Mike Brown

I trust Ray. The biggest strength we have is how strong this team is defensively. We're one of the best defensive teams in the league, and we're not too bad offensively either. Goaltending hasn't been great, but it's certainly capable of being great. There are no real holes with this team.

RECAP Goalie evaluation Ott goal 1: Excusable, due to a wicked snipe job, but still a stoppable shot Ott goal 2: Excusable, nothing Kinkaid can do there on the deflection Ott goal 3: Inexcusable, terrible goal to allow short side Ott goal 4: Inexcusable, terrible effort getting over shot needs to be stopped if Kinkaid is set properly Ott goal 5: Excusable, due to it being a breakaway, but it was still a weak shot by a goal who had scored 3 goals all season. Goaltending was the biggest culprit tonight, although Lack looked pretty good tonight. Doesn't mean they weren't careless defensively, but this is where goaltending cost us at least a point. Got to be more disciplined. Too many 5 on 3 situations lately, and Coleman's penalty was bench worthy. Hoffman is the kind of player this team needs the most. POSSESSION ES CF: 56 to 59 ES FF: 40 to 47 ES SF: 23 to 27 ES SCF: 27 to 21 ES HDCF: 8 to 7 All CF: 77 to 67 All FF: 57 to 55 All SF: 33 to 32 All SCF: 38 to 25 All HDCF: 12 to 9

RECAP Two GINORMOUS wins against two GREAT teams. The Zajac line was beastly tonight. Kinkaid was great when he had to be. Devils utterly dominated the Pens tonight in every facet of the game. I actually felt the Devils got a break with the GI call because it looked like it was Lovejoy's stick that hit Kinkaid. Although I'm not entirely sure if that really makes any difference or not with the ruling since Rust's stick was still responsible for the contact. On top of that, with the Hagelin crossbar, the hockey gods actually favored the Devils tonight. POSSESSION ES CF: 58 to 38 ES FF: 45 to 24 ES SF: 29 to 14 ES SCF: 27 to 18 ES HDCF: 14 to 8 All CF: 75 to 41 All FF: 58 to 26 All SF: 38 to 16 All SCF: 38 to 20 All HDCF: 20 to 9

Good point. I guess we can have Mueller and Lovejoy rotating in and out for the 3rd pairing RD job. Hall - Hischier - Bratt Wood - Zacha - Palmieri Quenneville - Zajac - Noesen Coleman - Boyle - Stafford Those should be the lines.

Still wish the sleeve stripes were the same as before, but the lack of a waist stripe doesn't bother me.

Good. Santini has not been good at all. Although he had a much better December, he still needs more polishing. Hayes should just be waived. My one concern for Quenneville is who will be coming out? The only guy I hope he plays for is Coleman.

RECAP Easily the biggest win of the season Flyers made the mistake of sitting back in the 3rd. It's really the only period the Devils actually showed up for. Despite that, they didn't play well overall. Definitely need to be more disciplined. Also they were very sloppy and flat in the first 40 minutes. Zacha has been great for quite a while. He should be the permanent 2nd line center. Wood and Palmieri are great line mates for him. Move Zajac to the 3rd line. If Philly makes the playoffs, they'll be deadly. They have the perfect system and personnel to go far. They're an extremely underrated team. Only question mark is their two young d-men and question marks in net. POSSESSION ES CF: 35 to 40 ES FF: 27 to 31 ES SF: 18 to 18 ES SCF: 17 to 12 ES HDCF: 4 to 4 All CF: 43 to 47 All FF: 33 to 38 All SF: 22 to 25 All SCF: 23 to 15 All HDCF: 5 to 5

RECAP Nice to see the team get rewarded for their effort this time. Exactly how they've been playing, but luck hasn't been on their side. Also, Kinkaid made the saves tonight that our goalies haven't been making recently. BTW, the Sabres one goal came from a low danger shot, which again shows it's not good to let teams take those at will. The one tonight was nobody's fault other than Boyle for losing the face-off clean. POSSESSION ES CF: 47 to 42 ES FF: 37 to 27 ES SF: 28 to 18 ES SCF: 20 to 18 ES HDCF: 9 to 4 All CF: 47 to 56 All FF: 37 to 38 All SF: 28 to 28 All SCF: 20 to 25 All HDCF: 9 to 7

I agree with everything here.

