GDT: Devils @ Canucks - 10:00 PM - MSG

[MartyOwns]

It's kind of funny, because I know you were one of the people running him out of town in the offseason? Flip flop much?

That'd be fine if he actually only was playing every now and again. All indications are that he will probably play a bit more than ''Every now and again''.

i explained this to you last time. i don’t think he’s here for the long haul for a variety of reasons, but he’s on our team for now, and he’s going to play. i actually think ruff has done a nice job managing the goalie situation.

i believe he’s played one more game than vanecek; the ‘indications’ you’re talking about are in your head (and on every page of every thread on this board). my advice is just relax, accept it, and hope for the best. he’ll be gone soon enough.

 

[MVP Zacha]

I am just happy that both VV and MBW are giving us solid enough starts to win games. But I guess we will just continue with the...

 

[Bleedred]

My god....if Mac becomes the reason we lose Bratt.....

Nah...I refuse to even entertain that idea.

Fitz will re-sign Bratt once the New Year comes around and all will be right in the world.

I don't think he'll be the reason we lose Bratt, I do think signing him for $3 million takes a percentage away from what we could give other players though.

We could get this kind of goaltending out of a $1 million dollar goalie, thus saving approximately $2 million on what we'd be paying him.

 

[Ripshot 43]

7-1-0 in the @RangerDoggo era

 

[glenwo2]

A one man gif party is better than no gif party.

I'll take it.

This is one GIF I will take :

 

[Better Call Sal]

A one man gif party is better than no gif party.

I'll take it.

To you, good sir.

 

[Bleedred]

Think of canning the HC of the org’s first playoff round winner in 26 years, and highest scoring team the NHL has seen in 25 years - just to hire one of the same, league recyclables of the last 27 years. What else can you expect from an org with 30 years worth of ineptitude? Thanks, Flordiques ! Bruno has been a paramount find for our team. And thanks to the TBL for sweeping them ! Killed two bucks with one shot ! We’re really lucky he was available for us !

Yeah but they won the Presidents Trophy last year! Eat crow on that! You told me they were gonna be moved to Quebec in 10 years and that was like 5-6 years ago! They're doing better than ever! See all the money they just forked over to that ''Recyclable''? He probably cost them million a year since the league seems to overvalue Ole Four Eyes so much.

 

[glenwo2]

I am just happy that both VV and MBW are giving us solid enough starts to win games. But I guess we will just continue with the...

The thing is...

that broken record has been spot on the past several seasons when it came to Blackwood.

Last night was the very first time in awhile where he wasn't a detriment to the team.

 

[Bleedred]

It is worth pointing out that the Panthers did score a ton last year and Brunette was the head coach for all but the first 6 or 7 games.

I wonder if he has a big influence on our scoring this year? Our ability to generate shots and chances wasn't that bad last year, but it's certainly gotten a lot better this year.

It's probably not really worth questioning too much, but I do wonder if Brunette has a considerable amount of control on the way this team plays already?

 

[Guttersniped]

2030? Is this for real? The first time I ever suggested buying him out was only the year before we actually did buy him out. I started talking about it in the Fall of 2018, so we wouldn't have been able to buy him out any earlier than June of 2019 from that point. So we'd be paying for it until 2025, not 2030.

In the end, I concede that we are better off that he was bought out a year after I wanted him to be. It's absolutely better for us now, but he was also kept around for about a year longer than he should have been. And the fact that he got waived about 6 weeks into that season (and they only gave him one more start after the 4th week of the season before waiving him) was pretty telling of that. Even if he was just buried in the minors for one year before buyout, I think he was here a year longer than he should have been. Especially since we were actually trying to ''Compete'' in 2019-2020. A Schneider-Blackwood tandem was questionable from the start. At the very least, Blackwood should have not started that season in the NHL and we could have gotten someone else and then Blackwood comes up to replace Schneider in November of 2019, instead of Louis Domingue coming up to replace Schneider.

Speaking of Bratt, my fear is that Blackwood (Who will cost $3 million next year and Vanecek is already signed at $3.4 million for next year) will be retained next year, no matter what for one more year. And if he doesn't have at least a .900%-.905% at season's end, we should not be re-signing him for his $3 million qualifying offer. We could find .900% goaltending for a million a year. Daws might be able to give us .900% next year for that price.

