GDT: Devils vs. Predators - 7pm, MSGSN

[NJDevs26]

TBH, with the way we have been playing, and if we happen to stay atop the Metro at seasons end, I would be disappointed if we didn’t win one round.

Depends on the matchup to a degree…I could absolutely see a 105-point Devils team lose to a 95-point Caps team.

 

[My3Sons]

Depends on the matchup to a degree…I could absolutely see a 105-point Devils team lose to a 95-point Caps team.

It probably boils down to goalies and health. NJ is quietly racking up the injuries. Wood Palat Bastian Blackwood (ok that one may be a blessing in disguise) Marino less than 100% and that’s going unnoticed because they aren’t Hughes Hischier Bratt or Hamilton. Those guys are a decent bit of thr NJ infrastructure and against a team like Nashville it showed. It’s still early enough that NJ could quickly fall back to the pack of competitive but not top teams.

 

[Louskoolaid89]

We need to chill.

It was a painful 3rd and awful OT.

BUT - we were down 2-0 early in the game and managed to get a point.

Boston lost to Ottawa and Anaheim took them to a shootout. Dallas lost to Ottawa. Nashville beat the Islanders. Things happen.

We beat Colorado and Tampa last year. A pitiful Flyers team handed the Isles quite soundly the other night. No guarantees in this game. It's why I suck at betting on it.

 

[Camille the Eel]

The league is moving away from this sort of featured shooter. I'd rather leave Holtz on PP2.

It doesn’t have to be either or. That goes for the lines too. If he earns some more top line time I’m sure he will see it.

 

[Camille the Eel]

It probably boils down to goalies and health. NJ is quietly racking up the injuries. Wood Palat Bastian Blackwood (ok that one may be a blessing in disguise) Marino less than 100% and that’s going unnoticed because they aren’t Hughes Hischier Bratt or Hamilton. Those guys are a decent bit of thr NJ infrastructure and against a team like Nashville it showed. It’s still early enough that NJ could quickly fall back to the pack of competitive but not top teams.

Yes I thought we really missed the Bastian and Wood line as a unit last night. They were taking big shifts as a unit (like right after either scoring or being scored upon) and playing important situations. Stabilizing things. Without them it very much changed how we managed or didn’t manage the game.

Not that they were the issue, but all the Preds goals were in the first or last seconds of the periods. 11 seconds in. 43 seconds before the end of period one. 8 seconds left.

 

[NjDevsRR]

f***ing bastards took Pepe away from us.

 

[Nocashstyle]

Good teams have stinker of games…and this wasn’t even that. They dominated a majority of the game but just had two awful breakdowns at the worst times.

 

[HBK27]

This makes no sense because at least 40% of the time you won't win the faceoff, and now you have Haula or McLeod out there in OT.



Faceoffs are obviously massively important 3v3 but who cares where any draw is in OT, it doesn't matter. Have you ever seen a 3v3 OT goal off an offensive zone faceoff? Everything about the game is different with only 3 players per side and one of them is that the locations of faceoffs are almost immaterial - nobody really challenges at their own blueline, so there is no inflection point - a faceoff win anywhere is worth about the same IMO.

The one difference is as you've described, it's harder to get a player off the ice in the D zone. Fine.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have McLeod or Haula out there if you have to defend 3 on 3. Most teams don't cough it up as quickly as Sharangovich did last night. Once we gain possession of the puck, they can come off.

Given the importance of a faceoff win and gaining possession in OT, I'd really rather not have to rely on Jack Hughes and his 33.6% faceoff percentage to try to win a draw. That's why it makes sense to have Nico out there to start, but you should either pair him with Bratt or Jack instead of Sharangovich, who is nowhere near as good stickhandling.

We have 3 guys above 57% on draws. Everyone else is below 43%. Personally, I want one of those 3 out there for any OT faceoffs.

 

[Camille the Eel]

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have McLeod or Haula out there if you have to defend 3 on 3. Most teams don't cough it up as quickly as Sharangovich did last night. Once we gain possession of the puck, they can come off.

