GDT: Rush GDT Squared, New Jersey Yukons @ Arizona Misfit Toys

[Emperoreddy]

You play Kinkaid so you can ride a fresh Cory hard down the stretch.

Literally zero issues playing Kinkaid on a back to back on the road.

Wedgwood should not play into that decision one bit.

 

[Sir Fenwick Corsi]

You play Kinkaid so you can ride a fresh Cory hard down the stretch.

Literally zero issues playing Kinkaid on a back to back on the road.

Wedgwood should not play into that decision one bit.

Sorry, not seeing it here. First, you don’t worry about a stretch 2 or 3 months from now that may not even happen. A lot can change by that time and maybe the team is on the outside looking in by that point. You play to win now. And like I said, this was not some grueling back to back situation. A true #1, which I believe Cory to be, could handle something like this.

I’d understand if our backup was solid, but like bleed said, kinkaid has been ass for a good stretch here. Until his game is in order, I see no reason to be playing him over Cory, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Had wedgewood not played last night, I still wouldn’t have liked seeing kinkaid play.

 

[Bleedred]

I had no issue with giving Kinkaid this game either, but I think I’ve seen enough of him for now. It’s unfair to say he’s costing us games, because he actually has a weird 13-14 Marty-like win/loss record. And we were shutout in both of his two regulation losses, but I can’t say he’s helping us win games either. Outside of the Rangers game 6 or 7 weeks ago and the Ottawa game that he replaced Cory in relief.

You can make all the excuses you want, but he seems like he’s just another inconsistent from year to year fluctuating backup. .896 save percentage is brutal. I can’t figure out how he’s won all these games with that number (he’s been in the lower 900’s or under for a month now) as low as it is. We have to score 4 or 5 goals whenever he plays. It’s not like every goal he allows is bad, but you can see at least one, sometimes two bad ones going in on him each game. Like that Strome goal last night. And there’s usually as weak of a rationalization as to why he allowed such a poor goal.

I don’t ever wanna read how he has starting potential again or how he’s better than Cory (unless it’s in a short sample size based on recent results) because Cory allows too many soft goals. The truth is, Kinkaid allows even more soft goals. At least this year he does. About 35% of the goals he’s allowing are goals that I’d say he has a fair chance on. And I know it’s only been one poster who’s been touting how he has starter potential, but that’s still one more person than their should be.

I’ll be really irate if Cory is healthy and Hiney Head throws him a bone in some mid-week game, after one poor game from Cory.

 

[Bleedred]

P.S.

I still don’t think Wedgewood is very good or regret trading a guy who could have been had for free less than a month earlier on waivers.

He’s already had a better NHL career than I ever expected him to have over the last several years, but Scott Clemmensen was a mainstay in the NHL for 6 years, as well. And a few other years before that.

 

[Sir Fenwick Corsi]

I don’t like kinkaid’s game this year. He’s had some solid moments for sure, but I just feel like he’s getting beat cleanly far too often. Cory has been far better this year and I don’t think it’s even close.

I started the game an hour late so didn’t even know kinkaid was starting until I saw him in net. Immediately thought “shit, potential punt game”. Sure enough, he gets beat on the first shot. To be fair, Greene was horrendous on that first goal and kinkaid was screened, but still. Can’t really blame him on either of the first two goals, but we needed at least one save there. Find a way.

 

[NJDevs26]

Sorry, not seeing it here. First, you don’t worry about a stretch 2 or 3 months from now that may not even happen. A lot can change by that time and maybe the team is on the outside looking in by that point. You play to win now. And like I said, this was not some grueling back to back situation. A true #1, which I believe Cory to be, could handle something like this.

I’d understand if our backup was solid, but like bleed said, kinkaid has been ass for a good stretch here. Until his game is in order, I see no reason to be playing him over Cory, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Had wedgewood not played last night, I still wouldn’t have liked seeing kinkaid play.

I mean Kinkaid hasn't been great this year but it's not like any of the goals were really on him last night until the game was completely out of hand. Plus given his play last year they don't want to Yann Danis him just yet. If they have to rely on Cory to play 70+ then maybe they did keep the wrong backup goalie.

 

[Bleedred]

I don’t like kinkaid’s game this year. He’s had some solid moments for sure, but I just feel like he’s getting beat cleanly far too often. Cory has been far better this year and I don’t think it’s even close.

I started the game an hour late so didn’t even know kinkaid was starting until I saw him in net. Immediately thought “****, potential punt game”. Sure enough, he gets beat on the first shot. To be fair, Greene was horrendous on that first goal and kinkaid was screened, but still. Can’t really blame him on either of the first two goals, but we needed at least one save there. Find a way.

