mouse

My main defense of DeBoer, and if you've been reading, I haven't defended him much, is that the players always went to war for him, even last year when they were losing. That's not true anymore. What does he do right at this point?

I initially had this image of him crying into the jock of someone from Queens. Like a fat Rags fan from Howard Beach with a sleeveless shirt and some terrible jewelry.

IMO Devils are victims of their own success to some degree. Larsson might be slightly better than Greene some day, but Greene was undrafted. So was Rafa. Fayne we picked up in the 5th round. Even Martin was a second rounder. Since we've had such success with late picks, and since Nieds was so good when we used a top 5 pick on a dman, we have this idea that when we commit to a d-man with the number 4 pick, he's gonna be a superstar, when really, there aren't many superstars in any draft. We got a player who will probably be a reliable, boring (in a good way, mostly) pro for a long time, assuming we don't butcher his development. That's not bad.

I like winter food, so I like winter beer, but I tend to nurse the heavy ones rather than drinking more than one beer that night.

Beer went downhill by the end as well. The food was actually good right at the beginning, but fell apart real fast. Agreed, it would have been nice to have a good spot for a couple brews there. Same with their sahtea.

Well, you made a point that many of us disagreed with, and attempted to back it up with an anecdote, which even you admit is flawed, and don't have any other evidence. Since you're not responding to real facts, people responded to your anecdote. Now, you're so defensive that you're missing the points people are trying to make. I'm not saying you have to agree, but don't blame everyone else on the board for missing your point. Your point did not sway us. Your method of proving it did not help. It's on you to do a better job convincing us.

I know this isn't scientific, and I'm as frustrated as anyone to see Bud Light up there that much, and I know that Blue Moon is Coors, but this map is actually cause for optimism that Americans are drinking at least somewhat better beer. http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/10/16/map_america_s_favorite_beers_by_state.html

I love Chico. He's fun, and fairly honest. He's also one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. Never seems annoyed at the fans talking to him after games. When I got my friend a Chico Eats shirt, not only did he sign it, he told me to take her over after a game so she could meet him in person.

This. Lou needs to figure out what's wrong with the team. If it's the players, PDB stays. If it's the coaching, save the players. And I can't tell with Larsson, because he hasn't ever played for anyone else, and I haven't been impressed with the way PDB has handled him, aside from during the Cup run, when he had him ready to jump in, even when he was sitting.

Agreed. The risk with Sal is if he's not healthy, he gets way too slow. I'm more afraid he's a traffic cone at the end of the year once he's been dinged up.

You need Volch or Sal. I agree not both, but you want a big body who can play physical and is solid on the PK. Having 2 slow guys iced every night is a different story.

And I was glad that we had a bug guy (Clowe) ready to protect Sal after the hit.

Legitimate point about effort, but it doesn't seem to be working. IMHO the players this year are much stronger, but the results are the same as last year. If guys gel, and this is a speedbump, that would be awesome, but at some point, Lou has to decide if he thinks that's the case, and it would be for the best if that happens soon, especially if some of this DOES fall on the coaching. Especially since Fayne, Greene, and Larsson are the only d who should be here long term, and DeBoer seems insistent on benching Fayne and Larsson. If he's still there, no way Fayne re-signs, and who knows how Larsson develops. If we lose this year, but develop guys, it's not the end of the world, but if bad lineup choices hurt the team in years to come, then we have a serious problem.

