GDT: Preseason Hockey! Game #2 - Your New Jersey Devils vs. New York Islanders, 7 PM, MSGSN

[Devs3cups]

I don't think they'll go with Tatar there going forward when the season actually starts. Yegor had 3 goals in 2 scrimmages with the others. If it didn't work then I'd be a little concerned that they're actually changing it but I'm not worried. They'll switch back

I think you’re right! They might be giving Tatar a shot, but when it’s all said and done Rango will be there. He’s looked good in the scrimmages.

 

[Guttersniped]

The Islanders crew isn't calling the game. I don't think Butch is doing preseason this year so it'll only be Spaulding and Dano.

The broadcasting team crew are the only ones in the building for preseason games.

 

[Hisch13r]

The broadcasting team crew are the only ones in the building for preseason games.

I imagine they'll do a split crew for the Ranger games like they usually do. Bill, Dano, Joe for our home game then Sam for Bill for their home game

 

[Darkauron]

The new guy is calling the game tonight for us

 

[Guttersniped]

It's an overcorrection, about 15 years ago a lot of skill was left out of the league due to it being undersized, that was silly, in particular on D where there were pylons everywhere, so a lot of people take the position that size doesn't matter at all. Then you bring up the importance of size re: board work and getting to / preventing players from getting to the danger areas and they bring up the guys who are small but with ridiculous leg strength or the guys who are big who shy away from contact.

Still you watch hockey games from 25 years ago it's almost unrecognizably slow, the speedy skill guys did revolutionize play for sure. Not sure what's behind it mostly if it's an artifact of rule changes or analytics improvements or a generation of kids learning how to play hockey from age 6 due to the potential windfall of a multimillion dollar contract at the end of it, I'm not sure.

Enforcer culture peaked in the 90s and then it went away around 2005, like you point out.

Coincidentally that’s the same time when the new CBA had NHL players tested for steroids for the first time.

Considering this is a split squad game with different players than the one in Montreal I don’t see why Geertsen is problem here except immediately complaining about him is a habit at this point.

 

[Triumph]

Enforcer culture peaked in the 90s and then it went away around 2005, like you point out.

I don't think this timeline is right. It was slowly diminishing in the 00s decade but the Devils still had multiple enforcers in 2005 and most teams still carried a designated fighter. It wasn't until the 2010s when it truly started to diminish, but the Rangers were still handing out a big contract to Derek Boogaard in 2010.

2011 leaders in PIMs: Konopka*, Neil, Peckham*, C. McLeod*, Dorsett, Ott, Boll*, Avery, Staubitz*, Downie, Parros*, Gillies*, Crombeen*, Martin. This is a lot of guys who could not take a regular shift in an ungooned NHL, I've marked those players with asterisks, and Dorsett and Martin are not at all far behind.

 

[xigon]

Will they even have a pa announcer? kinda weird there’s been no mention.

 

[Satans Hockey]

Tonight's my first game back in my own seats since March 10, 2020. Pretty excited for this season simply cause I'll be back at almost all of the games again.

In terms of the on ice product this past decade of shit has taught me to expect absolutely nothing.

Either way, LETS GO DEVILS!!!

 

[Xirik]

Tonight's my first game back in my own seats since March 10, 2020. Pretty excited for this season simply cause I'll be back at almost all of the games again.

In terms of the on ice product this past decade of shit has taught me to expect absolutely nothing.

Either way, LETS GO DEVILS!!!

I'm questioning how you marked it as "Your seat".

 

[SJinNewJersey]

I'm questioning how you marked it as "Your seat".

I'm just guessing here.

 

[Goptor]

They're bringing almost all NHLers to this one so...

Likely lose while the C team they bring to Montreal wins.

 

[Guttersniped]

I don't think this timeline is right. It was slowly diminishing in the 00s decade but the Devils still had multiple enforcers in 2005 and most teams still carried a designated fighter. It wasn't until the 2010s when it truly started to diminish, but the Rangers were still handing out a big contract to Derek Boogaard in 2010.

2011 leaders in PIMs: Konopka*, Neil, Peckham*, C. McLeod*, Dorsett, Ott, Boll*, Avery, Staubitz*, Downie, Parros*, Gillies*, Crombeen*, Martin. This is a lot of guys who could not take a regular shift in an ungooned NHL, I've marked those players with asterisks, and Dorsett and Martin are not at all far behind.

It had a long decline and ghost still remains.

Enforcers got smaller and worse at their job after steroids went away, they all (allegedly) took them.

In the 90s you had secondary fighters, the heavy weight plugs were there for fights set up by the coach, typically title card bouts with each other.

Teams also had multiple defensemen who fought (because they could be on the ice when needed more) plus nothing was more valued than forwards who could play and fight since they could protect top players by being out there with them.