Given the importance of a faceoff win and gaining possession in OT, I'd really rather not have to rely on Jack Hughes and his 33.6% faceoff percentage to try to win a draw. That's why it makes sense to have Nico out there to start, but you should either pair him with Bratt or Jack instead of Sharangovich, who is nowhere near as good stickhandling.

We have 3 guys above 57% on draws. Everyone else is below 43%. Personally, I want one of those 3 out there for any OT faceoffs.

If we had had Bratt out there with Nico that entire sequence would have unfolded differently.

 

[Triumph]

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have McLeod or Haula out there if you have to defend 3 on 3. Most teams don't cough it up as quickly as Sharangovich did last night. Once we gain possession of the puck, they can come off.

This ignores how many goals are scored 3 v 3 - off the rush. You don't want a player to have to come off immediately, you want to be able to break back up the ice. A lot of times that doesn't happen, but if Nashville turns it over, the Devils want to have some of their best guys out there to score.

Given the importance of a faceoff win and gaining possession in OT, I'd really rather not have to rely on Jack Hughes and his 33.6% faceoff percentage to try to win a draw. That's why it makes sense to have Nico out there to start, but you should either pair him with Bratt or Jack instead of Sharangovich, who is nowhere near as good stickhandling.

We agree that Hughes should never take an OT faceoff. Sharangovich doesn't have to be good at stickhandling, he needs to be good at doing overtime stuff, and he is. He's scored two game winners. I think the idea is for Nico and Yegor to have a short shift and then give it over to Hughes and Bratt and that makes a ton of sense to me.

 

[severian]

Yeah, I refuse to be bummed about this loss; there's a few injuries, what appears to be a flu bug going around the locker room, and they still stormed back to take a point and mostly got an unlucky bounce at the end of regulation. Shit happens.

That said, I can't help sometimes getting the same mindset I got watching the Mets from April through August this past season; I'm watching my favorite teams play at historically great paces (put it this way, the last time the Mets won 100 game I was only three years old), but suddenly that means I find my brain nagging me with "they CAN'T be playing like this if they want to make it to the Cup final/World Series!" or something. It didn't get to me last night, but I had a flash of it in my mind when I saw them get kind of sloppy in OT.

Just the nature of shifting expectations when you go from "I just want my team to compete" to "I want them to maim, destroy, and annihilate everyone".

Major difference being that the Mets were supposed to be a world series favorite and collapsed. Even if reality smacks the Devils in the face, making the playoffs with this group would still be seen as a step forward for the franchise.

 

[MachoDiablo]

Major difference being that the Mets were supposed to be a world series favorite and collapsed. Even if reality smacks the Devils in the face, making the playoffs with this group would still be seen as a step forward for the franchise.

Oh, September was a mess, believe me, that's why I specified April-August - once I saw the way they were playing in September, even when they still had a good overall record for the month, I started thinking "oh shit, they're out of gas."

Still, for the first time in my life I'm able to look at the Mets and know that the Wilpons aren't running the show, so I can expect them to be competitive with regularity...but yes, the feeling is even stronger right now with the Devils given how young the team is. Still, when you're playing well enough to be top of the league, it's tough not to think "man, this team should make a deep run this year or it'll be kind of disappointing", but that does call for a reminder that lots of great young teams taste early playoff failure before getting near a Cup.

Either way, it's nice to finally look at my two top teams and think "oh, they both might be really good for awhile". It's a pleasant change of pace.

 

[theoptimist]

Good teams have stinker of games…and this wasn’t even that. They dominated a majority of the game but just had two awful breakdowns at the worst times.

Yup, spanked them and would have probably been the most boring 3-2 win this year.

Someone posted earlier, 7 of 8 pts since TOR loss. Very good -- in years prior this may have been 2 of 8.

 

[billingtons ghost]

@devils

Correct me if I am wrong, but does Alex Holtz have our only 2 goals from the 2nd PP unit this year?

Mercer had one...but I think that is it.

