GDT: Devils @ Maple Leafs - 7:00 PM - MSG

[Slew Footed by Holik]

Lindy Ruff. He's said as much before.

I'll eat my words if he doesn't go back to Blackwood, but I just think he will.

Favoritism. Ruff loves to lean on a single goalie. Just look at how he ran an injured Mack into the ground previously. I also believe everywhere he's coached there's been a lone pony he rode starting as far back as Hasek in Buffalo (not that he can be blamed for that one!).

 

[FooteBahl]

 

[HBK27]

What irks me is that Blackwood is still seen as a guy that can get better as he's still "young for a goalie".

Vitek the same damn age bro, who's to say VV can't get even better?

Every team in the league wants a top 10 goalie, I get that. But at the same time, competent NHL goalies can take you a long way if the rest of your roster is good enough.

Who exactly is saying that Blackwood can get better but Vanecek can't?

The Blackwood talk on this board exhausts me. I got it when he was healthy and playing, but he's out with an injury and isn't coming back for at least another month or so. Certain posters have made their views on him very, very clear - was just surprising that within like 15 minutes of rattling off our 11th win in a row, this thread somehow deteriorated into a conversation about our injured goalie. Anyway, I'm going to step out of the conversation about him until he's at least healthy enough to play.

 

[Slew Footed by Holik]

People think Ruff is a “dinosaur” because he’s old and they underestimate how much of possession based coach he is.

I mean:

View attachment 609612

When Dallas under Ruff got rolling it’s offense was very dynamic. It wasn’t as good defensively at any point as we are now, which is the the real shocker and delight for me.

That team got way worse in 2016-17 but it lost two of three top defensemen when both Goligoski and Demers left in the off-season.

Their other top 3 defenseman was a 23 year old Klingberg in his 2nd season. Their 5th best defenseman was a 34 year old Oduya.

So the next season their defense was (in order of overall average ice time)
[80 GP] Klingberg
[73 GP] 22 year old rookie Lindell
[79 GP] a newly signed 34 year old Dan Hamhuis
[58 GP] Jordie Benn (until the TDL)
[61 GP] 24 year old Stephen Jones (only played 14 NHL games previously, out of the NHL after 2019-20)
[37 GP] 35 year old Oduya (traded to Chicago)
[12 GP] Greg Pateryn (the return for Jordie Benn)
[16 GP] 21 year old rookie Julius Honka
[41 GP] 24 year old Jamie Oleksiak
[40 GP] Patrick Nemeth (lost on waivers to Colorado).

Which was obviously not much to work with and it’s not surprising their PK was insanely bad.

That's a woefully bad d-corps. Wow.

 

[Guttersniped]

literally nobody has said that about blackwood this season

 

[glenwo2]

He got a rumor wrong and a couple people in this forum wanted to fight him. What an absolute overreaction. Go look at the Trade forum on here and tell me how many of those "rumors" come true. Anyone threaten to dummy Kevin Weekes?

Well tbh, Kevin Weekes would kick their ass anyway.

I'd take Kevin over the Cheetos-eating Keyboard Warriors any day of the week. lol

there are few players with po experience on the roster. i would treat the po as gravy. vtec, hamilton, marino, palat and haula aren't enough to expect wins over more experienced teams. give hischier, hughes and bratt a taste of po without the biggest expectations.


if not for bedard i would hope the rangers lose every single game.

Hischier and Bratt(to a lesser extent) already had a taste of the PO.

I'm sure both will be more ready to tackle the Playoffs next time around.

 

[PKs Broken Stick]

Yeah, and that's my point. He had a spectacular overtime, and a decent game. That's not really enough for me to be prepared to hand him the #2 job.

Blackwood hasn't been good in forever. Not much confidence for him either.

 

[Oneiro]

Hard to be enthusiastic about Blackwood but it's got to be tough mentally for him. A lot of shit luck.

 

[devilsblood]

What is he saying? I can't "read" his posts.

It was something like

Emoji emoji emoji SIGN BRATT!!! emoji emoji

 

[Bleedred]

Who exactly is saying that Blackwood can get better but Vanecek can't?

