GDT: OVER THE LINE! - Devils @ Stars, 8:30 PM, MSG

[glenwo2]

Columbus loss makes it somewhat bearable

Out of Town scoreboard continues to be the Devils friend these days.

 

[glenwo2]

Positive note tonight; the league didn't **** us out of a goal!

That's because aside from the 1st period, the Devils never led or had any shot of winning.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Positive note is that we continue to show we can play with anyone in the league.

Even in a slump we are still playing well, so I don’t think the collapse many feared early on is going to happen.

Just seems like a frustrating slump that all teams go through. It sucks, but it happens. Get two big points in Brooklyn and we got a week off to rest and heal up, and then a good chance to put some real distance between us and some Metro teams out of the bye.

Need to look at this upcoming stretch against Metro teams as an opportunity to really dig into our playoff spot.

 

[britdevil]

I take it Greene and Vatanen had a bad game then?

lol

 

[Bleedred]

I take it Greene and Vatanen had a bad game then?

lol

Vatanen wasn't that bad when playing, just the penalties. He looked pretty bad on that shorthanded goal, but even then, we were on the PP and needed to push to tie a game in which we trailed by one goal.

I really hate anyone faulting Vatanen for the game winner. When we're trailing by one, we need to push to tie. Maybe those people would have been happier if we lost 3-2 instead of 4-2 (eventually 4-3 after that brutal softy on Bishop) but he needs to push there to try and tie the game and things like that happen when you're more aggressive in trying to tie the game.

Greene didn't really look much worse than most nights, goaltending usually just stops his f*** ups (Cory had no chance on the goal he caused) and makes him still look ''Reliable'' and ''Good'', and he looks like a player that might be good in a reduced role, but it abysmal in this current role and just not barely serviceable in this current top pairing role.

 

[kiwidevil]

Watched this one. What a great performance apart from the bad gaffs, dumb penalties. At best they matched our play for 10 mins or so in the 2nd. They definitely had some home cooking going on the shot counter.

Bishop saved them, really. Their big guys just capitalised on mistakes, and even then they got lucky. Wood done really well to get back for the Seguin goal, then they got lucky banking it off his skate.

Play like this without the clown mistakes and we will be more than fine. Hall is the most dangerous player I've seen this year, a threat every time he has the puck. So weird he is on the Devils. The stars broadcast mentioned him and his line sooo much. He outplayed Benn, Sequin by a wide margin. Shero better have a blank check ready for him.

 

[Bleedred]

I know Cory isn't perfect, nobody is. I never claimed he was infallible, but when we start to question him (especially on goals like the game winner), we really need to think about what other options we have behind Cory. We don't have any. He's astronomically better than the other option. If Cory wasn't available to play, we'd be going with a Keith Kinkaid/Eddie Lack tandem, who instead of talking about who is the best out of the two, we'd be talking about who sucks the least out of the two. And I also have a feeling that many here would go from saying ''Yeah, our D isn't very good, it's a real weak spot'' to saying ''Yeah, we have the worst D in the history of hockey'' because that's what it would look like when Eddie Lack and Keith Kinkaid are in there, and try and mightily struggle to combine to stop 90.5% of the shots they face.

If Cory mostly stopped the game winner where he was on his back, 75%-80% of the time, he would literally have a save percentage between .950-.975. If he were to stop those, I can't imagine that he would let too many goals ever get past him. Maybe weird deflections? Between that goal and Andy Greene's amazing play on goal 1....

 

[MadDevil]

The frustrating thing is we probably should have won 3 of our last 4 instead of being on a 4 game losing streak. But some overturned goals and idiotic mental mistakes have cost us points, and in this tight of a division, that could be costly. Hopefully we stick with the good things we've done lately and don't get frustrated by the lack of results. Sometimes that can feed off itself and end up in a lengthy losing streak.

 

[Emperoreddy]

The frustrating thing is we probably should have won 3 of our last 4 instead of being on a 4 game losing streak. But some overturned goals and idiotic mental mistakes have cost us points, and in this tight of a division, that could be costly. Hopefully we stick with the good things we've done lately and don't get frustrated by the lack of results. Sometimes that can feed off itself and end up in a lengthy losing streak.

Can just as easily pull out of it quickly because they aren’t playing poorly.

Majority of the division is also slumping right now so it isn’t the worst time to drop a few games and get it out of the system. We were due for this one way or another after the long winning streak

 

[njdevil26]

Sorry if I missed this...

Any update on Zajac? This team needed a second line center before last night... but depending on his status, Shero may need to hit the phones. He went down hard and looked to be in some real discomfort...

 

[Maine Fan]

Greene was commenting about making too many mistakes and Gross said “specifically your backhand pass”.

IMO Gross is an arse

 

[njdevil26]

Just saw Amanday Stein say no update on Zajac.

 

[Bleedred]

Just saw Amanday Stein say no update on Zajac.

Deb said she saw him walking around down by the locker room area after the game, and that he looked fine but implied that he tends to take these things well.

 

[Better Call Sal]

Glad I took the rest of the night off here.

Unfortunately, the issue with this game lies on the shoulders of our defensive corps. When you have the defense we have, if they collectively have a bad game, this is likely the end result. Many of them have overachieved in a lot of ways so far this season, so I take this as things evening out a bit.