 

[billingtons ghost]

Depends on the matchup to a degree…I could absolutely see a 105-point Devils team lose to a 95-point Caps team.

Well hell yeah I'd be disappointed, but I'm pretty sure we have to go through some losing to learn how to win. Sending Jack home in the first round after a competitive series might not be a bad thing as I think he'd come back pissed.

What I don't want is for them to win just one series and think they've accomplished something and take a step back.

If they don't win the cup, I want them to be so pissed that they want the season to start the next day, and regardless of whether we ultimately sign them or not I want all FAs to kill to be on this team. Hell yes I'll take less aav and more term...

 

[MasterofGrond]

Depends on the matchup to a degree…I could absolutely see a 105-point Devils team lose to a 95-point Caps team.

Well the good news is I don't think the Caps are getting to 95 points.

 

[Richer's Ghost]

Even though he has the hockey IQ of a potato, I agree.

Dumbfire missiles still have a place in the arsenal even in a laser guided world.

 

[PWiz30]

Depends on the matchup to a degree…I could absolutely see a 105-point Devils team lose to a 95-point Caps team.

Bit of a tangent but it's wild to think that a 31-23-4 record the rest of the way would get them to 105 points.

 

[PKs Broken Stick]

Really his whole game looked pretty good. I want Lindy to throw him in there with Hughes or Nico to see if there’s something there. Against Philly is a good time to experiment.

Honestly, no thanks. They were getting stuck in the d-zone a lot more than I liked when he was on the ice. I think I'm fine with him being sheltered and used on pp for now.

Both things can be true?

If the Devils solved Saros in the third, they go home with two points. But, that was a mediocre Preds team.

I think we're seeing the blueprint of how teams will need to play to beat the Devils. Good goaltending + heavy cycle to limit the Devils rush and wear down the Devils D. Limit turnovers. Clog the neutral zone. Devils still got good chances, but there was not a lot of sustained offense in the third.

I was pretty happy with the overall game. It also made me look forward to the playoffs. I think we'll see a lot more games like this going forward.

Hopefully they figure out how to counter it effectively too, or they will be losing more games as more teams will be noticing the trend in the games where devils lose.

 

[PKs Broken Stick]

They did what they had to do. I’m not seeing any blueprint or coaching masterclass, it was just a hockey game where weird shit happened and we didn’t finish.

idk about the preds, but the maple leafs definitely did it well.

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

Honestly, no thanks. They were getting stuck in the d-zone a lot more than I liked when he was on the ice. I think I'm fine with him being sheltered and used on pp for now.

59% CF%, 80% xGF%, 7-2 scoring chances.

 

[PKs Broken Stick]

Well hell yeah I'd be disappointed, but I'm pretty sure we have to go through some losing to learn how to win. Sending Jack home in the first round after a competitive series might not be a bad thing as I think he'd come back pissed.

What I don't want is for them to win just one series and think they've accomplished something and take a step back.

If they don't win the cup, I want them to be so pissed that they want the season to start the next day, and regardless of whether we ultimately sign them or not I want all FAs to kill to be on this team. Hell yes I'll take less aav and more term...

I wouldn't mind losing in the first round, as long as it was a close series. You can't be mad about a 7 game loss with 1 goal loss each game.

 

[Emperoreddy]

I'm really not discouraged as we are still doing the things that got us 13 in a row. It was just some mental lapses and bad luck luck that sunk them.

I didn't take anything away from that game to feel like they are starting to fade

 

[glenwo2]

Not Bahl and Holtz both playing well?

No because obviously I never posted about that.

GDT: - Devils vs. Predators - 7pm, MSGSN

Eh. We have 19 wins in 24 games. Gonna lose a few more games this year. It happens.

forums.hfboards.com

(well I only posted about holtz so my bad about forgetting about Bahl.)

Remember who you are talking to.

 

[glenwo2]

They did what they had to do. I’m not seeing any blueprint or coaching masterclass, it was just a hockey game where weird shit happened and we didn’t finish.