The Blackwood talk on this board exhausts me. I got it when he was healthy and playing, but he's out with an injury and isn't coming back for at least another month or so. Certain posters have made their views on him very, very clear - was just surprising that within like 15 minutes of rattling off our 11th win in a row, this thread somehow deteriorated into a conversation about our injured goalie. Anyway, I'm going to step out of the conversation about him until he's at least healthy enough to play.

I take full responsibility for this

So while I have your attention, here's my encore..... I have to just one more thing to say

 

[britdevil]

Who exactly is saying that Blackwood can get better but Vanecek can't?

The Blackwood talk on this board exhausts me. I got it when he was healthy and playing, but he's out with an injury and isn't coming back for at least another month or so. Certain posters have made their views on him very, very clear - was just surprising that within like 15 minutes of rattling off our 11th win in a row, this thread somehow deteriorated into a conversation about our injured goalie. Anyway, I'm going to step out of the conversation about him until he's at least healthy enough to play.

I've seen posted a few times on this board.

You have to remember that I live in a hockey desert. The only exposure I get to fan opinions is here, so I probably take those takes with a much larger pinch of salt than others. Hell, I might well be the only New Jersey Devils fan within a hundred miles of where I live lmao.

I avoid twitter, reddit and other boards like the plague.

 

[MasterofGrond]

I take full responsibility for this

So while I have your attention, here's my encore..... I have to just one more thing to say

View attachment 609636
View attachment 609638
View attachment 609640

Black Wood Man With a Lollipop?

I don't follow

 

[HBK27]

Black Wood Man With a Lollipop?

I don't follow

I'm still waiting for the first image to load, then I'll figure out the connection between firewood and the dude with a lollipop eyeing me.

 

[Saugus]

Black Wood Man With a Lollipop?

I don't follow

Come to the Devils board for the spicy goalie takes, stay for the rebus puzzles.

 

[Guttersniped]

I know it useless to say this over and over again but the hope people had was that Blackwood could play better, as he had done in the past, if he could somehow stay healthy this season (at least for a while).

Could that happen? Who the hell knows because the guy only played in 7 games and got injured in two of them. This was after a pre-season of being told how great he felt and in both cases nothing freakishly unlucky happened to him like the puck smashing his masked face in.

The dude can’t stay healthy. This team is not in love with him, despite people weirdly imagining this. Blackwood most likely got the Edmonton game because Vanacek was going to get Calgary. We had recently done badly against Calgary and Blackwood was at the center of some of those grisly beatdowns (including a game with 9 GA at the Saddle Dome).

I said that I had zero faith in Blackwood staying healthy but I hoped was wrong and I still hope at some point he does manage to do that. You never know (I just don’t want to be the team counting on it anymore.)

It won’t be here in the future, just going by what happens to NHL players who continually struggle with injury and don’t perform because of it. It’s not just fans who get frustrated by that, the people they work for don’t like it either so those players get moved.

Sometimes that’s absolutely the right call (Anaheim & Ondrej Kase, Nashville & Ryan Ellis). Sometimes not so much. Dallas traded Langenbrunner because of his injury troubles and he was pretty damn healthy as a Devil.

Vanacek historically has been inconsistent too, which is a very common phenomenon. This might also be due to injury as well, seeing that he missed time in February.

This is him last season.

People can’t drag how excited people were about Blackwood’s earlier impressive runs on a much worse team. Those stellar runs always were cut short by some weird injury, including 2019-20.

And don’t imagine that Vanacek is indestructible either or that Schmid could necessarily be counted on for a long run. Blackwood is still on this team and we might need him. Hell, Bernier is in play at some point.

Remember the phenomenon I affectionally call Zombie Cory, when Schneider would rise from the dead in the spring and go on a mini-tear.

At least these are NHL goalies in play and Schmid has more pro experience, so it’s not the void of nothingness of last season.

 

[Bleedred]

I'm still waiting for the first image to load, then I'll figure out the connection between firewood and the dude with a lollipop eyeing me.

It was the best pictorial aid I could do for sucks.

