GDT: ECSF Game 4: Your New Jersey Devils vs. Carolina Hurricanes, 7 PM, ESPN

[Eggtimer]

This is the kind of goaltending performance that gets a goalie exiled out of town.

But I don’t really blame him. I blame the people in charge who deviated from Schmid to start him. I don’t care how bad Schmid was in games 1 and 2. He’s played mostly great games, but gets sat for a guy that’s been consistently bad and didn’t even do enough in his game 2 relief appearance to even earn the start for game 3. It’s bullshit.

If the Canes actually traded a first round pick for somebody this year, whatever team got their pick would really be hating us right about now and talking about Vanecek the same way we talk about Jarry for 2021.

What upsets me the most is that everyone could see that VV has been fighting it and looks like he has lost all his confidence and his mechanics and all parts of his game are crap right now . If we can see that , why the hell didn’t anyone on their staff say anything ? Kinda an important piece of the team to try and win game 4 ….

 

[Eggtimer]

There is and was, literally NO ONE better we could have gotten.
He might not be the long term answer - but ya know, if our players can play THAT badly in front of him, and you have faith that they'll eventually not suck - you might want to give a young goalie a chance too.

Or should we just blow the whole 'franchise-record-in-wins-and-points' team up, because, you know - we turned the puck over a bazillion times to arguably the best remaining team in the playoffs; the team that out-systemed and out-disciplined the Islanders of all teams and actually HAS talent too.

Im not placing the blame totally on VV . But he has been ass . Recognizing he is currently fighting it and playing someone not fighting it , is what is the very frustrating thing , and I think the frustration is somewhat placed on VV when it should be on Ruff for putting him in , with some blame on VV fir not being able to perform like he can .

 

[billingtons ghost]

What upsets me the most is that everyone could see that VV has been fighting it and looks like he has lost all his confidence and his mechanics and all parts of his game are crap right now . If we can see that , why the hell didn’t anyone on their staff say anything ? Kinda an important piece of the team to try and win game 4 ….

But Schmid got yanked too. Twice. Do you honestly think the result would have been better, or would we be talking about Daws today bc Schmid isn't the goalie of the future after all?

I'm fine with putting VV back in bc he's battled all season long.

The results here were gross. No doubt about it. But it's really just that we are too green, and we folded after one gut punch. I can't read it any other way and I don't want to bc anything else is pretty sad.

 

[NJDevs26]

What upsets me the most is that everyone could see that VV has been fighting it and looks like he has lost all his confidence and his mechanics and all parts of his game are crap right now . If we can see that , why the hell didn’t anyone on their staff say anything ? Kinda an important piece of the team to try and win game 4 ….

My frustration is with the team who didn’t even give him a chance last night after he had a fine first fifteen minutes. I think if we were even competent last night he would have played well enough to at least keep it close. I don’t think there’s any game in the playoffs where you can attribute the loss primarily to goaltending - Game 1 against the Rangers was close to that but we still got walked in the end.

 

[HoliksGhost]

Vitek was fundamentally out of position, too far back in the net, and shaken. He got blitzed and never made a key stop the bleeding kind of save. Yes the kids were flustered but you need a save.

 

[CalamityX23]

VV while he's perform well in the season til towards the end cause he was on shaky grounds finishing up the season. He wasn't performing at the most highest confidence at all. We hope in the playoffs it would change and go another gear.... we were mistaken.

The guy as a starter in the playoffs is allowing a minimum 4 goals per start! gm 4 he did what his stat line confirms. It took 8 goals and 3 goal post saves to minimize VV's uninspiring play at net. It sucks and its not his fault Ruff called his number for a pivotal gm 4. Ruff should've went Akira in gm 4 despite the "win" in gm 3.

Now its definitely Akira for the rest of the series, one way or another.

Ruff jeopordize/gamble on gm 4. VV wasn't even on a short leash which is mind boggling to me... it was too late when the change was made.

 

[KovalchukFistPump]

Maybe Vitek gets super nervous when there is a microscope on him. Get him some propranolol.

 

[NJDevs26]

Vitek was fundamentally out of position, too far back in the net, and shaken. He got blitzed and never made a key stop the bleeding kind of save. Yes the kids were flustered but you need a save.

