GDT: Blues @ Devils, 1:00 PM

[PizzaAndPucks]

Alot of things Jack had a hard time since joining the league (shooting, staying up on his feet , etc) he has made significant strides in.

 

[Jack Be Quick]

Yes Zacha is back

Which point in the season are we at?

 

[Camille the Eel]

Super happy we won the game and in an exciting way for the largely NJ high school hockey tournament crowd. Just a fine win and also a milestone for hockey in the Jersey region to see so good a house.

 

[Guttersniped]

@Bleedred why the angst towards Daws? Hes showed well. Am I ready to hand him 1B to Blackwoods theoretical 1A? Probably not but he's looked very solid.

You shouldn’t expect consistency from a goalie that young who’s played so little hockey recently, there’s a reason you don’t see 21 year old goalies in the NHL these days.

He’s done well for this desperation short term stint since it’s going well and he’s getting playing time but you don’t want him to sit on the bench nor do you want him to use up all his waiver exemptions and then implode. (He gets 60 games as a goalie before he’s no longer waiver exempt and he’s played in 9 games so far.)

Daws doing well is great but the wheels can come off at any time and Ruff has to be careful about his playing time.

The big issue now is that the team can’t handle a goalie injury at either the NHL or AHL level, both coaches have one goalie they trust, both are very young rookies, and the ECHL goalie backing up Schmid can’t even play in the NHL. The Devils have three healthy goalies in their entire org available to them.

 

[Bleedred]

Just give Husso a ton on a short term deal and see how that goes. I'd rather do that than probably any trade out there

This is really why I'm hesitant with Husso

Last year he was like Jon Gillies bad. I had him down for 39% of his goals being stoppable, which was probably one my highest percentages. Matt Murray was certainly worse than that though and so was Hogberg from the Senators, who is out of North American hockey this year.

I have him for a very low percentage this year (I don't have the numbers in front of me, phone is charging) and his save percentage is also really good. I didn't nail him on any of the 3 today.

There's a pretty high probability that he is not as bad as he was last year, but I don't think he's quite as good as he's been this year either. Now if he could be his career average of .915% that would be good enough, but there's still too many questions next year with the goalies we have under contract.

How many games does Blackwood play? Will he be good if his injuries are worked out? Or is he just really closer to a .900% goalie than he is to the .916% goalie that he was for his first two years in the league? Injuries likely made him worse this year, but how much worse? Is a healthy Blackwood any better than a .905% goalie? Does he have to be used as a backup/1b just to be league average or better? Or is he still gonna be mediocre to bad from here on out (more years than not) if he's played strictly as a backup? He did have one of the worst AHL seasons a goalie can have in his second year as a pro. His third year was also nothing special, he played significantly better in the NHL that year than he did in the AHL. Those are tough questions right now.

 

[Hisch13r]

Alot of things Jack had a hard time since joining the league (shooting, staying up on his feet , etc) he has made significant strides in.

The only thing he still sucks at are faceoffs and those are meh anyway. My biggest issue with his game is how careless he can be on the PP

 

[Hisch13r]

This is really why I'm hesitant with Husso

Last year he was like Jon Gillies bad. I had him down for 39% of his goals being stoppable, which was probably one my highest percentages. Matt Murray was certainly worse than that though and so was Hogberg from the Senators, who is out of North American hockey this year.

I have him for a very low percentage this year (I don't have the numbers in front of me, phone is charging) and his save percentage is also really good. I didn't nail him on any of the 3 today.

There's a pretty high probability that he is not as bad as he was last year, but I don't think he's quite as good as he's been this year either. Now if he could be his career average of .915% that would be good enough, but there's still too many questions next year with the goalies we have under contract.

How many games does Blackwood play? Will he be good if his injuries are worked out? Or is he just really closer to a .900% goalie than he is to the .916% goalie that he was for his first two years in the league? Injuries likely made him worse this year, but how much worse? Is a healthy Blackwood any better than a .905% goalie? Does he have to be used as a backup/1b just to be league average or better? Or is he still gonna be mediocre to bad from here on out (more years than not) if he's played strictly as a backup? Those are tough questions right now.

I mean pretty much any goalie you pick up is a question mark. Good goalies with a long track record of being good are almost never available.

 

[Billdo]

There is no angst, other than the idea that he's ready to be given a full time NHL roster spot next year.

Quite honestly, that sounds like another symptom of Gillies Syndrome. That's the latest symptom of Gillies Syndrome.

I feel it's VERY DANGEROUS to assume that he's ready to be one of the two goalies on this team next year. Unless you have Vasilevskiy, Saros, Demko or Hellebuyck here (one of the workhorse goalies that can play A LOT of games) next year, he really can't start the year here.