I looked up images of a person sucking on a lollipop. I didn't wanna use one of a woman doing it because I didn't want it to possibly go in another weird provocative direction that I was not intending to go.

Actually, I was planning on using someone sucking on a lemon, but I thought that would be even tougher to figure out.

I was even gonna use a picture of Miles Wood for the Wood part, but I didn't wanna make anyone possibly think I was slandering that Wood.

 

[Guttersniped]

He got a rumor wrong and a couple people in this forum wanted to fight him. What an absolute overreaction. Go look at the Trade forum on here and tell me how many of those "rumors" come true. Anyone threaten to dummy Kevin Weekes?

He got a rumor wrong and we made fun of him, no one actually wanted to fight him.

Weekes does a better job of immediately withdrawing bad rumors and apologizing for them. The dude you’re white knighting for no reason did that a month later or whatever.

 

[Slew Footed by Holik]

Today has been glorious. Living in Ontario...I naturally know quite a few Leafs fans. For years I've been bombarded with how the Devils were a doormat all other teams wiped their skates on, and Toronto... was THE Team.

I've never had so much pleasure trolling those peeps!

And, of course, they always resort to, "Yeah, well...we have, like...10 more cups!" The easy follow-up question being: how many have they won since New Jersey first got a team?!!

 

[Bleedred]

He got a rumor wrong and a couple people in this forum wanted to fight him. What an absolute overreaction. Go look at the Trade forum on here and tell me how many of those "rumors" come true. Anyone threaten to dummy Kevin Weekes?

That was me that talked about him being the closest internet PERSONALITY I've wanted to physically assault in a long time.

I wasn't serious, as I'm not a violent person whatsoever. The last person I punched was about 13-14 years ago and he f***in deserved that, you better believe it.

Really the whole ''Bratt will sign next week!'' or tomorrow or whatever he said. That really just got me annoyed and then I think he did it again and I was like ''How many times are you gonna try to fool us?''.

Maybe he does have connections though, as they let them come down to the ice and meet Bratt after the game.

 

[severian]

I've seen posted a few times on this board.

You have to remember that I live in a hockey desert. The only exposure I get to fan opinions is here, so I probably take those takes with a much larger pinch of salt than others. Hell, I might well be the only New Jersey Devils fan within a hundred miles of where I live lmao.

I avoid twitter, reddit and other boards like the plague.

I saw a Devils jersey when I was in Salisbury during the ECF in 2000. Was that you? If not, you should find that guy and hang out! Hopefully he's still alive.

 

[billingtons ghost]

Blackwood hasn't been good in forever. Not much confidence for him either.

He did have a three game winning streak where he looked pretty good, when we were still figuring out the system to start the season - but I know that doesn't fit with the revisionist hatred program...

 

[glenwo2]

That was me that talked about him being the closest internet PERSONALITY I've wanted to physically assault in a long time.

I wasn't serious, as I'm not a violent person whatsoever. The last person I punched was about 13-14 years ago and he f***in deserved that, you better believe it.

Really the whole ''Bratt will sign next week!'' or tomorrow or whatever he said. That really just got me annoyed and then I think he did it again and I was like ''How many times are you gonna try to fool us?''.

Maybe he does have connections though, as they let them come down to the ice and meet Bratt after the game.

Watch the whole vid :



The guy explains how that whole situation came about. (start it at 27:08 of the vid)

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

He did have a three game winning streak where he looked pretty good, when we were still figuring out the system to start the season - but I know that doesn't fit with the revisionist hatred program...

He can barely even handle 20 shots against a night without shitting the bed.

 

[MasterofGrond]

I don't know if Schmid is better than Blackwood.

But man it'd be hard for him to be worse.

 

[Hisch13r]

I dunno man . Tatar is what he is . I think he is just finally in a role that best suits him . Getting the most out of him now . That’s at the least partially due to good coaching . But that’s not saying it is Ruff for sure . I think the new assistants have done minor miracles . ALL of the players are doing better . Way better structure and tons of different minor details are improved . Gap control , breakouts , sticks in lanes , picking up the proper assignments , etc etc et.

He is what he is and what he is is great.