GDT: Your New Jersey Devils @ St. Louis Blues, 8 PM, MSG+2

[NJDevs26]

And if Hynes only ******* answer to this is to scale it back so we're allowing 25-28 shots and only getting 18-20 shots instead, I'll want him gone more than I want him gone right now. That's not good enough and that would be worse than last year.

I can already see him doing something like that and Cory turning it around, and we lose games 2-1 instead of 5-2.

If you don't have the horses to play that game you can't continue to get your head beat in. As much as I didn't like him for other reasons at least Brent Sutter was smart enough to shelve the wide-open style he wanted to play after ten games in his first season when he realized that team just wasn't equipped to do it. People can knock regressive hockey but we don't have the talent to win pond hockey or playing super aggressively, we just don't.

It might be too late to switch now though, there's almost no point of doing it if we're so far out of the playoff race it doesn't matter.

 

[Emperoreddy]

The thing is a GM doesn't really have a ton of buttons he can push besides the fire the coach button.

He can't trade all the players for potentially playing subpar. Benchings could work, but it could also completely pollute the locker room, and if Shero is the one poking Hynes into "doing something" it could also create problems and simply undermine Hynes long term.

Shero's only real option right now is to either decide Hynes can fix this, and simply needs more time and stay the course, or decide the team needs a big shake up and fire him.

 

[Tundra]

The only real button to push at this stage is to fire Hynes

which would be completely counterproductive at this stage. They need to just ride it out. Like I said, they will be lucky to get 4 to 5 points out of the last ten games in December. Those are simply better teams and no coach can will this unit to victory.

 

[Emperoreddy]

If you don't have the horses to play that game you can't continue to get your head beat in. As much as I didn't like him for other reasons at least Brent Sutter was smart enough to shelve the wide-open style he wanted to play after ten games in his first season when he realized that team just wasn't equipped to do it. People can knock regressive hockey but we don't have the talent to win pond hockey or playing super aggressively, we just don't.

It might be too late to switch now though, there's almost no point of doing it if we're so far out of the playoff race it doesn't matter.

We aren't even playing pond hockey though. The Chicago was pond hockey, and ya we lost, but you can still hang some kind of hat on that.

This is failing at basic fundamentals, coasting up and down the ice, etc. Who besides Wood is actually moving their feet out there? Is anyone even attempting to be physical?

 

[Tundra]

If you don't have the horses to play that game you can't continue to get your head beat in. As much as I didn't like him for other reasons at least Brent Sutter was smart enough to shelve the wide-open style he wanted to play after ten games in his first season when he realized that team just wasn't equipped to do it. People can knock regressive hockey but we don't have the talent to win pond hockey or playing super aggressively, we just don't.

It might be too late to switch now though, there's almost no point of doing it if we're so far out of the playoff race it doesn't matter.

Better to just take our lumps like Buffalo and Toronto has. Regressive hockey can die.

 

[Emperoreddy]

which would be completely counterproductive at this stage. They need to just ride it out. Like I said, they will be lucky to get 4 to 5 points out of the last ten games in December. Those are simply better teams and no coach can will this unit to victory.

He has already willed more wins out of a worse team last year, and with this same team for the first 15. So obviously a coach can get them to win.

 

[MadDevil]

This has been going on for weeks now. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that this is just a poor defensive unit in general, but the entire team seems lost as well.

My opinion is that this season is toast. I will eat a shoe if this current roster makes up 10+ points in the standings over the next 4 months. But they have to find a way to play a structured game again. If that means firing hynes, so be it. This team is playing tremendously lousy hockey and another 4 months of this garbage should be considered unacceptable. They should at least be competitive.

I don't really care about the playoffs at this point. I just want this team to figure out an identity. At least last year we were a good defensive team, had strong goaltending, and were solid on special teams. We weren't going to score much, but at least we weren't going to get curbstomped. This year pretty much all of that has gone straight to hell.

 

[Tundra]

These players just want to make their money and thats it man. They don;t play die hard hockey as other teams. its whatever to them. There's no love for hockey the way they play. Not creative at all. I don't know whats going on but its definitely something internally going on and the team is just giving up at this point on the season.

The team plays hard. I never question effort. 90% of their problems is related to talent and odd pieces which don't fit well.

 

[Emperoreddy]

We can't succeed in today's NHL with regressive hockey. That is a loser's mentality as you are just embracing 80 point seasons with zero hope of improving because the style of hockey is so limiting.

They have to find a way to push forward, and tweak the system to let them at least have a chance to succeed. First and foremost though is cleaning up the absolute fundamental failures in the game.

 

[Tundra]

He has already willed more wins out of a worse team last year, and with this same team for the first 15. So obviously a coach can get them to win.

He had Larsson and Schlemko back there as well. He's almost forced to play aggressive with the cast on the blueline.

 

[Tundra]

Hynes is a carbon copy of Jmac

JMac had game breaking talent at his disposal. Hynes not so much.

 

[NJDevs26]

JMac had game breaking talent at his disposal. Hynes not so much.

What game-breaking talent, Elias and Kovalchuk? Hall's better than Kovalchuk and Camm's close enough to that version of Elias production-wise. Or Zajac, whoever you want to throw in as our #2 forward now. Honestly it's not that far off considering they had no Parise and didn't have 'lucky Clarkson' then.

 

[MadDevil]

MacLean was completely clueless from day one. Hynes at least got the most out of the team last year and the first 15 games of this year. I don't know what the hell has happened since though.

 

[Emperoreddy]

What game-breaking talent, Elias and Kovalchuk? Hall's better than Kovalchuk and Camm's close enough to that version of Elias production-wise. Honestly it's not that far off considering they had no Parise and we didn't have 'lucky Clarkson' then.