I mean he did when Jack tried to hand the Canes the tying goal with the worst of our 26 turnovers. How long is he supposed to do that with no support, 20-25 minutes? He did that in Game 2 against the Rangers. How about the team start helping him out? He isn’t Igor, you guys are literally asking him to be that and more and Igor wasn’t winning any of these games either.

 

[Eggtimer]

Of course no one here is going to be happy about game 4 , but when you put things into perspective, it makes it a lot easier to deal with the disappointment. We went from drafting 2nd OVERALL just last year and had a franchise record setting season …
No one expected us to do that and making playoffs was thought of as a long shot.
We finished as the 3rd best team in the entire league and have the 2nd best prospect pool and a core of players that are either too young to legally drink / one if the youngest teams in the league .
It’s actually amazing to think of .
I can’t think of one other franchise I would swap out their roster / prospects with .
Look at past cup winners . It takes a few years to get the roster figure out to win .
Our time is coming

 

[JimEIV]

Anyone that thinks a goalie would've changed the outcome of the last 4 games in any meaningful way is just looking for something to yell about and not being honest....I think so anywayd?

Edit: I probably shouldn't have put it that way...but I don't know how you get passed how poorly the 18 skaters played in the last game to talk about a goalie.

 

[CalamityX23]

I don't think anyone should be giving a pass to the forwards and defensemen... at least i hope not. They were gutless in gm 2 and quit again in gm 4.... its unheard of for Devils fans who knows what our NJ Devils culture is all about.

Hate to end their season on that note and not better.

 

[Jersey Fresh]

Anyone that thinks a goalie would've changed the outcome of the last 4 games in any meaningful way is just looking for something to yell about and not being honest....I think so anywayd?

Edit: I probably shouldn't have put it that way...but I don't know how you get passed how poorly the 18 skaters played in the last game to talk about a goalie.

No question they folded and this is all conjecture, but Vitek never even gave them an opportunity to recover. Sometimes you need a save (or two and three) you don’t deserve.

Everything about his game was bad. I’ve never seen a goalie be so small in net.

 

[Bleedred]

Oh brother.

Dude. At some point, you'll come to the realization that goaltending isn't in a vaccuum and stop beating the drum to beat up one of our players that really doesn't deserve to be beaten up. Schmid got pulled just like him. Twice. And none of them deserved it, because of the way the team was playing in front of them.

You talk about saves and softies causing momentum for the TEAM, but you have this ridiculous blindspot where you don't believe the exact analog is true.

Goalies tend to fold when their confidence is shaken because the team is a complete shitshow in front of them. Sometimes they recover to play well - sometimes they never recover and are Blackwood.

Vanacek deserves nothing but our apologies and thanks - he put together a terrific season.

If he lets a Brett Burns blast go through him after we've GIVEN THE PUCK AWAY 26 times, I'm really pretty ok with that. Let it sink in that these are not TAKEAWAYS, TURNOVERS. This is us getting rid of the puck well before we need to, showing zero poise, confidence and patience, and playing directly into their counterattacking with speed. We played just like last year, turning over the pucks at the blueline.

He's an average goaltender, playing behind an unexperienced unpoised group of kids who are learning how to win. Maybe Hammond, Gillies etc are absolute crap - but Helleybuck or anyone is going to make absolutely no difference in that game. In fact, playoff Helleybuck has been demonstrably worse when things go south, if you'll remember.

He's going to come back and give us 30 wins for the next three years. Roll with it.

I'm not gonna respond to most of this because it's your usual blind goalie apologizing, but I really don't think he's gonna give us 30 wins for the next three years (he's probably only gonna be here for 2 more years because he's not signed 3 more years after this) because I don't think he's gonna play enough games to get 30 wins the next two years. At least not both of the next 2 years.

The reason he played all of those games in the first place is because A: Blackwood is the worst goalie in the national hockey league. B: Blackwood is never healthy for long anyway. C: It took them until game 83 for them to finally move Schmid ahead of Blackwood on the goalie depth chart, when it was obvious after about 30-40 games into the season. Blackwood being on the roster when he was healthy meant you had to play Vanecek more games than you'd want to, because Blackwood is the worst goalie in the national hockey league.