What Fitzy NEEDS to do is not be f***ing lazy and f***ing acquire somebody somehow and I guess the tandem starts out as acquired guy/Blackwood. Bernier can't be relied on to play and who knows if he'll be cleared by the start of the season? And if he is, I expect him to look like Rask did when he played this year or Ben Bishop in his AHL game he played a few days before just deciding to hang them up. At the very least, I figure Bernier will play in the AHL on a conditioning stint before they give him any NHL games.

And if Blackwood starts the year shitty like his last two years have been? You waive him, just like we did with Schneider early in 19-20 and you call up Daws then if you have to.

There's probably a slightly better than 50% chance that Blackwood is not in the organization by the 2023-2024 season, with his contract expiring after next year and missing a very significant number of games during it, as well as wildly underperforming on it. Right now I'm 65%-70% sure Blackwood is gone after next year, but if he stays healthy and plays well while doing it it I think those chances go down and his chances of staying go up.

For Daws to be on the team to start next year he has to really light the world on fire and he's not really doing that right now.

Once again, I'm not trying to dump on Daws, but thinking he's shown enough right now to be on the NHL roster next year is just the latest symptom of Gillies Syndrome.

That could be a LETHAL mistake for Tom Fitzgerald, one that could cause his job to end more prematurely than it would have.

If you really think Daws has shown enough right now that he's cruising for one of the two goalies spots on this team to start next season then it's really time to pump the brakes.

Ah I must've misread something. I thought you like didn't even want him to be a positivity next year or something. Having said that I am, and have been, relatively high on both Daws and Schmid so perhaps I'm a bit biased. I have zero faith in Bernier being ready for next year and actually playing a normal share of games. He's toast.

 

[Bleedred]

I mean pretty much any goalie you pick up is a question mark. Good goalies with a long track record of being good are almost never available.

Agreed.

And too many teams have made big mistakes with goalie acquisitions and the contracts they've given them in recent years, though some are obviously bad from the start.

Like the Oilers extending both Koskinen and Smith (by two different GM's) to multi year deals, based on overachieving seasons or even overachieving fluke half seasons, like Koskinen's first half of 18-19.

The Matt Murray contract from the Senators was also way too obviously bad from the start.

Holtby getting a two year deal from Benning, only to be bought out after that year was another hilarious one. I remember suggesting Holtby might spend the second year of that deal in the AHL or even be bought out and people thought that was bizarre and would be completely shocking.

 

[Bleedred]

Ah I must've misread something. I thought you like didn't even want him to be a positivity next year or something. Having said that I am, and have been, relatively high on both Daws and Schmid so perhaps I'm a bit biased. I have zero faith in Bernier being ready for next year and actually playing a normal share of games. He's toast.

If Blackwood sucks next year and is really struggling by November, don't give him 10 f***in years to figure it out like we did Cory (exaggerating a little bit with the 10 year remark) and let him work it out. That's when Daws comes up and if Daws struggles, then that's the time to give Schmid another NHL cup of coffee cause it clearly wasn't working for him this year.

Like I said, as of this moment I think there's 65%-70% chance that Blackwood is not a member of the Devils by 2023-2024.

He is an RFA for one more year after next, but I don't see why you'd sign him after three poor years, I don't know what you'd offer him. I don't think he'd even be worth his qualifying offer with one more bad season.

That's assuming he has a poor year. If he has a really good year, that could be trouble for us long term too. Cause then you wonder ''Is he gonna be good again now? Or will it not last past this year? Is this a one-off fluke before he returns to the poor version, like Mike Smith last year?''.

But who knows? The organization might still be a little too high on Blackwood. They couldn't stop throwing on the ice every game he was healthy for until he went on the IR. Even when he was sick, they put him into games. Bad injuries, throwing him into games.

And we hadn't even really seen much of Gillies until he went to the IR. I didn't think Gillies was that bad in the 2 games he played before Blackwood disappeared. So it's not like we were playing him because other teams were killing Gillies and embarrassing us with him out there. Unless he was just getting scored on way too much in practice.

 

[Whaddagoal]

Which point in the season are we at?

That username is gold.... (I know its not new recently but it really true.)

 

[Buck Dancer]

That is so irrelevant. If another player is doing better there and working than he deserves that spot. You haven’t made an argument. The powerplay has been pretty good and I really like Severson there. The coaches seem to like him there too. Just because Dougie is getting paid 9M doesn’t mean he should automatically get that spot.

Hamilton was injured and Severson took his spot by default, not by merit.

Handing the puck off to Bratt or Hughes doesn’t take a massive skill set and this coaching staff has been making dumb calls on top of dumb calls when talking about our PP (one can say in general but let’s stick to the PP for now).