I know you know these things but it’s easy to forget the vibe unless you rewatch 90s games. Sometimes the game got real tense and the threat of gnarly multiple fights was very real.

I’ve rewatched some infamous parts of ones and the recent WSH/NYR shit shows are nothing compared to what went down then. There’s an actual air of menace at time and it comes partly from a number of players being steroided-out muscled lunatics.

The other huge change for sure is the league being forced to take concussions seriously.

There’s a clip of fights after Doug Gilmour is elbowed in the head by McSorley (well) after he completed a drop pass.

The commentator talks about how you can’t take the “trolley tracks”, or some shit, and that you can’t skate across the ice with your head down after completing a drop pass.

Actually, Gilmour had his head up and unsuccessfully tried to dodge McSorley’s attack. It was pretty wild to hear that much defense of a thug defending the ice from someone playing hockey.

The NHL had to get rid of Colin Campbell and put Shanahan in charge to get someone in the DofPS to care about elbows in the head though.

Campbell’s excuse was that suspensions for head shots weren’t in the rules, or some shit, but that was a guy who suspended Sean Avery six games for the “sloppy seconds” comment. That’s not in the rules either.

Shanahan didn’t start until 2011.

 

[Bleedred]

I swear to god, yesterday the app showed this game as being on NHLN.

Now it’s got the Rags and Bruins on NHLN. The Rags were just on NHLN last night.

 

[Guttersniped]

I forgot, in 2016-17 the AHL adopted a new rule where 10 fight in the regular season gets you a 1 game suspension. After 14 fights it goes to a 2 game suspension.

A lot of players only have 9 fights in AHL (plus some in the pre-season lol). That’s obviously killed enforcer culture too and was the good move because guys down there really will beat each other’s brains out every game to impress teams. Now they’re limited to their fight auditions and goons need to be able to play too even in the AHL.

 

[Ripshot 43]

​

 

[PKs Broken Stick]

They're bringing almost all NHLers to this one so...

Likely lose while the C team they bring to Montreal wins.

My feelings exactly.

 

[Goptor]

It's an overcorrection, about 15 years ago a lot of skill was left out of the league due to it being undersized, that was silly, in particular on D where there were pylons everywhere, so a lot of people take the position that size doesn't matter at all. Then you bring up the importance of size re: board work and getting to / preventing players from getting to the danger areas and they bring up the guys who are small but with ridiculous leg strength or the guys who are big who shy away from contact.

Still you watch hockey games from 25 years ago it's almost unrecognizably slow, the speedy skill guys did revolutionize play for sure. Not sure what's behind it mostly if it's an artifact of rule changes or analytics improvements or a generation of kids learning how to play hockey from age 6 due to the potential windfall of a multimillion dollar contract at the end of it, I'm not sure.

Same thing that pushed most style changes in the NHL: Teams copied other more successful teams.

The Penguins cup teams would be the culprit here. Before them, the pylon defensemen would be excellent on the PK and then you put them out against the slow forwards 5on5. All of a sudden the penguins have Phil Kessel on the 3rd line getting all the matchups against the pylon defensemen that teams couldn't get easy matchups for.

 

[Eggtimer]

Interesting placement of Sharangovich. They were using Wood with Haula and Mercer when camp started, so I'm interested to see how they do as a line.

I hope that they don’t get any cute ideas of playing Wood higher up in the lineup when the season starts . Our forward group will be very interestimg to see who all makes it. I just hope it’s the best 12 players as units in their lines that are iced. If that means that a Johnson or Tatar or Mcelod sits….then so be it.

 

[TrufleShufle]

"Goons aren't needed" isn't a controversial statement in my opinion....It hasn't been for a very long time

Where it gets weird is when people use that statement to pretend that a team full of 5'10 - 175lbs players that are allergic to any type of blue paint isn't an issue. And/or that size, strength and physical play doesn't mean anything.

There is often a strange conflating of Goons and big, strong, physical players when these conversation arise....And for the life of me, I don't understand it.

The mixing up and using the term goon every time anyone brings up anything in the physical attribute category is 100% strawman. I hate using that term but there is no other way to put it. If you feel there is enough skill guys and want someone on the team who can do other stuff needed in hockey that stat sheets don't show, its hard to argue against. So people make it easy on themselves and delude themselves into thinking the person is "looking to add goons."

You and the person making that claim know it isn't what's being said, but arguing in good faith is not a strong suit of the internet.

 

[Eggtimer]

I can't wait to take a sledgehammer to something when Geertsen-McLeod-Bastian is the 4th line, while someone like Tatar or Johnsson is a healthy scratch.