A true top pairing d-man is something this team is lacking. I just don't see one that's available that won't cost the team an arm or leg. Greene would be excellent if he was given less ice time. He still brings value to this team, but like Lovejoy last year, he's being overused. Everybody else on defense has been excellent. We absolutely do need a 2nd line center which is something I've been saying for a long time. Problem is now we also need a 2nd line LW if Johansson is gonna be out a while. Nyquist from the Wings comes to mind, and I don't think he'd be that expensive. Zacha has been playing very well for a while now despite his production not being there. All the underlying numbers are there, and I think he really deserves a shot in the top 6 for an extended period of time, and not just spot starts there. I also agree Galchenyuk would be perfect, and would probably ask about Pacioretty as well. Hoffman from OTT is also a possible candidate.

RECAP First 2 Preds goals came off point shots. Maybe the coaching staff should tell the guys to do more to prevent those, and the whole idea of keeping the puck to the outside is a flawed system that's easy to exploit. Also, the coaching staff needs to tell the players that shooting the puck from the low danger areas is actually how you create chances from the high danger areas. Forcing the puck to the middle all the time does nothing, and leads to wasted possession. POSSESSION ES CF: 46 to 42 ES FF: 34 to 35 ES SF: 24 to 25 ES SCF: 21 to 21 ES HDCF: 12 to 13 All CF: 51 to 45 All FF: 37 to 38 All SF: 25 to 27 All SCF: 24 to 23 All HDCF: 13 to 13

I just want to point out that since the time Zajac came back, our goalies have the worst HDSV% in the league, plus our PDO has gone down the tubes.

RECAP Complaining about the officiating is lazy, but I do believe it's warranted for tonight. I will say Wood should not have gone after Miller while his team was on the PP. While the pinch by Lovejoy wasn't a good play, Pastrnak really deserves the credit for being able to chip that puck out right to Marchand. I'm really starting to hate the Bruins. Everything that could go wrong in this game, did. POSSESSION ES CF: 43 to 32 ES FF: 35 to 24 ES SF: 30 to 18 ES SCF: 19 to 13 ES HDCF: 5 to 4 All CF: 57 to 41 All FF: 46 to 32 All SF: 39 to 24 All SCF: 24 to 15 All HDCF: 7 to 4

RECAP We could use another pure sniper. POSSESSION ES CF: 43 to 45 ES FF: 33 to 38 ES SF: 25 to 26 ES SCF: 22 to 21 ES HDCF: 6 to 7 All CF: 64 to 49 All FF: 51 to 42 All SF: 37 to 30 All SCF: 34 to 24 All HDCF: 7 to 9

I never said anything about people thinking the value was bad, but believe me when I tell you people were very upset Larsson was traded for Hall. We just went through the exact same thing when we traded Henrique for Vatanen! Nobody thought these were bad trades, but don't act as if people weren't upset that the two Adams were traded! Clearly people were upset, and some fans were legit mad even.

I'm not sure this team is at the point where we go "all in" just yet. The good news about OEL and Karlsson is that there value should be lowered by their contract statuses, but they'll still cost a hefty price. I think going after one of the LW'ers would be the most ideal, but I trust Ray no matter what he decides to do.

