Lateralous

Every time I've watched Luongo, he usually faces around 40 shots, gives up a weak goal, loses but makes several nice saves in the process and ends up with a nice shinny save %. That sounds about right. Anyway, I didn't mean to get off topic, I just don't think we had "it" this season for several reasons that have all pretty much been covered here.

Yeah, but then again, this was exactly the type of performance many want to give Luongo the Vezina for!

Guys, I think we have to accept that we aren't the team we were in 2000. We have only I scoring line and our defense is in a transition, missing Stevens and Daneyko and waiting for Hale and Martin to develop. You can pin this on Marty all you want, but IMO we stole the cup last year and it has caught up to us this year. No biggie, we still have the bast goalie in the world, and we have a great core of young talent, not to mention plenty of prospects and a great draft record. The Flyers will get theres. For all the pub about Esche, if the goalies were in the opposite nets, the seriues would have been 4-0. I have never seen anything like this. Every rebound Marty gave up, ended up in the back of the net (He certianly could have been batter) but Esche gave up a rebound on every shot.

Well said!!! It's actually what make this series still so interesting. I've never seen a goalie look so brilliant and shaky at the same time. You have the feeling that if the Devils can just get the first goal tomorrow, especially a softy, it could snowball. That being said, Esche has played great and not given up the deflating goals that all of the previous Flyers netminder have.

The Flyers core is getting old, so Clarke has to make the move necessary to make a move NOW! The Devils core players are mostly still young, so while we may have had a better chance at an extended run with a few moves, the desperation of getting done this year was not there. I think both GMs did what they needed to do. At some point, we need to reload, and I'm still happy that Lou held onto all of our prospects and our 1st rd pick this year. If 2 out of Parise, Suglobov & Foster turn into legitimate top 2 line forwards, we are right back to where we were in 2000-01.

Whoa, I disagree. Didn't you outshoot us in Game 1? Yes, you had 39 shots. 26 in Game 2 and 35 in Game 4. He made the saves and basically kept the Devils off the scoreboard in Game 4. Yes, he is the difference along with the forwards. Brodeur seems to be the only one leaving the rebounds out. Did it on Zhamnov's goal, Primeau's goal, Gagne's goal & Johnsson's goal. We usually try and clear the puck. Your defense hasn't done that very often. Devils aren't lacking for speed, the goalie is just stopping every shot. Are you kidding? I'm not going to argue that Esche hasn't played better, but anyone who has watched any part of this series has seen rebound after rebound popping off of Esche. He's been giving up rebounds off of shots from behind the blueline! The only difference is that when Broduer gives up a rebound, it ends up in the back of the net. Which brings us back to our forwards inability to finish. Also, in Game 1, half of those 39 shots came from really far out. I didn't see the stats, but there were not many good scoring chances for the Devils in that one until it was 3-0.

I don't know why Philly fans who bought tickets didn't show up, but I'm sure there would have been more Flyers fans in gerenal if the game wasn't on the same day as the Phillies home opener in their new ballpark. We will probably see quite a few more of the bad guys tommorrow.

The second goal was a point blank one timer! What did you want him to do. I had a real good view of that one because I was lucky enough to get a 10 row ticket at center ice on the same side that the shot came from and Marty had most of the goal blocked. It was just a perfect shot from in close.

did u not see him fall on his ass for the 3rd goal? Get a clue, the defenseman can never allow Primeau to come across the crease like that with the puck. Brodeur's sole resposibility was to cover the short side post on that one. The only bad goal IMO was the first, weak rebound. Esche let up far more rebounds, we just didn't capatalize except for about 30 seconds in the 3rd.

I think her articles are typically pretty good. She doesn't say anything wrong in this article, she just doesn't think we can repeat. It's not like she is calling for a 1st round disaster, just that we won't win it all. I tend to agree with her and hopefully we will both be wrong.

Ottawa They've done a nice job of building their team through the draft and have even held the line on players like Yashin. I wouldn't mind seeing them win it all.

Yeah, it was ugly. Caron stopped the puck behind the net for his d-man, who cut to the wrong side of him. Zhamnov swept through and stole the puck and gave it to Gagne for basically an open netter.

Go check Luongo's stats when he faces less than 30 shots a night. We might miss the playoffs with him in net.

