devils102

How did Helgeson look? Talk about protected minutes, 6:14 TOI?

I have a hard time saying it's time to tank this early in the season, but I get the sentiment. Too many veterans that are past their prime. I would disagree about Schneider. He's having a bad stretch, but there's nothing making me think he's going to continue to perform below his career stats. He's had a heavy workload so far this year. Not just in the games played, but in the amount of shots faced. Tonight wasn't that bad but early in the season we were getting blitzed for a while. His confidence is probably pretty low like the rest of the team, but I think Cory can get back to last year's level and hopefully steal us a few games soon. I think the problem with this franchise right now, and it's similar to some others that are just "mediocre" as one poster pointed out above, is we've gone through several years of trading draft picks and prospects for top end talent combined with having our talent leave for other organizations. For the first time in awhile I feel like we've got some prospects in the system, especially on D which is great. But the forward corp is a mess, and it doesn't look like there is much relief on the way. Instead we fill up the roster with bad contracts which keeps those few prospects in the minors. Meanwhile until just recently, we've been trading away picks for runs in the late 00's and don't have any of those young, serviceable players to plug in the roster. I don't want to become one of those posters who complains about the same thing all day because I've mentioned this is in another thread... but I blame Lou! For all the Brodeur-haters out there who complain about the legacy starts he got last year, I'm surprised Lou gets such a free pass around here. I would expect that in any other organization, a GM with his track record over the last 10 years would have been fired by now. He's really only here still because of what he did in the 90s and the beginning of 2000s (albeit what he DID do during that time was pretty amazing)

Our PK was 65% going into this game. It's unbelievable how bad that is.

It will be interesting to see how this will be implemented. Will teams have a choice? I can see Leafs or Wings ownership not being in favour of something like this, for example, whereas other owners may think it's a great way to add revenue without giving up to much. And will the money be distributed collectively or does each team keep their share of the ad revenue? If Florida wants to stick ads on their jerseys to make a few bucks, more power to them. But I fear the NHL will share the revenue among all it's owners which is problematic for me. I don't see why the well-run and successful teams (and their fans in this case because I would assume all owners would have to agree to something like this) should have to compromise in order to fund perennial charity cases.

Saw Greene and Salvador together before the whistle. Interesting line combos continue.

Yes, and he's been better defensively and more physical since he's been here than I was expecting based on his reputation.

This is a good post. I'm not sure I agree they are close to being a top-flight team, but their scoring depth is refreshing compared to last year. And you're right about the young D. If we could play better defensively this team could make some noise. I don't think we're watching a bottom-feeder. As I said in an earlier post, in my opinion they're a bubble team. Unfortunately that means when a few things aren't working they get exposed.

I was going to say Fayne.

Fair enough. But I would argue if your going down the fire somebody road, Lou should with him.

The fire Pete thing is tempting after a loss like this, but the problem imo is that this is a bubble team. I don't know that any coach can fix this and I think Lou knows it too. This group is what it is. The most disappointing part is that with a veteran team like this... you expect the speed thing to be an issue against some teams. But you expect they can play in a system and not get too mentally rattled. That seems like the opposite here. We looked like the Edmonton Oilers of the last couple years tonight..

Not a lot of pride out there tonight.

On another positive note (which have been rare tonight) fourth line has played well. Drawing penalties, pinning the Penguins in their end, and looked good on the PK. And two goals of course.

We haven't been playing that well tonight... Lots of lost battles, a step behind etc. Another blown lead sucks, but we were lucky to have it in the first place. We're not playing too well. If we can sustain some the pressure as we've been able to for rare stretches of the game, we might be able to take a run at this in the third. Fleury has been soft too. Does Clemmensen come in for the third?

Glad Gelinas got to play. He was born in Ottawa pretty much.

Did anyone else notice Zajac sneak on to the ice during the timeout in place of Havlat(I think)?

They were dying to call a penalty there. EDIT: After replay... less of a dive than I thought. More of an accident.

Has our fourth line been THAT bad so far? They've been the worst line but that's gonna happen no matter who's on there.

Good old-fashioned beat down for the most part.

I feel like it's been long enough since Pronger played that I'm OK with it. It's a public enough job that any bias will show. As for him being a dirty player... yeah it's a weird choice. He also lost time out of his career to a head injury so I would think he'd bring that perspective too.

Whoops... wrong thread.

Schneider: He was great. I don't know what some of you are seeing, sorry. He made 2-3 saves that could have been goals to make up for any he should have had. If he was bad then I shudder to think of what you thought of Mason. Zubrus: Looked like a top 9 player tonight. He had some shot attempts, rather than just getting the puck to the boards. I was complaining about his second-line play time but he was good tonight at least. Severson: Awesome. He rushed the puck a couple of times. Has a nice shot. Decent speed. Solid in his own end. Had the one blatant giveaway at the end of the game when things were decided. But otherwise really good game I thought. Salvador: Terrible pinch on the fourth goal. A flubbed pass early in the game when everyone was nervous. Didn't notice much else but he wasn't very good. Cammalleri: He's awesome. Has a great nose for the net, kind of like Parise. Tootoo: That penalty was bad. He should have played the puck instead of whacking at the guy, although he caught a bad break on that slashing call. I think Brunner is in next game for sure. That whole line didn't outplay anybody as someone else noticed. Everyone else was pretty good.

Schneider actually had a good game. There was a few standout players tonight. As far as blowing the lead... It's hard to keep leads when your PK isn't working and ours isn't yet. You can apply that to 2012 when are PK was poor throughout much of those playoffs. That was an awesome game and the team looks pretty good. If blowing multi-goal leads is our biggest problem this year, it's going to be a great season. And Dano was good too I thought.

This is intense. Gotta say though. Nice that this team can score. Fun change from last year.

I still can't believe there is no GameCenter for X-Box One yet. Someone really screwed the pooch on that one as well. Although I'm pleased that for customers in Canada who have a Rogers account, you can get GameCenter for free until Dec. 31. May be the only good thing about Rogers buying NHL rights.

Maybe. There's Johnny Oduya who might not even be in the NHL if it wasn't for the Devils. I think the Swede thing is just a coincidence. But yeah all those guys probably hang out and I could see them bitching about the boss.