Of course, I don't want to really have Daws up in the NHL full time next year or at any time this year, as I think he could have a higher ceiling than a .900% NHL backup, but almost $6.5 million is too much for two goalies next year when at least one of them can't keep up with the league average. We could use that extra $2 million on that just about anybody else and it would be more worth it.

And what's spent is spent this year. He got this contract 2 years ago now, which was a fair deal at the time. I cannot imagine giving him $3 million for next year (which is a raise) if he does not improve from the last two seasons. He don't need to have a Vezina season, but he needs to be somewhere in the neighborhood of league average. And even then, I would give him one year. If he's really good in 23-24, you re-sign him. If he's not, you let him go. And if he's not close to average this year, you do what the Caps did with Samsonov.

I mean we would have been better off keeping Cory in 2020-21 so the 2m cap hit wouldn’t extend into next season.

Crawford retired a few days before the season started and we finished 7th in the MassMutual East. So it couldn’t have been much worse with him.

We didn’t know that was going to happen though (particularly the Crawford retirement part).

 

[Bleedred]

The thing is...

that broken record has been spot on the past several seasons when it came to Blackwood.

Last night was the very first time in awhile where he wasn't a detriment to the team.

I don't agree that last night was the first time in a while where he wasn't a detriment to the team. There were a few other games this year where he wasn't, but he's been more of a detriment since February of 2021 than not.

And if we get a little too crazy with how much we play him, we could find ourselves struggling.

The shot differential has been so good that it's pretty much made the goalies irrelevant this year in our wins. Outside of the 1-0 shutout.

 

[HBK27]

The thing is...

that broken record has been spot on the past several seasons when it came to Blackwood.

Last night was the very first time in awhile where he wasn't a detriment to the team.

Huh?

I mean he posted a .941 SV% against the Islanders and a .955 SV% against the Sharks a couple weeks ago.

 

[Bleedred]

I mean we would have been better off keeping Cory in 2020-21 so the 2m cap hit wouldn’t extend into next season.

Crawford retired a few days before the season started and we finished 7th in the MassMutual East. So it couldn’t have been much worse with him.

We didn’t know that was going to happen though (particularly the Crawford retirement part).

It's almost like we were punished for getting rid of him those last two years. It really seemed like we were cursed with ''So you think he's the worst goalie we could put on the ice? Well we're about to potentially 5 worse goalies than him on the ice in the next two years''. Between the sudden Crawford retirement and losing Bernier for the season pretty early.

He didn't play a whole lot n 20-21, as he was on the taxi squad for the Islanders the entire year and he played a few games in the AHL and they weren't good, but a limited sample size.

Last year was his first good season in either the AHL or NHL since 15-16. He was below average every year in both leagues (except for one game in 17-18 in the AHL) every year since, but he was a .921% in the AHL last year.

I think he would have been an upgrade over Gillies, Hammond, and maybe even Daws and Blackwood last year and then we don't even have his buyout on the book as he just walks after last year when his contract was to have expired, but we never could have seen that coming.

 

[NjDevsRR]

A one man gif party is better than no gif party.

I'll take it.

 

[Better Call Sal]

Too much hate in here after a big fat dub.

 

[MartyOwns]

Too much hate in here after a big fat dub.

 

[Rhodes 81]

I can't believe I'm getting sucked into the goalie shit again, but here we are. Everyone likes to complain about how bad their goalies are, but you can't just decide to upgrade the position. At any given time there's probably a forward or D upgrade available for you if you're willing to pay, but with goalie that's just not the case. There's a reason that there's a goalie carousel every year where teams basically trade free agents and they all still suck. There's just not that many good ones.

Small sample sizes, but here's a list of the goalies that moved teams this year and have started a game along with their save%.