Yes, I would say Marty is as great as we all think. Everyone wants to point to the recent Stevens injury as exposing Marty for being an average goalie. I think that the Stevens injury has force the Devils into a numbers game, playing 3-4 AHL caliber defensman a night. Obviously, all goalies are dependant on having a good defense in front of them. Right now, I don't think you can say the Devils defense is even good, especially the nights that Rafalski is out and Marty's is suffering because of it. Hale and Martin are both good young defenseman, but they are rookies who make mistakes, alot of them. I'm willing to live with the rookie mistakes, and it wasn't a big deal when you had the top 4 healthy, but when you add Brown, Albelin and to an extent, White's mistakes to the pile, it is hard to put up great numbers in net. Another thing that is working against Marty is that anything less than superhuman effort each night and people want to bring him down. Two recent examples are the game at Montreal where we lost 2-1 and the last Flyers game. Some people actually were on here calling that last goal at the Habs a soft goal. It was about the third rebound from in close with David Hale standing and admiring the play. In the Flyers game, I wouldn't call either of those goals weak. The first was a bang-bang play from in close. For some reason, alot of fans consider a 5 hole goal soft, no matter what the circumstances. The second one? Yes, there was a big rebound off of the LeClair shot, but what else is he going to do? Think about it, there is no way to stop a low hard shot to the far post without a rebound, so you kick it out of harms way as best you can. That play, it happened that a Flyer was coming in late and got the long rebound without being covered. I realize that this is a message board for this type of talk but questioning the only part of our team that I would consider to be top notch seems a little silly. This is in response to not only this thread, but numerous ones on here and HF questioning Broduer. The Devils have alot bigger issues that we should be focusing on like the previously stated defense and the fact that we play about 7 4th line forwards a night. Why aren't we praising Marty for keeping us in the division title hunt without Stevens & Langenbrunner for long periods of time, as well as numerous disappering acts by many of star players (Friesen and Madden), instead of questioning the guy?

I agree that the post-CBA NHL will be be very different league. Assuming that the idea is to level the playing field for all teams, will be to our advantage with our record for scouting, drafting and developing players. I think we can also safely assume that in the future, it will be even more important to have alot of cheap, young talent, especially if there is a salary cap. For this reason, I was relieved that we hung onto Parise, Suglobov, Foster, Hale, Martin and our 1st round pick instead of trading any of them for a quick fix. That being said, I was slightly shocked that we didn't get another d-man today but considering that I would have only been willing to give up Ahonen (I don't see much future for him here) and maybe a 3rd round pick, I can't really complain. We may not go far in the playoffs this year, but in the long run it is probably better to let this team reload with the young guns in our system that constantly trading for the last piece of the puzzle. We traded alot of young guys from 2000 -2002, and it was well justified considering how close we were to the cup, but we are now paying for letting guys like Mitchell and Souray go. Once you get into this cycle, it takes a fews years to break out of it. Believe me, I went to the River Rats game last night and there wasn't a whole lot there! Anyway, I for one am pretty happy with the moves we made and the ones we didn't make, especially if it is true that most of the other GMs were asking for Parise.

lol! I'm doing the same thing.

I agree. This trade was good for both teams. It finally signals the end (hopefully for their sake) of the Rangers dumping money and young players for quick fixes. If I'm a rangers fan (God forbid), I would get more enjoyment out of watching youngsters for the rest of the season who are fighting for future roster spots than the vets going through the motions. Also, I think it is a good trade for the NHL in general. Get these star players out of NY and spread them out around the league and let them do there thing instead of having them all in one place underacheiving.

That makes sense! Let's bench the guy who single handedly kept us from getting blown out. How do you figure that last one was Marty's fault?

maybe he wouldn't be as good on NJ as he is on Florida. Just a thought. The whole Dev team seems to be built around Brodeur. Also, can Luongo go for periods of time without shots and then make a save on a glorious scoring chance like Marty can? I never quite understood the "Imagine if so and so was on NJ" hypotheticals because it's pure speculation and one can never predict how any given goalie is going to play on any given team (with that particular roster, coach, GM, system of play). Just to add to this whole argument, I also don't think Luongo should get nominated for or win the Hart if FLA misses the playoffs, sorry. Khabibulin's basically proven you correct already...he used to be a beast on bad Phoenix and Tampa teams, then with good Tampa teams the last couple of years he's been very average. There was a old-time Ranger fan on AOL who once said there are good bad team goalies, and good good team goalies. I don't remember the exact quote but that was basically the gist of it. His point was that sometimes goalies were made to excel on bad teams and some were made to excel for good teams. So I agree I don't neccesarily buy into goalies on bad teams neccesarily being as good on good teams. Although Luongo size-wise is so damn huge I'm tempted to think he can do pretty well on a good team just given that alone Just to take it a step further, I seem to remember seeing that Luongo had a save percentage under .900 and a GAA near 3.00 in games where he has faced under 25 shots this season. I think it might have been posted on one of those rediculous "Marty stinks without stevens" threads on HFboards.

Well you can only pick DiPietro, Heatley, Gaborik in their defense. I think they messed up by trading Luongo; but hindsight is 20/20... DiPietro can still be a great starter, although Luongo looks to be developing for that elite status; DiPietro on that "good" status. Yes, but I'm pretty sure that they could have had Luongo, Heatley or Gaborik, Spezza, Jokinen and Chara if they simply didn't do the Yashin and Luongo deals. Milbury's ego seems to get the best of him on draft day when he wants to make a big splash. I know it seems like second guessing, but I remember thinking Mad Mike was out of his mind on both of those deals when they originally happened, especially the Luongo one.