Yeah, we literally had no bottom 6 for the first half of that year.
I don't know how many games it was that we played BOTH Boulton and Janssen in the same game, but there were quite a bit. And I don't think both were a healthy scratch in the same game until the regular season finale.
We had no bottom 6. Tedenby played the first half of that season and scored one goal and it was off his skate. Pretty sure he had under 10 points before he was finally demoted to the minors when Ponikarovsky was acquired.
A couple old players really overachieved that year and the two names particularly were Johan Hedberg in goal and Petr Sykora having a comeback year after not playing in the NHL at all the year before and only 14 games the year before that and being 35 years old. That was also the last good season of Dainius Zubrus, who probably had his best season as a Devil that year. And you can't talk about that season and career years without bringing up David Clarkson, who by far had the best year of his career and got one of the worst contracts ever in the cap era not even an entire full season of hockey after that year.
The defense on paper was kind of uhhh meh? And it was one of the worst offense producing defenses we've ever had, at least until Zidlicky. I remember Zidlicky publicly asked to be traded here cause he wanted to play with Elias and Sykora and they were already friends and countrymates.
But yeah, like I said, the playoffs were not a gimme, nor anywhere close to guaranteed for a lot of that season. We were only just coming off our first playoff miss in 15 years the year before that. We had the Parise being a pending UFA thing hanging over our heads. A long playoff run was so unexpected and unimaginable at that time that many people wanted to trade Parise.
One other thing that was getting uncomfortable at the end of that year was Buffalo made a strong second half push. That was Ruff's last full year there. Buffalo came close to beating out Washington for the final playoff spot that year. They even beat Washington I think in DC late in the year. Ryan Miller was horrific in the first half of that year (that's when Lucic drilled him) and then turned it on in the second half of that year. I think they had a similar type of run to what we did under Lemaire the year before, only it wasn't quite as good, nor were they in quite the hole we were in to begin with.
Looks like 21 games with both Jansen and Boulton.
2011-12 was a defense first team with a couple of nice offensive stars. It was completely devoid of offense from the blue line before we got Zidlicky and then he was the offense from the blue line. You can’t have a good offense with that.
For those less interested in stats, that is bad.
That’s impressive.
Yep.
Sal’s PK was statistically the best in the league that year, it was nuts.
That is when you have some pop.
More Marty’s fault, ironically because Hedberg just about single-handedly tanks our next season but you can only ask so much from a 39 year old journeyman goalie.
This losing streak sucks and I’m unhappy about but they happen (unfortunately).
We piled up points at a cartoonish rate and goal should always be make the playoffs.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll even be disappointed if we don’t hang tough at the top of the Metro top 3 but people seemed to have switched awful quickly to demanding nothing less than utter domination of opponents in every game. “This isn’t the team from November.” The one that won every game? No, that wasn’t going to last.
People seemed to think the NHL factoids attached to the winning streak had more meaning than they did.
Despite this f***ing loss we’re still tied with Boston with the most regulation wins and have the second best GD. Sometimes the goals don’t come.
Stupid annoying shit losses were coming, but hey, we did hurt the Flyers chance at Bedard by giving them a regulation win, enjoy mediocrity f*** faces.