This game is harder to swallow due to us giving the game away and having those two earlier games in this skid stolen from us. There are no moral victories really, but the silver lining here is that we are able to compete with anybody. Even if we're going through a skid like this, it's better we do it now and learn from it than later down the road. Especially when this skid is only as long as it has been due to a nonsense rule.

We've got a big division stand coming up that we can really take advantage of. If we can take Sunday's game heading into the break, it could give us some confidence. Here's hoping that we can pull it off because the Isles are in a tailspin of their own.

Also, Taylor Hall is such a beast. I cannot believe how lucky we are to have him.

 

[Billdo]

He’s on pace to score only 18 goals this year.

That’ll happen when you’re shooting 12% and not your career average of over 15% and you don’t even average 2 shots on goal per game.

He wouldn’t even score 15 goals in a year if he had a year of shooting only 8%, with the lack of shots he gets.

He has the ability imo to be a 25 goal scorer and maybe 50-60 points but he never has the consistent effort... alas he’s gone so hopefully these posts stop.

 

[Devils Dominion]

Too many issues with this team to count.
I'm highly discouraged.

At NYb, we know where that will go.

I wish the break started today....

 

[NjDevsRR]

Too many issues with this team to count.
I'm highly discouraged.

At NYb, we know where that will go.

I wish the break started today....

Yeah man, losing due to mental errors and officiating is worse than getting outplayed every might...

Newsflash: They haven’t been playing bad. The only bad game recently was the Washington game. They could have, should have won 9 of their last 10.

 

[New Jersey]

that game was about as close to just "letting" the opposition win as we've come all season, in regards to totally negating all the positive moments with gifts for dallas.

can't be stupid in your own end, kiddos. now we put ourselves in a position where a game at a rink we never win at becomes a mandatory two points. can't wait to trudge through the dirty ass leftover nyc snow to this one on sunday.

 

[Edmonton East]

Vatanen wasn't that bad when playing, just the penalties. He looked pretty bad on that shorthanded goal, but even then, we were on the PP and needed to push to tie a game in which we trailed by one goal.

I really hate anyone faulting Vatanen for the game winner. When we're trailing by one, we need to push to tie. Maybe those people would have been happier if we lost 3-2 instead of 4-2 (eventually 4-3 after that brutal softy on Bishop) but he needs to push there to try and tie the game and things like that happen when you're more aggressive in trying to tie the game.

Greene didn't really look much worse than most nights, goaltending usually just stops his **** ups (Cory had no chance on the goal he caused) and makes him still look ''Reliable'' and ''Good'', and he looks like a player that might be good in a reduced role, but it abysmal in this current role and just not barely serviceable in this current top pairing role.

I can't take anything you ever say seriously if you truly believe Vatanen "wasn't that bad" last night.

He's had some good games and some bad games since coming over, as expected. But his play both on and off the puck last night was so bad I figured he had $ on the Stars and was gonna toss the puck into our own net in the closing minutes.

 

[Bleedred]

I can't take anything you ever say seriously if you truly believe Vatanen "wasn't that bad" last night.

He's had some good games and some bad games since coming over, as expected. But his play both on and off the puck last night was so bad I figured he had $ on the Stars and was gonna toss the puck into our own net in the closing minutes.

He was mostly bad for the penalties, more than his on-ice play.

He looked pretty bad on that short handed goal, but you can’t possibly blame him on that fourth goal, unless you were content with giving up on trying to tie the game and fine with losing 3-2.

He turned the puck over because he was pressing and attacking and we needed to press and attack to tie the game at that point. And stuff like that tends to happen with aggressive forechecking and cycling. It was one of the major criticisms during the DeBoer era of what not to do when we had a lead. However, it’s whats needed when you don’t have a lead and need a goal to tie.

 

[Edmonton East]

He was mostly bad for the penalties, more than his on-ice play.

He looked pretty bad on that short handed goal, but you can’t possibly blame him on that fourth goal, unless you were content with giving up on trying to tie the game and fine with losing 3-2.

He turned the puck over because he was pressing and attacking and we needed to press and attack to tie the game at that point. And stuff like that tends to happen with aggressive forechecking and cycling. It was one of the major criticisms during the DeBoer era of what not to do when we had a lead. However, it’s whats needed when you don’t have a lead and need a goal to tie.

Eh. It was more than the moronic penalties.

For example, after those penalties, he hops on the ice and proceeds to let a Stars forward walk across the crease from left to right and almost deflect a point shot in. He made virtually no effort to even touch the guy.

 

[Call Me Al]

we have to press to attack but you also need to recognize when you're the only dman on the ice on the power play and when seguin/benn are on the ice. it's not just pinch at all costs he took a high risk/low reward chance there and it screwed them.

he's been very very good for us since the trade but he was terrible last night if you look at the game as a whole. not worth parsing the penalties from the on ice play because it all matters and it's a big reason why we lost.

 

[Call Me Al]

or are you talking about the third period goal where he couldn't get back and let the guy basically walk into the crease for a tap in goal at the end, because they were even at the blueline there

 

[severian]

that game was about as close to just "letting" the opposition win as we've come all season, in regards to totally negating all the positive moments with gifts for dallas.

can't be stupid in your own end, kiddos. now we put ourselves in a position where a game at a rink we never win at becomes a mandatory two points. can't wait to trudge through the dirty ass leftover nyc snow to this one on sunday.

On the bright side, it should be an entertaining 9-8 type of game.

 

[New Jersey]

radulov and seguin should have never scored last night. f***ing echl plays by us.