This team really has no glaring weaknesses. We don't need help on defense like some people think. John Moore, Damon Severson, and Sami Vatanen have all essentially played like top 4 defensemen this year if not top 2 defensmen. Then having Butcher, Mueller, Greene, Loveoy, and Santini filling out the other 3 spots really makes the defense corps deep. If there is one area we could use an upgrade at, it's the 2nd line center spot. In a perfect world, Zajac would be the 3rd line center and not the 2nd line center. Now in order to upgrade there we can one of two things trade wise. trade directly for a 2nd line center I don't really know of which centers have been rumored to be available. trade for a scoring LW and then move Mojo to the 2nd line center spot. We all know there are a few of these available in guys like Galchenyuk, Kane, Pacioretty, Nelson, Vanek, and Hoffman. If not a trade, then imo they should just put Zacha there and really let him loose. He needs to be given an opportunity in the top 6 at some point if we expect him to produce and be successful.

RECAP Bad games happen. Regroup and get ready for Monday. I've got a feeling Kinkaid is gonna be out a while. Appleby was very impressive. POSSESSION ES CF: 41 to 44 ES FF: 30 to 33 ES SF: 24 to 24 ES SCF: 17 to 25 ES HDCF: 3 to 14 All CF: 55 to 61 All FF: 38 to 44 All SF: 29 to 31 All SCF: 21 to 33 All HDCF: 5 to 16

Happy recaps? Did you not read the one I postes yesterday where I basically roasted the Devils for not being able to close it out in regulation? This whole idea that I'm some sort of apologist is completely misguided. The only reason it might seem that way is because people on here do nothing but rip the Devils so I'm constantly reacting to people who incessantly rip on the team so all you see is me defending the team. The truth is, I'm actually level headed and objective about the team. I post what I see. If I see something bad, I will post about it without sugar coating it. If I see something good, I'll post about it. I'm not sure why it's so hard for you and Micky Mouse to understand. And don't give me this "people on facebook" bs. The very same people who post on facebook, twitter, HF, reddit, etc are all the same as the people who post on here.

The people who post on here, make up a very minute part of THAT very minute part of the fanbase you speak of. So I hope you're not using NJDevs as some sort of barometer and then trying to extrapolate through the entire fanbase. Also read what I said in that post 4 years ago. I said we'd give up something we didn't want to give up in order to get him. We ended up giving up something we did not want to give up in order to get him. I would update the software on your sarcasm detector up to date if I were you, because I use sarcasm quite often.

Yes there were definitely people who hated this trade and thought giving up Larsson was in fact giving up too much. Don't even try and tell me these people don't exist.

I'm not the one lacking awareness there champ. I thought it would be painfully obvious to everyone that me quoting myself from a post 4 years ago was in jest, but apparently I was too confident you guys would get the joke.

I was right. Nobody wanted to trade Adam Larsson. So we did end up giving up more than we wanted to when the trade was made.

RECAP Great effort, but it really should have been a regulation win. 2 points is 2 points, but if they want to learn how to close out games, learning to clear the zone would be a good starting point. Kinkaid made some big stops, but he does need to learn how to deal with screens better. Overall, this was a tremendous win, and Hall is amazing. POSSESSION ES CF: 48 to 29 ES FF: 44 to 22 ES SF: 28 to 13 ES SCF: 22 to 15 ES HDCF: 14 to 6 All CF: 56 to 44 All FF: 49 to 32 All SF: 32 to 19 All SCF: 27 to 22 All HDCF: 18 to 7

I'm not trying to downplay Cory at all. I'm just making aware of the fact that as a result of him facing a lot of shots, his SV% was inflated due to higher shot volume. When separating the higher shot volume games (I use 30 or more) from the lower shot volume games (29 or fewer), every goalie in the past 30 seasons has a higher cumulative SV% in those higher shot volume games. 29 or fewer shots: .899. 30 or more shots: .917. Now that's going back 30 years which crosses over different eras and whatnot. To break it down even more and going strictly with more recent data, the past 10 years breaks down like this. 29 or fewer shots: .906 30 or more shots: .926 Since we're talking Cory, here's just his splits in his career. 29 or fewer shots: .918 30 or more shots: .933 I must emphasize that all of this data only includes games where the goalie plays 50 minutes or more which means relief appearances and games where the goalie gets pulled due to bad play are omitted from the above data. I still believe Cory is an elite goalie. He just hasn't shown it these past 2 seasons.