Dougie Hamilton was brought in this summer to kick start the offense from the back end and bring a proven QB to our PP. The people behind the bench, I assume, want to spread the wealth by putting Hamilton on our 2nd unit but he should definitely be on our main option since they’re on the ice 80%, if not more, of the 2 minutes.

That’s great but I want to see my best players out there every chance they get because a PP goal can be the difference between putting a team away and letting them come back into a game they have no business doing.

Salary doesn’t determine the number of minutes you should be playing or on what line/pairing/unit but common sense would lead you to believe that your highest paid players (aka your best players) should see more ice time than those who are paid half their salary.

 

[Whaddagoal]

Just got back from the game. Was a fun one. They looked pretty good until the 3rd. Then i had visions of a typical meltdown... Particuarly after the refs called that penalty late!

Lot of good chances that should have been converted on. Moderately packed crowd to boot...

Dougie flipped that greatly... Assume it had to be on edge cause that angle was nasty in tight to roof it like that...

 

[Bleedred]

You shouldn’t expect consistency from a goalie that young who’s played so little hockey recently, there’s a reason you don’t see 21 year old goalies in the NHL these days.

He’s done well for this desperation short term stint since it’s going well and he’s getting playing time but you don’t want him to sit on the bench nor do you want him to use up all his waiver exemptions and then implode. (He gets 60 games as a goalie before he’s no longer waiver exempt and he’s played in 9 games so far.)

Daws doing well is great but the wheels can come off at any time and Ruff has to be careful about his playing time.

The big issue now is that the team can’t handle a goalie injury at either the NHL or AHL level, both coaches have one goalie they trust, both are very young rookies, and the ECHL goalie backing up Schmid can’t even play in the NHL. The Devils have three healthy goalies in their entire org available to them.

I'm glad he's doing well out there and not getting beat up too much, as Gillies really deserved a long stint on the bench after the last two games he played. I was actually half expecting Gillies in today, but was also not surprised when he wasn't in.

 

[Hisch13r]

Just got back from the game. Was a fun one. They looked pretty good until the 3rd. Then i had visions of a typical meltdown... Particuarly after the refs called that penalty late!

Lot of good chances that should have been converted on. Moderately packed crowd to boot...

Dougie flipped that greatly... Assume it had to be on edge cause that angle was nasty in tight to roof it like that...

I didn't think they looked that bad in the 3rd either

 

[Hisch13r]

I'm glad he's doing well out there and not getting beat up too much, as Gillies really deserved a long stint on the bench after the last two games he played. I was actually half expecting Gillies in today, but was also not surprised when he wasn't in.

Well I mean Gilles did pull out the win last time he faced St Louis lol

 

[Whaddagoal]

I didn't think they looked that bad in the 3rd either

Thats right too... I meant...The nailbiting commenced in 3rd.. Stl goals were pretty good shots.

Hughes was good... Although he almost had a major fubar on final PP that could have ended real bad. Other than that he was really buzzing.

 

[Buck Dancer]

I mean pretty much any goalie you pick up is a question mark. Good goalies with a long track record of being good are almost never available.

Yeah but you don’t hand out a big deal to an unproven goalie who had a hot couple of months when the rest of his resume was, let’s just call it, below average.

I would much rather try and land someone like Samsonov, Varlamov or any other #1 that is being pushed out of his starting role and has one or two years left on his deal.

The Bernier situation will dictate what we do because I don’t see us having a 3 goalie carrousel like the Stars have this year.

 

[Hisch13r]

Thats right too... I meant...The nailbiting commenced in 3rd.. Stl goals were pretty good shots.

Hughes was good... Although he almost had a major fubar on final PP that could have ended real bad. Other than that he was really buzzing.

I thought the Krug goal was a good shot but also one that should've been stopped. The Kyrou one was a great play by them. Great cross ice feed and then off the post and in.

Yeah Jack was creating left and right. The play on the PP bothered me too. He does stuff like that way too often on the PP.

 

[Bleedred]

Just got back from the game. Was a fun one. They looked pretty good until the 3rd. Then i had visions of a typical meltdown... Particuarly after the refs called that penalty late!

Lot of good chances that should have been converted on. Moderately packed crowd to boot...

Dougie flipped that greatly... Assume it had to be on edge cause that angle was nasty in tight to roof it like that...

What I wanna know is how the hell were ''Let's Go Blues!'' chants so audible? That's just so random.

Obviously, it's expected when any of the 3 local teams in the region come in. They're all within a 2 hour drive at most. Even if it were Boston or Montreal or Toronto, as we heard a lot of Go Leafs Go last time they came in.

But St. Louis? It's like so far out there. It's probably almost an entire day's drive. Did they have a huge group come in there that traveled for the game or maybe showed up for the entire trip?

