GDT: Devils vs. Bruins - 8 More to go… 7:00 PM - MSG

[Camille the Eel]

Only down 2- 1 going into the third? Didn’t see the game. The season is going out with a whimper. Maybe we should punch hard these last 7 games.

Filing under “I had a hunch” - those first couple losses to the Rags in preseason felt really bad before things ever started. Could be these things are cyclical however and next year is our year to play like Montreal or Carolina’s role this season.

Meanwhile - as I noted in “Around the League” - Tampa is technically still alive to break the 1976 Habs single season record of 132 points. With 7 left they need to run the table to get to 134. What a season it’s been for them.

I hope Brad Marchand gets knocked out of the playoffs early with a perfectly clean check by someone like Kadri or Jack Johnson.

 

[Emperoreddy]

You had a hunch in preseason we would get the worst goaltending in the year and then our entire top 6 would get injuried?

 

[OmNomNom]

while a lot of us can blame the coaching staff, we can't fully blame them for the injuries. is it our conditioning coach perhaps? or is it just plain bad luck? either way, john hynes coaching is like someone coaching for a michelin starred restaurant with just a lighter and a pair of rusty pans.

honestly, he should be rated an incomplete grade this year

 

[OmNomNom]

Only down 2- 1 going into the third? Didn’t see the game. The season is going out with a whimper. Maybe we should punch hard these last 7 games.

Filing under “I had a hunch” - those first couple losses to the Rags in preseason felt really bad before things ever started. Could be these things are cyclical however and next year is our year to play like Montreal or Carolina’s role this season.

Meanwhile - as I noted in “Around the League” - Tampa is technically still alive to break the 1976 Habs single season record of 132 points. With 7 left they need to run the table to get to 134. What a season it’s been for them.

I hope Brad Marchand gets knocked out of the playoffs early with a perfectly clean check by someone like Kadri or Jack Johnson.

i can never fully hate someone like brad marchand. yes, they play like boneheads, but guys like him, tom wilson, and prime simmonds and lucic are a dying breed. maybe brady tkachuk can be one of those types, but they're so rare and dynamic.

 

[Whaddagoal]

You had a hunch in preseason we would get the worst goaltending in the year and then our entire top 6 would get injuried?

I think everyone here had that in their books, especially the entire top6 plus parts of bottom 6 being all hurt up, particuarly.

I mean, you telling me you never foresaw this? Jesus Christ!

 

[PizzaAndPucks]

Turned game off with 30 seconds left and I see their plug backes scoresed one. This garbage season makes me not even want to watch playoff hockey , as usual we are in the basement.

 

[Camille the Eel]

i can never fully hate someone like brad marchand. yes, they play like boneheads, but guys like him, tom wilson, and prime simmonds and lucic are a dying breed. maybe brady tkachuk can be one of those types, but they're so rare and dynamic.

I think Marchand is a little different, what with licking that one guy and the cheap shots on Vats and Marjo. I don’t mind a lot of nasty and cheap stuff. Tom Wilson lining up some green rookie in preseason is cheap but guys have to know to protect themselves. But sticks to the back of the head to players like Vats far from any play and where they are not even doing anything - or spitting at or licking guy’s face to face? There’s no excuse for it and it’s gross. He’s a weirdo and kind of a perv in my opinion.

 

[Peter Sidorkiewicz]

It looks like Coleman has been taking penalties on purpose.

I don't know what has happened to him in the 2nd half of the season.

Plays very well and scoring on the 3rd line in the first half of the season, whereby he earned a promotion to the top 6 and some power play time due to injuries. Then after that promotion, he becomes an indiscipline penalty taking machine.

 

[Patrik26]

There should've been a sign above Gabriel's locker after tonights game. The joke is he and Chara went at it early in the game for all of about 3 seconds before Gabriel came to his senses.

 

[Camille the Eel]

You had a hunch in preseason we would get the worst goaltending in the year and then our entire top 6 would get injuried?

Funny but after that first Ranger game - where Jesper Fast stole a puck from
Bratt in OT - I vented (frankly) about how different our focus felt in camp in 2018 then it had in 2017 and got rounded on by several people on the board with the (fundamentally sound) argument that preseason meant nothing and we’d been a playoff team last year.

Now I don’t know why but I did feel - back in October - that we did not have the commitment, focus, and hunger to win during camp that we did the year before.

And I think it was true. Goaltending sank us, to an extent; injuries got us, to an extent. But we weren’t hungry like the year before. Not at the coaching or the player level. And I do think it was probably the single biggest reason this season ended up the way it did. We never had the fire this year we had the prior season and you could see it during preseason.

 

[Patrik26]

I don't know what has happened to him in the 2nd half of the season.

Plays very well and scoring on the 3rd line in the first half of the season, whereby he earned a promotion to the top 6 and some power play time due to injuries. Then after that promotion, he becomes an indiscipline penalty taking machine.

Seems to me he's a very good 3rd liner, nothing more nothing less, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Funny but after that first Ranger game - where Jesper Fast stole a puck from
Bratt in OT - I vented (frankly) about how different our focus felt in camp in 2018 then it had in 2017 and got rounded on by several people on the board with the (fundamentally sound) argument that preseason meant nothing and we’d been a playoff team last year.

Now I don’t know why but I did feel - back in October - that we did not have the commitment, focus, and hunger to win during camp that we did the year before.

