Neb00rs

That might have been Hughes' best play as a Devil.

When you're reaction to a goal like that is to nonchalantly stand up and skate to the bench without so much as a smile - you've done that a lot before.

I think it's like a shell shock effect or something.

Anyone else just find themselves instinctively counting the shots on Blackwood that Schneider would have let in?

Why is Hynes keeping Goose and Hughes together? My take is that he doesn't mind just limiting that line's minutes as he did last game. Hughes and Gusev will play on the PP and Zacha is there for both special teams units as needed. At 5v5 he'll put them out there in some favorable situations and hope that something good happens.

On a positive note, Blackwood wasn't just good tonight, he was fantastic. We lose that game handily with Schneider in net, and possibly some other NHL goaltenders as well. But let's talk about Boqvist. His game was awesome - not that he was spectacular but for his third or so game, I loved what I saw. He was fairly responsible out there, he made some things happen - drew that penalty at the end of OT - and he has a clever snarl to his game I didn't know about. He did some very veteran things out there to be a pest to Winnipeg. With our roster, that man should be playing nightly.

Gusev badly needs to be removed from the lineup. He can't play on the fourth line because Hynes likes to have checking players on that unit that he can put out there for d-zone faceoffs, and he can't play with Zajac because that line is relied on to be two-way. So, he has to play him with Hughes, and thus, he has to protect that line and as you saw tonight, we basically had 3.5 lines, and Hughes is rendered ineffective.

And all of a sudden, the Devils are 4-1-2 in their last seven, losing once in regulation in their last seven games.

We got proper goaltending that period. Blackwood was tracking the puck well and redirected a number of pucks intelligently.

Terrible instincts by Rooney to not just throw that puck towards the net with all the time he had.

That's why Hall is elite. He gets the puck into the zone and then to the net.

Funny enough, Hynes' strategy has resulted in this team having outcomes that run completely contradictory to what we all expected of them going into the season based on their skilled makeup. The Devils have been the worst in the league at generating 5v5 offense from day 1 of the season. They have the least 5v5 shot attempts/60 in the entire league (46.25). But they've made up for it with a >10% 5v5 team shooting percentage - that's part of why they're not even worse off record-wise - and there's a mix of factors for it. The shooting % has resulted in a goals for/60 of 2.83 which is good for tenth in the league. The Devils have however some of the best numbers in the league when it comes to 5v5 shot attempts against/60 (51.37). Where they rank among the best teams in the league (4th). In other words, despite some high scores of late, this isn't some gunslinging Devils team that unleashes their offense full throttle and que sera sera on defense. I would suggest that because of the team's youth and inexperience they are playing as protective a game as they can. But...now we have to talk about goaltending. The Devils are the worst. Period. The team's 5v5 save percentage is .872, good for dead last in the league. For comparison, last year's San Jose Sharks team, which was held back by a very mediocre Martin Jones starting 62 games, had a 5v5 team save percentage of .897. This of course means, we should expect to see some improvement for the Devils over the next 70 games. We can adjust for shot quality as well. Charting Hockey has updated tables covering goals saved above expected, which factors in shot quality. The above is a table showing goals saved above expected/60 - doing per 60 allows us to factor in goalies who have played only a few games (min. TOI 180 mins) and goalies who have been pulled a few times in-game. As you can see neither of our goalies are above zero, meaning both Blackwood and Schneider have saved less goals than is expected they should have based on shot quality. Cory Schneider, over five games, is allowing two more goals/60 minutes than we'd expect based on the shots he's faced. With the above, if you don't think the Devils traded for Domingue with the thought that he might actually have to play some NHL games, you're crazy.

If Zacha-Hughes-Gusev is the line, that's a mistake. I get the thinking that Zacha-Hischier-Gusev could work as it worked for Bratt. That is what they should go with if Gusev must play. But, Bratt is better than Gusev.

Yeah, they were Stars employees.

Buying out Cory at the end of this year would only cost the Devils a 2M cap hit over the next four years (two of those years of which would have had Cory's 6M cap hit had he still been on the team) So that's two years you have to deal with a 2M cap hit for - not unreasonable. It all depends on the moves the Devils make this summer as to whether buying Cory out makes sense. Did they re-sign Taylor Hall? Are there players they want to sign and take advantage of the immediate cap savings over the next two years? Then again, if he continues to be this bad, maybe it's not even worth paying him 100% of the remaining value of his contract in any case.

If the Devils plan on re-signing Hall, this is probably the last season LTIRing Cory is going to be doable - they could do it as long as they don't plan on replacing him with player of a value somewhere around the same as Cory's, which is unlikely mid-season anyway. But if the Devils re-sign Hall, plus make other additions this offseason that bring them closer to the ceiling, LTIRing Cory, as Triumph was saying, will become a dangerous thing to do in future seasons given Jack's contract. Obviously, if Cory gets injured, they will do it - but don't necessarily expect another 6M AAV goalie to be coming in in his stead.

I wonder if they want to carry three goalies.

Seen at the Montreal-Dallas game last night:

If in 2002, I had told you that by 2019 the only team to have played at "Xanadu" would be the Ottawa Senators...

I think if Hall wants to leave he won't sign a deal, it's not a smart thing to do if you want to choose your fate. But I'm done trying to get in his head or interpret his actions, I don't want to do that to myself - and when you do that, you get paranoid and start seeing things you shouldn't. Overall, I appreciate that Hall hasn't said anything like "I want to be here," before he's 100% sure. John Tavares did that throughout the 2017-18 season, repeatedly expressing his "hope" to stay with the Islanders and then all of a sudden he was gone. It was really not cool and the Islanders fans were dragged through the mud...errr...a pit of fire.. I will say, as far as I know, hockey media people repeatedly stated that the Isles and Tavares never got to discussing numbers during that final season - which, as it turns out, should have been the harbinger for Isles fans that he had a foot out the door. So, we keep hearing about meetings with Hall's agents (I don't know the extent to which Garth Snow and Tavares' people had non-numbers-specific meetings during that season), but given what we learned from Tavares, the first sign of real hope will be a specific quote that numbers have been discussed. The last time Hall addressed that personally, he specifically denied that numbers had been discussed.

Just an FYI, Eliotte Friedman said today on Sportsnet that Taylor Hall's agents will meet with the Devils again in Calgary when they're there next week.

I thought the Devils were pretty good tonight - not amazing, but still good enough to win. They were weak for parts of it, but they got some breaks in this one, as all teams should hope for, and they finished strong for once. As for the fourth line, they've been a pretty standard fourth line the whole season - relatively passable. Miles Wood usually does a bunch of good things out there, it's just that tonight he had a particularly good game for what he is as a player. Ya'll are just ridiculous. As for Zajac, oh boy, does he look sllooowww.

This is where Boqvist should play, with Rooney.

Punched the other guy in the face. Other than that, nothing.

Imagine thinking Gusev should play instead of Wood.