Definitely close enough. That no name defense Jmac had was also pretty bad.

 

[Tundra]

What game-breaking talent, Elias and Kovalchuk? Hall's better than Kovalchuk and Camm's close enough to Elias production-wise. Honestly it's not that far off considering they had no Parise and we didn't have 'lucky Clarkson' then.

Hall is no way better than pre-injury Kovalchuk. I don't even know if Hall is a more complete player than Zach.

 

[Emperoreddy]

MacLean was completely clueless from day one. Hynes at least got the most out of the team last year and the first 15 games of this year. I don't know what the hell has happened since though.

I am worried they have fallen into a premadonna mode of feeling sorry for themselves, and Hynes isn't able to shock them out of it.

 

[MadDevil]

The first 15 games we allowed 3 or more goals 5 times. In the 14 games since we've allowed 3 or more 13 ****ing times.

 

[Chessarmy]

There isn't one trade that can fix this mess, and Shero is in no position to make a trade in December anyway when the whole team sans Hall and Zajac are playing like trash. These are the horses we've got, our only hope is they snap out of it and go on a miracle run in the second half and even if they still miss the playoffs, it'll leave us with something positive.

 

[Emperoreddy]

There isn't one trade that can fix this mess, and Shero is in no position to make a trade in December anyway when the whole team sans Hall and Zajac are playing like trash. These are the horses we've got, our only hope is they snap out of it and go on a miracle run in the second half and even if they still miss the playoffs, it'll leave us with something positive.

It wouldn't even take a miracle run by normal standards. The big problem is stringing two wins together right now would be a miracle.

 

[MadDevil]

It wouldn't even take a miracle run by normal standards. The big problem is stringing two wins together right now would be a miracle.

I'd settle for stringing two periods together at this point.

 

[Bleedred]

We need a couple more saves, too many stoppable goals going in. Cory has looked like Kinkaid of last year, with a worse defensive game in front of him of course. But too many stoppable goals going in and it's happening more than once in some of these games. He's gotta be averaging more than a stoppable goal a game since the Anaheim game.

Marty looked like this in the first half of the MacLean season and up until late January or maybe even early February.

I don't think it's a decline like what we experienced with Marty that year, Marty started showing signs of a drop off around New Years of 2010. From the 50 save shutout at MSG until the end of the playoffs that year, he wasn't anywhere near as strong as before that.

But we need better goaltending from Cory. He's gonna allow more goals if he's facing more shots, that's to be expected. Any goalie will. But too many stoppable goals going in, 2 tonight, 2 the last game, 2 against Montreal. He was barely allowing any before the Anaheim game.

 

[NJDevs26]

It wouldn't even take a miracle run by normal standards. The big problem is stringing two wins together right now would be a miracle.

 

[Emperoreddy]

We need a couple more saves, too many stoppable goals going in. Cory has looked like Kinkaid of last year, with a worse defensive game in front of him of course. But too many stoppable goals going in and it's happening more than once in some of these games. He's gotta be averaging more than a stoppable goal a game since the Anaheim game.

Marty looked like this in the first half of the MacLean season and up until late January or maybe even early February.

I don't think it's a decline like what we experienced with Marty that year, Marty started showing signs of a drop off around New Years of 2010. From the 50 save shutout at MSG until the end of the playoffs that year, he wasn't anywhere near as strong as before that.

But we need better goaltending from Cory. He's gonna allow more goals if he's facing more shots, that's to be expected. Any goalie will. But too many stoppable goals going in, 2 tonight, 2 the last game, 2 against Montreal. He was barely allowing any before the Anaheim game.

We can't even hang tonight on him though. First one was a laser. If Cory was playing well, no one is calling that "stoppable". It was a picked corner snipe. Second one was deflected. Third one he had no chance.

4th one...well the game was already out of hand, and ya I don't even know what that was.

 

[Bleedred]

We can't even hang tonight on him though. First one was a laser. If Cory was playing well, no one is calling that "stoppable". It was a picked corner snipe. Second one was deflected. Third one he had no chance.

4th one...well the game was already out of hand, and ya I don't even know what that was.

He allowed a goal to a Buffalo player last season that beat him too cleanly to the glove and I counted it against him. It was one of the last games of the season, I don't even remember who scored it. The Tarasenko goal wasn't terrible or really his fault, I'd say he could have had it though. It reminded me of Marty's gamely clean wristers allowed to the glove side from October 2010-January 2011. Another throwback to the MacLean era.

Was goal 2 deflected? I know it was certainly caused by a moving screen from Merrill trying to play tag with some Blues guy. I wouldn't count goals 2 or 3 against him in any way.

Goal 4 has me now thinking this is a confidence issue. It's almost like he's going into games expecting to give up 3 or 4 goals now.

 

[Emperoreddy]

He allowed a goal to a Buffalo player last season that beat him too cleanly to the glove and I counted it against him. It was one of the last games of the season, I don't even remember who scored it. The Tarasenko goal wasn't terrible or really his fault, I'd say he could have had it though. It reminded me of Marty's gamely clean wristers allowed to the glove side from October 2010-January 2011. Another throwback to the MacLean era.

Was goal 2 deflected? I know it was certainly caused by a moving screen from Merrill trying to play tag with some Blues guy. I wouldn't count goals 2 or 3 against him in any way.

Goal 4 has me now thinking this is a confidence issue. It's almost like he's going into games expecting to give up 3 or 4 goals now.

Score keeper changed it to one of the Blues in front. Seemed like it bounced off a body before going in. He was also definitely screened as well.

Goal 1 one is a confidence issue too though. He makes that, that is a great save. I don't totally believes he can stop the high quality open looks right now. If he is seeing a shooter setting up with time, I think he worries. He doesn't worry when he is on his game.