Darcy Kuemper - .922 8 games
Martin Jones - .879 8 games
Jack Campbell - .881 7 games
Ilya Samsonov - .920 6 games
Eric Comrie - .902 6 games
Ville Husso - .926 5 games
Charlie Lindgren - .919 3 games
Thomas Griess - .915 3 games
Jaro Halak - .867 3 games
Kevin Lankinen - .919 2 games
David Rittich - .885 2 games
Matt Murray - .826 1 game

I'm sure I missed a couple, but outside of Kuemper, Husso, and Samsonov, that's not an impressive list. Of those guys, Samsonov was the only one the devils had a realistic shot to acquire, but that was after they already traded for Vanecek. I'd honestly take Vanecek and Blackwood over everyone else on that list.

Maybe Blackwood does suck, but most of this board was ready to crown him and mocking Flyers fans that they thought Hart was better as recently as last offseason. So far this season, he has an xGA of 13 and 15 goals against. That first game against the Flyers was the worst, where he had 4 goals against and something like 1.5xGA or so if I remember correctly. Outside of that game he's been decent. If he starts really blowing games like he did against the Flyers again and he's still getting starts at that point, then we can start freaking out. Otherwise, he and Vanecek have both had 1 really horrendous game and been fine otherwise.

 

[njdevils1982]

It was definitely common practice for Top of the Pops

 

[MasterofGrond]

blackwood sucks, but he was solid last night when we needed him

couple more games like that and I'll upgrade him to "not very good"

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

Brunette hire was huge.

He scored last night?

Watching the replay on NHL Network with the Canucks broadcast. Good lord they are homers.

Watch most of the games with the opposition 1

Not exactly "rolling the dice" when you have a 1A/1B goalie situation to put in the perceived worse of the two against the easiest opponent over the next 4 games.

We're gonna need both these guys this season. I don't think we're going to see many (perhaps any) 4 game stretches for either guy unless there's an injury.

Maybe now teams will stop playing their 2's against the Devils. Or don't.

Your choice.

 

[glenwo2]

A shot of bourbon to top off the nyquil and good night you savages. Don't get in trouble. There used to be gif parties after wins like this but do what you will.

Isn't that....you know...dangerous or something?

 

[severian]

Rewatching it again. It was actually the better pass. Bratts was also great, but he had a clean lane to Nico for the slam dunk which allowed him to keep it on the ice. Jack had the much more difficult pass to make which allowed Bratt and Nico to do the slam dunk. Saucing it through that much traffic, that quickly to the tape of Bratt allowed the clear lane to Nico.

View attachment 602229View attachment 602230

Both passes were just filthy. Hughes and Bratt might both be top 10 passers in the league.

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

might not be the next, but definitely will be brought up after losing in a physical game:

devils employ a style, which doesn't work in the playoffs. hence we need to trade bratt for whatever we can get.

You know you're about to be cancelled, right?

Two players on the Devils you can't criticize.

 

[Xirik]

Prior to last night, the last time Blackwood played Vancouver was basically a million years ago....

...and he had stunk for several seasons since.

So excuse me if I was very SKEPTICAL that he wouldn't have similar success this time around.

Again....Lindy rolled the dice here when he didn't have to and risked losing a very winnable game by playing a very shaky Goaltender.

You saw that despite the mostly (for him) solid play, his shaky-ness was still there.

I half-joked pre-game that the Devils would need to score 5 goals to have a chance to win (and that's what they did) with him in net.


I mean....imagine if we had lost this game and it's because of Mac letting in a couple of softies....We'd be all raking Lindy over the coals for this decision to play him and we'd be staring down the possibility of losing the rest of the 3 remaining games against Western Canada teams (EDM, and CALGARY twice) as those two teams won't be easy games at all.

Again, I'm glad Mac managed to play well enough not to be a liability in this game for the Devils but I would have thrown him out there against the first Calgary game as a throwaway game while making sure we won the Vancouver one last night with Vitek.

Whatever. Lindy was very fortunate.

This next game against EDM is going to be quite the challenge....

Bleedred hacked Glens account.

 

[Xirik]

This is one GIF I will take :

will be a fun gif to put subtitles too.

Miles: we are the better team..... you stupid F^$#

Schenn: Yeah well you guys still play the trap

Miles: *laughs*

You know you're about to be cancelled, right?

Two players on the Devils you can't criticize.

Brodeur and Zubrus.