I didn’t ding him on that first goal (not the first goal on the first shot last week either but both 3rd period goals were stoppable in Detroit) but I noticed he was way out on that one. Even if he wasn’t screened, that shot might have still beaten him, with how aggressively out of the blue paint he was for that shot. He reminded me of Nabokov there. Nabokov would always do that and he got beat a lot on it. He looked like that in Jagr’s 700th goal game, where he made Mark Fayne look like Bobby Orr.

There was another shot that just hit him last night, think it was in the 1st, could have been in the 3rd though. I remember he was on that side of the ice. He looked like that against Chicago on one shot early in the game, where it just hit him and he didn’t even know it.

He seems to only be good every other year and this would be one of his off years.

 

[Bleedred]

I mean Kinkaid hasn't been great this year but it's not like any of the goals were really on him last night until the game was completely out of hand. Plus given his play last year they don't want to Yann Danis him just yet. If they have to rely on Cory to play 70+ then maybe they did keep the wrong backup goalie.

I don’t question the move, just for the fact that Kinkaid has had a better pro career up to this point. Remember, Wedgewood was really bad in the AHL until 15-16. Scott Clemmensen outplayed him in 14-15 and Clemmensen looked finished by 2013, at least at the NHL level.

Kinkaid was also good last year, but he wasn’t good the year before.

I think this firmly plants Kinkaid as being one of these backup goalie’s, that fluctuates from year to year. Most of the career backups are never consistent. Think of the career backups here, like Al Montoya, Chad Johnson, I know I’m forgetting a few others. One year they’re at a .903, the next year they might be at a .920 for the year. I think Kinkaid is one of those.

And backups like that, their numbers almost always regress when they become starters. Darling was a .920 backup before he became the starter in Carolina this year. Kinkaid is only a .910 career backup. Imagine if he became a starter somewhere? He might have a season like Hiller did 3 years ago, which washed him out of the league.

 

[devilsblood]

Kink is never going to be a starter in this league. There is a reason he resigned here at the age of 28.

 

[Bleedred]

Kink is never going to be a starter in this league. There is a reason he resigned here at the age of 28.

I don’t think anyone was in on him to be a starter this past year. I’m sure there was backup interest from other teams.

I’m not second guessing the move to sign him again, I was a huge proponent of it. But I did acknowledge that there was a chance he might be one of the fluctuators, who is good one year, bad the next. That’s an NHL backup for you. The really good ones usually wind up either eventually taking the starting role (Vasilevskiy, Rask, Gibson) or they get traded somewhere else, like Cory, Talbot, Jones, Lehner.

 

[Call Me Al]

the goaltender isn't the issue when the team scores 0 goals

 

[Call Me Al]

the lines i'd want to see next game are:

hall - hischier - zacha
mojo - zajac - bratt
wood - boyle - stafford
gibbons - coleman - noesen

top two lines would have two "finesse" guys with one strong board player/playmaker. would honestly prefer to have JQ up in place of stafford and put him on lw of that line and put wood on rw and keep the 4th line, or move stafford to 4th instead of noesen.

also for the love of god don't put zajac AND boyle on the first pp

 

[Call Me Al]

i'd want zacha to get another chance on the first line with skill players, he looked really good there on the wing against florida in the third period and they produced a goal.

hall - hischier - bratt looks good on paper but you look at the first line on other teams and the good ones are capable of potting multiple goals a game with some regularity. this line hasn't clicked like that and we should try to find some chemistry that can

 

[Bleedred]

the goaltender isn't the issue when the team scores 0 goals

In one game? No.

When the goaltender has an .896 save percentage in 9 games, it’s a huge issue.

And since we win most of the time he’s playing, he isn’t costing us games, as we’ve been shutout in both of his regulation losses. He surely isn’t helping to win them though. We had to bail him out against Chicago, Detroit and that Ottawa game. All of these games featuring two stoppable goals on his part.

Some people argue that goalie’s are team system players, but we must have one of the biggest current differentlal in play between the two goalie’s. .920 vs .896. Vasilevskiy and Budaj are pretty far apart right now.

 

[Call Me Al]

the team laid an egg last night and gave up 4 goals to open players in front of the net walking untouched

 

[Devils Dominion]

I've always made it clear that I preferred Wedge over Kink.

And over MBW too.

So far it looks like we sent away the best of the 3 netminders.

