4th line guy but teams decided not to go in that direction. That's all that was ever said about him but people just interpret however they want to. That was it - Beau Bennett could play on an NHL 3rd line in 2017-18 - not on a good team probably, but he could've played there. He didn't, and then he got hurt again, and now he's 28 with a huge injury history - it is not surprising that he is in the AHL now.
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Fire Hynes
in Hell
On 11/7/2019 at 12:42 PM, jagknife said:I find Hynes has two big flaws:
1.) Blind freaking loyalty to a system. Be it loyalty to a guy who clearly cannot manage a defensive strategy in Nasraddine, to his own failure to adapt to the game at hand, Hynes is too loyal (maybe wrong word) and seems to not change his thinking well, if at all.
2.) His asset management is suspect. His lineup decisions sometimes pay way off, such as recently or during the heater early-mid season two years ago when we made the playoffs but others are terrible. It flows from my previous point but he doesn't handle matchups well at all and his "lets throw the lines in a blender" crap when things are going well is very frustrating to me.
This is one of those posts where I read it and I get very confused. Hynes has changed things so many times here.
In 2015-16, he ran a very boring system, quite conservative. The Devils were last in the league by far in shot attempts but were reasonably stingy. In 2016-17, they get Taylor Hall and some other offensive players, and he opens things up a bit. The Devils start out hot, then they go on that 10 game losing streak. He changes things back to the 2015-16 system. Next season, he opens things up again, things stay reasonably open. Last season, when the Devils got all those injuries, the Devils went back to the 2015-16 style of play for the forwards.
They've tried different tactics in the defensive zone - they switched to the idea of the D taking the puck carrier, almost regardless of where that guy went - that is gone. They tried that last season and it didn't work and it's not here anymore.
I'm also waiting for the coach who gets praised when his team loses. 'Well, they lost, but the coach made the right moves.'
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Fire Hynes
in Hell
8 hours ago, mfitz804 said:He had an assist, a play called back that many think was a goal, and he was one shy of his career high for shots on goal in a game.
Gotta try reading the whole post - I praised Hall's performance in Sunday's game. I said even with that, and his line was really the only one doing much offensively, his line is still getting 5 fewer shots per 60 minutes than he did in his Devils career.
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Fire Hynes
in Hell
10 minutes ago, NLinfante said:I was away for a week but I caught yesterday's game. It was nice to see a win, and Blackwood played especially inspired. However, the defense and offense are equally frustrating. I was like a lot of fans who thought that the offseason moves would help possession, play driving and ultimately scoring. If you go even further back (read: years ago) I am guilty of saying that statistics, including advanced stats, were not necessarily a substitute for watching a hockey play in the game and seeing what they bring to the team. That's due to a decade of coaching. With that being said, having the puck is the simplest and most important part of the game, even for children. The Devils do not have the puck enough - only 6 players on the team have positive corsi%'s and that's not going to cut it in the long run.
Of course, the goaltending could be better and even small injuries on the blueline mean Tennyson and Mueller are on the ice, but the F's (even with all the added talent) are not immune from the blame.
The two biggest issues in terms of play driving have been pretty straightforward -
1: Gusev has been a disaster. He tanks any line he's on - he was just not capable of making the right play in the defensive or neutral zone. And he's played with just about everyone at one point or another, so he's tanked all of their numbers for at least a brief period. The good news is that he's shown signs of improvement the last two games.
2: Taylor Hall was not himself. Hall is normally a high-event player who generates lots of shots for and against, but definitely more for. Even with yesterday's dominant performance, the Devils are only getting 28 shots/60 with him on the ice 5 on 5 - he's averaged around 33 as a Devil.
These things are showing signs of working themselves out.
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2 hours ago, jagknife said:
All the talk of depth at defense and how we need help, I cannot beat this dead horse enough: we could have had Sbisa for nothing and (almost literally) minimum cap hit.
(Awaiting advanced stats to prove it would be bad, cause ~12 NHL games in the last few years would agree with that.)
Sbisa is really bad. He's been consistently on for more shots against than for during his career, he's had multiple serious injuries, and he's 30. It would not shock me if there are 20 guys in the AHL better than him.
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Wood-Hischier-Bratt did look good though they didn't accomplish a whole lot - they were in the zone causing problems for Vancouver, but none of what they were doing resulted in shots.
Good signs for the Devils - Gusev has looked good two games in a row now, and Hynes noted that Hall looks like himself again. These are things that people tend not to talk about when discussing the Devils' problems, and indeed the goaltending has been a larger issue, but man, Gusev looked awful and now he's looking okay. Hopefully he can continue to make better decisions.
What terrible officiating - you hate to see the officials miss a call as badly as they did with the hook on Pettersson by Severson because you figure they're going to fvck it up again and they absolutely did. I'd like to see one of them take a body check like Hall took.
Have to hope that the Devils can find defensive help somewhere. Tennyson is just not going to cut it and Mueller looked abysmal today.
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Big win - nice to get off the shootout schneid, nicer to do it 2-0 so there's no real sweat at the end.
They need to work on 3 on 3 - that's been horrible the last two games and they've been lucky to escape without losing there. No real chances for except on the late power play.
They've got to find someone to fill in for Tennyson. Can't have someone dragging Butcher down like that. It's weird, he doesn't look that bad but the results are really awful so far.
One thing I like about this stretch also - Hynes is not coaching like someone who is coaching for his job. Gusev and Hughes got a late shift in a tie game. Boqvist got a shift with a minute left. It would've been easy to bench all 3 guys and ride 9 forwards down the stretch.
1 minute ago, MB3 said:By the way @SterioDesign, you ever considered moving to Winnipeg? They booed Subban every single time he touched the puck in an apparent “wink wink nudge nudge this has nothing to do with his race”, that seems like your peoples.
Far be it from me to defend either Sterio or the people of Winnipeg, but Nashville and Winnipeg had some pretty big playoff battles when Subban was there. Is there probably a racial element to it, yeah, but that's at least not all of it.
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6 minutes ago, sundstrom said:
that's my point though - i think cory will play well enough for a stretch at some point that he gets 4 of 6 starts. i have a feeling the end season split is going to be like 48-34 blackwood.
Almost no way Cory makes it through the season healthy - he's been hurt in each of the last 3 seasons and he was injured in game 1 of this season. I'm not saying it's Blackwood's net forever, but Cory is near unplayable right now.
GDT - Vegas v. Jersey 7 p.m. - Rest your vocal cords today
in Hell
Posted
The Devils played fine. Marchessault gets a fluke goal off his leg and then a tip goal which goes in a low percentage of the time. I don't know how they broke down so bad on the 4th goal, I can only think that they forgot they were killing a penalty.
They were in a road and home back to back which isn't something you win a ton anyway.
Referees didn't help - no idea how that's not a major penalty on Carrier, no idea how the hook on Palmieri doesn't get called and then the interference by Palmieri does get called. No idea how the high stick on Palmieri during the power play in the 1st period, right in the eyeline of the ref, doesn't get called. Awful night for the stripes - got lucky to come away with that 2nd goal given how bad they were.
The Devils looked fast tonight, faster than Vegas, and that's how they should look. Some goaltending or some goaltending luck would go a long way in games like these.