Yes. He's just an average goalie. I think we agree on that.

 

[Bleedred]

Im not placing the blame totally on VV . But he has been ass . Recognizing he is currently fighting it and playing someone not fighting it , is what is the very frustrating thing , and I think the frustration is somewhat placed on VV when it should be on Ruff for putting him in , with some blame on VV fir not being able to perform like he can .

I'm definitely more frustrated with Ruff and whoever makes the decisions than I am Vitek. He shouldn't have been playing. That's on the powers that be.

I haven't had much of an issue with Ruff's goalie decisions this year, other than starting the season off with Blackwood. That may have also been an organizational call as well. This organization clearly had nothing but faith and hope that Blackwood will be as good as he was before the covid season and he wasn't. I would be somewhat surprised if he wasn't played tomorrow night, so they could throw one last hope and prayer at him. Especially since it's not a home game where the crowd would have turned on him faster than you can imagine. There's no doubt in my mind if he were in last night you would have heard more boos towards a Devils player from our fans in the history of the organization.

 

[Bleedred]

VV while he's perform well in the season til towards the end cause he was on shaky grounds finishing up the season. He wasn't performing at the most highest confidence at all. We hope in the playoffs it would change and go another gear.... we were mistaken.

The guy as a starter in the playoffs is allowing a minimum 4 goals per start! gm 4 he did what his stat line confirms. It took 8 goals and 3 goal post saves to minimize VV's uninspiring play at net. It sucks and its not his fault Ruff called his number for a pivotal gm 4. Ruff should've went Akira in gm 4 despite the "win" in gm 3.

Now its definitely Akira for the rest of the series, one way or another.

Ruff jeopordize/gamble on gm 4. VV wasn't even on a short leash which is mind boggling to me... it was too late when the change was made.

It'll be Akira the rest of the series if we're lucky.

I don't put it past these DOPES to bring goalie #3 out of the garage for this one lol.

And I definitely didn't think there was any chance he'd even dress again, let alone play before last night's shit show, combined with Akira in the first 2 games of this series.

It all depends if they wanna go back to Akira or not. I'd like to think they're more confident in going back to Akira than bringing him out of the stable for the first time in literally a month, but I also liked to think they were more confident in not playing Vitek in either game 3 or 4 and definitely not game 4 after what happened in game 3.

 

[bossram]

Start Schmid. Vitek's got the yips now, it's absolutely over for him this postseason.

And again, as I've been saying, if they want to keep Luke in the lineup, it has to be with very carefully managed minutes.

...but same with Dougie.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Many people are downplaying the reality check a lot of our players are getting on how difficult the postseason is. Mentally and physically. This group is growing together. They have to learn through the highs and lows.

Also, this ain’t over. Win tomorrow and OH MY. The Rock will be crazy Saturday.

 

[Eggtimer]

Anyone that thinks a goalie would've changed the outcome of the last 4 games in any meaningful way is just looking for something to yell about and not being honest....I think so anywayd?

Edit: I probably shouldn't have put it that way...but I don't know how you get passed how poorly the 18 skaters played in the last game to talk about a goalie.

Ya it was an ugly game all around but VV is part of that . Not 100% on him but he was garbage as well . You can tell he is fighting it yet they still put him in. His issues right now or not ones you can turn around in two days.
And now is not the time where you play him and see if he can work things out .

 

[HBK27]

But Schmid got yanked too. Twice. Do you honestly think the result would have been better, or would we be talking about Daws today bc Schmid isn't the goalie of the future after all?

I'm fine with putting VV back in bc he's battled all season long.

The results here were gross. No doubt about it. But it's really just that we are too green, and we folded after one gut punch. I can't read it any other way and I don't want to bc anything else is pretty sad.

Not to put too much emphasis on home/road splits, but you could've also justified starting Schmid last night as he was coming off back-to-back shutouts at The Rock.