I'm trying not to panic -- it's early, and there are new players who need to adjust -- but since the Cup run, DeBoer's decisions have gotten more and more questionable. I'd love to see this organization get some coaching stability, and I was hoping DeBoer would be the answer, but I just remember the Johnny Mac season, where we were saying a lot of similar things, and once they fired him, the team completely changed.My biggest regret from this year is that they ran out of time, because I think we had a better team than a couple of playoff teams, especially after trading Langenbrunner. If DeBoer is part of the problem, I'd like to see us solve that part soon. The hard part is figuring out if DeBoer is part of the problem or not. Clearly, the roster last year was bad, especially after Kovalchuk went down. IMO this roster is considerably better (at least than the roster we iced when Kovalchuk was hurt). If they don't improve soon, especially if DeBoer keeps making bad lineup decisions with the defense, bad moves that can hurt the future as well as the present, I'm not willing to blame the players, at least not 100%, and I'd like to see if someone else can give them a chance to succeed. Of course, the problem is, the replacement choices leave something to be desired. Short of Lemaire coming out of retirement and creating a miracle again, I don't see anyone fixing things quickly.

I like having big, tough guys around for protection, but I'd rather they be players with some skill. A real goon is a waste of a roster spot.

Both commercials were good. Hate the Clarky contract, and I'm glad Lou wasn't stupid, but I miss him. Even if he drove me crazy.

He's doing it now. The problem is, he and Sal are both slow. When they're healthy, they're just fast enough to keep up, and they do the little things right. When they're hurting (which they will be, because their games require them to take a beating), they end up a step slower, and get burned badly. Hopefully, DeBo is smart enough to manage their ice time and maximize their production, but if he doesn't, Volch becomes a traffic cone out there.

Visited Jolly Pumpkin over the summer. They were fine, but nothing to write home about. If you do end up ordering from them, stick to the European styles, like the farmhouse or the Belgians. Their more American styles (pale ales especially) were boring.

No problem, I can call them.

IMO this isn't a terrible idea IN THEORY, and isn't that different from the times we carried a ton of As and no C. The reasoning, though, is ridiculous. If Ott took it from Vanek, give it to him, but it looks more like they're grooming Ott to take over when they inevitably suck, trade their franchise player and goalie, and go into full rebuilding mode. Not exactly a vote of confidence for a team that actually might not be that bad, at least in terms of talent.

Your keeper logo and sig make me sad.

Do you know if they're ever open on weeknights? I really want to pick up their doppelbock in a month or so, but I have class on Saturdays in NYC, so I can't come in to the tasting room on a Saturday afternoon.

That's fair, but judging Lou on 20+years of moves (10 since the big lockout) against someone who just got there isn't really fair. If you want to judge organizations, Devils win because of Lou.

They also gave McDonagh up for Gomez. IMO Montreal doesn't have much of a direction -- they throw sh!t on the wall and see if it sticks. Sometimes it does. The Devils have a direction. It may not always work, but they haven't gotten burned badly before, and they aren't now.

But he put in a ton of goals at the beginning of the season, then trailed off badly, which affected his numbers. Also, I'm not just blaming Clarkson (though it came off that way). I'm blaming the approach. They didn't have a good enough group of snipers to expect their shots to just beat the goalie, especially when Kovalchuk got hurt. Therefore, they needed to play to their strengths, and go for a ton of ugly goals. Considering how well they controlled possession, they should have been able to establish a better cycle, and even if they couldn't, they needed to plant somebody near the net whenever they had possession. Instead, they tended to settle for shots around the circles. Since their shooters left something to be desired, those shots were rarely going in. Just look at how many shots hit the goalie in the pads. What those shots can do is create rebound opportunities, and they often did, but nobody was there to get them. Also, nobody was screening the goalie, which makes it less likely that the shots are going in. Also, Clarkson was able to take a ton of shots when Zach was there. Zach was a master of ugly goals. With him gone, somebody had to fill the void, especially the way the rest of the team was constructed. It could have been Clarkson. There were a ton more problems on that team, D'ags, Sullivan, Poni, and Kostopoulous aren't that good, and got too many minutes, but imo that team wasn't just unlucky. They were flawed. The possession numbers made them look better than they were. I agree that they won fewer games than they should have because of bad luck (every time they scored, the goalie sh@t the bed, every time they kept the other team off the board, they couldn't score, Kovalchuk got hurt at a bad time, Marty came back too fast because Moose played much worse than he has in the past), but even if they had average luck, they were first round fodder at best.