Though to be fair Kink got absolutely no support last night in any of the 3 zones.

 

[Bleedred]

the team laid an egg last night and gave up 4 goals to open players in front of the net walking untouched

Like I said, I’m talking about a larger body of work. This goes beyond last night.

Kinkaid has looked pretty bad since that Ottawa game where he came in for relief duty.

Not a terribly large sample size, but he’s already played over a third of the games that he averaged most seasons, so it don’t look like he’s gonna have a very good season this year.

I don’t think he’s been so inferior to Cory this year, because the defense lays an egg for him every game or because every goal he allows is a perfectly, unstoppable, perfectly placed, perfectly picked corner, teed up, seeing eye shot or deflection. He only allowed one poor goal last night, but that’s still about 8 or 9 other stoppable goals unaccounted for on the season.

 

[Call Me Al]

that’s fine and plausible but i’m less worried about the backup goalie after last night than i am depth scoring and team chemistry. they just haven’t looked good lately even in games that they win. i’m not saying they are a bad team and they’re going to miss the playoffs and other sky is falling complaints like some posters but i just hope they figure it out and put up dominating games on lesser teams once in a while rather than squeezing out one goal wins. their best hockey was preseason and the first 10 games and they need to get back to that

 

[devilsblood]

I've always made it clear that I preferred Wedge over Kink.

And over MBW too.

So far it looks like we sent away the best of the 3 netminders.

Though to be fair Kink got absolutely no support last night in any of the 3 zones.

Blackwood is 20 yrs old.

If Wedge was able to stay healthy last year Devils may have gone that route instead of Kink. But he wasn't and that has been an issue in his career, so that may have been a deciding factor.

 

[Call Me Al]

didn’t realize this but the first 3 games of the season are the only games that were won by a 3 goal or more margin. vancouver on nov 1 and chicago are the only games since then that have had 2 goal margins of victory

 

[Bleedred]

that’s fine and plausible but i’m less worried about the backup goalie after last night than i am depth scoring and team chemistry. they just haven’t looked good lately even in games that they win. i’m not saying they are a bad team and they’re going to miss the playoffs and other sky is falling complaints like some posters but i just hope they figure it out and put up dominating games on lesser teams once in a while rather than squeezing out one goal wins. their best hockey was preseason and the first 10 games and they need to get back to that

Fair enough and I tend to agree.

 

[Bleedred]

Blackwood is 20 yrs old.

If Wedge was able to stay healthy last year Devils may have gone that route instead of Kink. But he wasn't and that has been an issue in his career, so that may have been a deciding factor.

He’ll be telling us Wedgewood is better than Cory soon. It’s coming, buckle up and prepare. I’m surprised he didn’t already tell us that “Wedge has a lower GAA than Cory right now”

 

[Bleedred]

I've always made it clear that I preferred Wedge over Kink.

And over MBW too.

So far it looks like we sent away the best of the 3 netminders.

Though to be fair Kink got absolutely no support last night in any of the 3 zones.

No offense DD, but I couldn’t blame anyone for disagreeing with your evaluation on goalies. Your pro-Wedgewood stance may have been enough to scare management away from Wedgewood, if they read these boards. You being a backer of his, might have been a very red flag. Considering you were very adamant that Hammond was a late bloomer and that it wasn’t a fluke run, as well as Being one of the only people in the world that thought that Ray Emery was still a solid goaltender in 13-14.

Where is the Hamburger guy right now, by the way? Out of the league and in the AHL, where he’s spent almost the entirety of over the last 2 years, except when the Sens had an injured goalie.

 

[Bleedred]

Anyone interested in Boedker? $4 million a year for the next two years after this, gets a FAST 28 year old forward, capable of putting up about 25 points over an 82 game season. You might even 27 points out of him if it’s a good year.

I mean, he looks really fast on the Sharks! Skating around with the geezers and old fogey’s they got over there.

 

[Devils Dominion]

that’s fine and plausible but i’m less worried about the backup goalie after last night than i am depth scoring and team chemistry. they just haven’t looked good lately even in games that they win. i’m not saying they are a bad team and they’re going to miss the playoffs and other sky is falling complaints like some posters but i just hope they figure it out and put up dominating games on lesser teams once in a while rather than squeezing out one goal wins. their best hockey was preseason and the first 10 games and they need to get back to that

There are a lot of red flags with this team of late.
Getting outplayed, out hit, out hustled and not enough puck time or scoring chances like they were getting early on.
Ever since Trav came back, maybe even Boyle but at least he's producing at times.