Vitek still looked shaky as hell in Sunday's win. Someone (I think @Bleedred) also rightfully called out that you could've just said something about giving the rookie a break in game 3. Yes, you're not winning any games the way the team played last night but butterfly effect & all who knows how the game plays out if Schmid gets the nod instead.

 

[billingtons ghost]

I'm not gonna respond to most of this because it's your usual blind goalie apologizing, but I really don't think he's gonna give us 30 wins for the next three years (he's probably only gonna be here for 2 more years because he's not signed 3 more years after this) because I don't think he's gonna play enough games to get 30 wins the next two years. At least not both of the next 2 years.

The reason he played all of those games in the first place is because A: Blackwood is the worst goalie in the national hockey league. B: Blackwood is never healthy for long anyway. C: It took them until game 83 for them to finally move Schmid ahead of Blackwood on the goalie depth chart, when it was obvious after about 30-40 games into the season. Blackwood being on the roster when he was healthy meant you had to play Vanecek more games than you'd want to, because Blackwood is the worst goalie in the national hockey league.

Yes. He's just an average goalie. I think we agree on that.

The only blind bit here is your goalie hate. Blackwood isn't even near the worst goalie. He's actually ahead of Markstrom and just behind Binnington in SV% at 49 ahead of 60 others since that's about the only metric you care about.

You won't reply to it because it's your typical goalie-in-a-vacuum inability to ever see things in any context whatsoever.

 

[Bleedred]

The only blind bit here is your goalie hate. Blackwood isn't even near the worst goalie. He's actually ahead of Markstrom and just behind Binnington in SV% at 49 ahead of 60 others since that's about the only metric you care about.

You won't reply to it because it's your typical goalie-in-a-vacuum inability to ever see things in any context whatsoever.

Markstrom and Binnington over the last 3 years has not been worse than Blackwood.

Nice try though.

 

[JrFischer54]

Anyone that thinks a goalie would've changed the outcome of the last 4 games in any meaningful way is just looking for something to yell about and not being honest....I think so anywayd?

Edit: I probably shouldn't have put it that way...but I don't know how you get passed how poorly the 18 skaters played in the last game to talk about a goalie.

the first two games eh whatever but last night is 1000% on the goalie. you get spotted a 1-0 lead at home crowd with you going nuts and then you cant even keep the game close? like say 2-1 or even 3-1? i'm sorry but that is on the goalie its crazy because its not like this wasn't predicted once the goalie was announced EVERYONE knew this was going to happen.

 

[billingtons ghost]

Many people are downplaying the reality check a lot of our players are getting on how difficult the postseason is. Mentally and physically. This group is growing together. They have to learn through the highs and lows.

Also, this ain’t over. Win tomorrow and OH MY. The Rock will be crazy Saturday.

Btw. I love that Jack chipped his tooth and all of the guys had bloody lips etc. This is a baptism by fire for sure, but all of the beatings we are taking are going to be vital in the coming years if we are going places.

I'd love to see a big bounceback tomorrow. We've won three playoff games in a row this year already - I have no problem doing it again.

I get that panic sets in and we get all scrambly - we're young.

Despite the hurt from getting blitzed - this is all good stuff.

Markstrom and Binnington over the last 3 years has not been worse than Blackwood.

Nice try though.

When did the goalpost change?

 

[Emperoreddy]

Many people are downplaying the reality check a lot of our players are getting on how difficult the postseason is. Mentally and physically. This group is growing together. They have to learn through the highs and lows.

Also, this ain’t over. Win tomorrow and OH MY. The Rock will be crazy Saturday.

I'm not liking the attitude that us losing tomorrow is a foregone conclusion.

 

[Bleedred]

Btw. I love that Jack chipped his tooth and all of the guys had bloody lips etc. This is a baptism by fire for sure, but all of the beatings we are taking are going to be vital in the coming years if we are going places.

I'd love to see a big bounceback tomorrow. We've won three playoff games in a row this year already - I have no problem doing it again.

I get that panic sets in and we get all scrambly - we're young.

Despite the hurt from getting blitzed - this is all good stuff.


When did the goalpost change?

Because a one year sample size doesn’t mean anything. A 3 year sample size is much larger.

I think you can argue Campbell, Jones and Mrazek are worse though.