And I think it was true. Goaltending sank us, to an extent; injuries got us, to an extent. But we weren’t hungry like the year before. Not at the coaching or the player level. And I do think it was probably the single biggest reason this season ended up the way it did. We never had the fire this year we had the prior season and you could see it during preseason.

Bratt turning over a puck in preseason has literally...LITERALLY, nothing to do with how this season turned out.

If I say it is going to rain tomorrow because I heard a man farted on a tree, and then it rains tomorrow, it doesn’t mean I was right.

Just because the team is bad doesn’t mean your hunch in September on why the team was correct.

 

[NJDevs26]

You had a hunch in preseason we would get the worst goaltending in the year and then our entire top 6 would get injuried?

Yeah this meme that the preseason was somehow indiciative of bad times ahead (DD was a big second-guesser on that) ignores the dominant 4-0 start. If preseason was such a big tell about how bad this year was going to be, how did we outscore mostly good opposition 17-4 the first four games of the season?

Not to mention all the other meh preseasons where we had good regular seasons. People only use the cause and effect because of 2017-18 where we had a great preseason and it 'carried over'. Perhaps the first four games did breed overconfidence and they couldn't get out of the bad spell once they got in it because of the bad goaltending they started getting from late November on.

 

[britdevil]

Poor, so very poor. What a horrible season.

 

[OmNomNom]

I don't know what has happened to him in the 2nd half of the season.

Plays very well and scoring on the 3rd line in the first half of the season, whereby he earned a promotion to the top 6 and some power play time due to injuries. Then after that promotion, he becomes an indiscipline penalty taking machine.

wedding planning stress

 

[Oneiro]

Coleman hates playing meaningless games.

 

[AfroThunder396]

Coleman hates playing meaningless games.

He seems really frustrated.

 

[I Hate Tie DOMI]

Severson had one of his worst games of the year. Easily. 4 people saw it though, so everyone else will continue to tell me he's good.

 

[Camille the Eel]

Yeah this meme that the preseason was somehow indiciative of bad times ahead (DD was a big second-guesser on that) ignores the dominant 4-0 start. If preseason was such a big tell about how bad this year was going to be, how did we outscore mostly good opposition 17-4 the first four games of the season?

Not to mention all the other meh preseasons where we had good regular seasons. People only use the cause and effect because of 2017-18 where we had a great preseason and it 'carried over'. Perhaps the first four games did breed overconfidence and they couldn't get out of the bad spell once they got in it because of the bad goaltending they started getting from late November on.

At the risk of creating a sideshow, that I won’t pursue after this, I ask you: which was the abberation from the rest of this season: training camp, or the 4 - 0 start? Our play this season was perfectly consistent with our preseason. All year long. Those preseason games did in fact
predict how we would look this year. (The causal factors of bad defense and mediocre goaltending, the lack of confidence and mental weakness, the blown 2 goal leads, lack of a system - many of the patterns we saw this year - were visible in preseason too. We were bad before the injuries this season but they too started early with Bratt breaking his jaw before game 1).

 

[Bleedred]

Severson had one of his worst games of the year. Easily. 4 people saw it though, so everyone else will continue to tell me he's good.

I agree that he had a very bad game.

 

[MartyOwns]

the problem goes back further than the preseason. we didn’t improve the team over the summer. it’s not complicated. so our goaltending, which we knew was shaky going in, failed us. when injuries hit, which happens every season, we didn’t have the depth to compete. all the stars that aligned to allow us to squeak into the playoffs last year were nowhere to be found this year.

it’s one thing to say before the season that we had a good chance of making the playoffs. it’s wrong, it’s foolish, but i understand it. it’s quite another to, after missing the playoffs, say ‘oh my stars heaven to betsy there’s no way we could’ve seen this coming’. that’s beyond wrong and foolish, it’s dishonest

 

[Better Call Sal]

I really think Coleman has been trying to do too much these past several weeks and it's leading to him taking more penalties. It has to be a combination of frustration, trying to make things happen and being a bit more sluggish from now playing in all situations the way he has been now that our whole forward group has been injured.

He absolutely gets a pass on how the rest of this season plays out. Him and Zajac, along with being healthy for the most part, have been the most stable forwards we've had all season long. When Coleman becomes the focal point of our offense, as he essentially has, it's going to be difficult for him to maintain his success and probably leads to his further frustration.

Also, anyone pinpointing what we're seeing at this moment to the preseason is out to lunch.

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

Severson had one of his worst games of the year. Easily. 4 people saw it though, so everyone else will continue to tell me he's good.

It was probably his worst game of the season and I saw he looked terrible and said as much in the first period in the GDT. He was dreadful. He has still had a pretty good season, not that you’ll ever be convinced.

 

[None Shall Pass]

The lowest in a long time, I was here with you guys watching the game, just too lazy and uninspired to post anything, lol

Same.

 

[None Shall Pass]

while a lot of us can blame the coaching staff, we can't fully blame them for the injuries. is it our conditioning coach perhaps? or is it just plain bad luck?

I mean, you can't blame them for, off the top of my head:

Hall's bad knee, Bratt's broken ankle, Wood's broken ankle, Mueller's trip into the boards, Palmieri's whatever happened two games ago.

I just plain forget what happened to Nico, Zacha, and Vatanen. Think it's honestly bad luck.