 

[Whaddagoal]

What I wanna know is how the hell were ''Let's Go Blues!'' chants so audible? That's just so random.

Obviously, it's expected when any of the 3 local teams in the region come in. They're all within a 2 hour drive at most. Even if it were Boston or Montreal or Toronto, as we heard a lot of Go Leafs Go last time they came in.

But St. Louis? It's like so far out there. It's probably almost an entire day's drive. Did they have a huge group come in there that traveled for the game or maybe showed up for the entire trip?

There was a stl group in the suite right below 108 (where i was). Really loud right after they got their goals but we buzzed them out quick. Maybe some mics nearby that..

(And did seem random they had a suite lol....)

 

[Captain3rdLine]

Hamilton was injured and Severson took his spot by default, not by merit.

Handing the puck off to Bratt or Hughes doesn’t take a massive skill set and this coaching staff has been making dumb calls on top of dumb calls when talking about our PP (one can say in general but let’s stick to the PP for now).

Dougie Hamilton was brought in this summer to kick start the offense from the back end and bring a proven QB to our PP. The people behind the bench, I assume, want to spread the wealth by putting Hamilton on our 2nd unit but he should definitely be on our main option since they’re on the ice 80%, if not more, of the 2 minutes.

That’s great but I want to see my best players out there every chance they get because a PP goal can be the difference between putting a team away and letting them come back into a game they have no business doing.

Salary doesn’t determine the number of minutes you should be playing or on what line/pairing/unit but common sense would lead you to believe that your highest paid players (aka your best players) should see more ice time than those who are paid half their salary.

You notice how not a single part of what you said mentioned anything about what he actually does on the power play. I like Severson on that powerplay more than Dougie. I think he’s a more skilled skater and puck handler and I like how he moves the puck with Jack and Bratt. The powerplay has been better and he has done well. Regardless of how he got there he has done well in the spot and shouldn’t be pushed out of the spot just because of what the Devils brought Dougie in to do and because he’s getting paid more and is a bigger name who has produced better in his career.

I found Dougie to be very frustrating on our first unit earlier in the season because we would get the puck moving and then he’d throw some early floater through that got covered, blocked and/or cleared and would completely kill our puck movement and offense at times. He still does that and I really like how Severson moves and moves the puck on the powerplay and I would like him to stay there.

I don’t think they’re trying to spread the wealth by putting Hamilton on the second unit at all. I think they just like Severson there more similar to myself and the power play has been better with Severson there than it was with Dougie before whether thats largely to do with Severson or not. I don’t know but I like him there more.

 

[NJDevs26]

What I wanna know is how the hell were ''Let's Go Blues!'' chants so audible? That's just so random.

Obviously, it's expected when any of the 3 local teams in the region come in. They're all within a 2 hour drive at most. Even if it were Boston or Montreal or Toronto, as we heard a lot of Go Leafs Go last time they came in.

But St. Louis? It's like so far out there. It's probably almost an entire day's drive. Did they have a huge group come in there that traveled for the game or maybe showed up for the entire trip?

Same here...plus like I said during the game it's not like they're some big national team where they'll have a lot of bandwagon or transplanted fans.

 

[Hisch13r]

You notice how not a single part of what you said mentioned anything about what he actually does on the power play. I like Severson on that powerplay more than Dougie. I think he’s a more skilled skater and puck handler and I like how he moves the puck with Jack and Bratt. The powerplay has been better and he has done well. Regardless of how he got there he has done well in the spot and shouldn’t be pushed out of the spot just because of what the Devils brought Dougie in to do and because he’s getting paid more and is a bigger name who has produced better in his career.

I found Dougie to be very frustrating on our first unit earlier in the season because we would get the puck moving and then he’d throw some early floater through that got covered, blocked and/or cleared and would completely kill our puck movement and offense at times. He still does that and I really like how Severson moves and moves the puck on the powerplay and I would like him to stay there.

I don’t think they’re trying to spread the wealth by putting Hamilton on the second unit at all. I think they just like Severson there more similar to myself and the power play has been better with Severson there than it was with Dougie before whether thats largely to do with Severson or not. I don’t know but I like him there more.

They actually have a higher GF/60 with Dougie. They generate more with him too. He's just simply a better player and one of the best PP Dmen in the league. It should be him.

 

[Captain3rdLine]

They actually have a higher GF/60 with Dougie. They generate more with him too. He's just simply a better player and one of the best PP Dmen in the league. It should be him.

Is that on the power play?
Their percentage with him on the top powerplay was 14.4% which was 31st in the league. Since Damon took over they’ve been at 23.1% which is good for 12th in the league. It’s debatable as to how much credit Severson deserves but I think he’s been very good and he’s been loading up on points lately (not just on the powerplay).

I just like how he moves and moves the puck a lot more.