I know we don't really like Tatar or Johnsson, but Geertsen shouldn't even be on the roster, let alone playing over anybody. We just sandbag our lineup by dressing a goon in the year TWO-THOUSAND-TWENTY-TWO, where I'm pretty sure about 75% of the league, maybe even 80% of the league doesn't even carry a goon on their NHL roster anymore.

And I know..... ''Oh it's preseason! It means nothing! Just because that's a line in a preseason game doesn't mean it'll actually be a line in the regular season!''. That would actually be rational if this were a line that we haven't ever seen before (this was an actual line from last year for games) or if Geertsen were on a line with at least one guy that in all likelihood won't even be on the opening night roster.

I'd actually be less scared if he were on a line with somebody that was actually good and not a 4th liner, as we know for a fact that it's an incredibly safe bet that he'd never play with that player in a regular season game, unless half the forward roster was injured/sick.

I highly highly doubt it but maybe all of McLeod Bastian Geertsen are on the bubble and they use Boqvist Zetterlund Haula Wood Tatar Johnson I’m the bottom 6 ?….

It wo go against what we used last few seasons with how our 4th line is cinstructed.
To me it felt like the 3rd line was still supposed to be a scoring line and the 4th was an energy line that was just expected to crash and bang and nkt get scored on was the goal.
Maybe they go with a hybrid energy / scoring lines for lines 3/4 ?
Like I said , very doubtful .
I wish we had a line 3 like Tampa’s. Colton type players. Gritty yet skilled and dependable defensively or even a defensive specialist or two or three in the bottom 6.

 

[My3Sons]

The mixing up and using the term goon every time anyone brings up anything in the physical attribute category is 100% strawman. I hate using that term but there is no other way to put it. If you feel there is enough skill guys and want someone on the team who can do other stuff needed in hockey that stat sheets don't show, its hard to argue against. So people make it easy on themselves and delude themselves into thinking the person is "looking to add goons."

You and the person making that claim know it isn't what's being said, but arguing in good faith is not a strong suit of the internet.

I think that players like old school Clarke Gillies or Wayne Cashman or Terry O’Reilly are the issue. I have yet to see anyone say Geersten should be on the team and he ain’t them. I agree that using the term goon is an oversimplification.

 

[HBK27]

I highly highly doubt it but maybe all of McLeod Bastian Geertsen are on the bubble and they use Boqvist Zetterlund Haula Wood Tatar Johnson I’m the bottom 6 ?….

It wo go against what we used last few seasons with how our 4th line is cinstructed.
To me it felt like the 3rd line was still supposed to be a scoring line and the 4th was an energy line that was just expected to crash and bang and nkt get scored on was the goal.
Maybe they go with a hybrid energy / scoring lines for lines 3/4 ?
Like I said , very doubtful .
I wish we had a line 3 like Tampa’s. Colton type players. Gritty yet skilled and dependable defensively or even a defensive specialist or two or three in the bottom 6.

The reality is that we probably have 8 forwards guaranteed a spot in the lineup (Hughes, Bratt, Nico, Palat, Sharangovich, Mercer, Haula & Wood) and another 7 guys fighting for those last 4 spots (McLeod, Bastian, Holtz, Zetterlund, Tatar, Johnsson & Boqvist). I wouldn't be too surprised if any of those last 7 guys listed were not in the opening night lineup.

A big selling point of McLeod is his faceoffs, which Haula addresses. Though, I'm not really sure who would take his spot on the PK, considering McLeod led forwards in PK TOI last season and guys like Vesey, Kuokkanen, & Studenic/Gauthier (who all had at least 1:00 PK ATOI) are all gone, leaving just Nico and Sharangovich as the only two with over a minute PK ATOI (followed by Haula at 0:44, then Mercer/Palat at 0:18). That alone might just solidify a spot for McLeod.

Bastian's biggest asset is his size, which the return of Wood negates to a degree. Bastian was also featured on the PP to screen and get rebounds, so it'll be interesting to see if he gets used in that capacity again this season. Bastian was 5th among regulars in PP ATOI last season - behind the now departed Zacha, while Palat and Holtz (if on the team) would certainly surpass him this season. Not to mention we have a competent PP coach, so who knows how the units will be deployed.

Looking at those last few open spots in the lineup, special teams will certainly have an impact which I think gives McLeod and Bastian an advantage right now. Will be interesting to see how various players are used on these units the rest of preseason.

 

[captainscott12]

the organizational depth is pretty good at this point with at least decent NHL players. for a pre season game thats a pretty good lineup outside of hughes they are all NHL ready.. for most part.

 

[captainscott12]

The reality is that we probably have 8 forwards guaranteed a spot in the lineup (Hughes, Bratt, Nico, Palat, Sharangovich, Mercer, Haula & Wood) and another 7 guys fighting for those last 4 spots (McLeod, Bastian, Holtz, Zetterlund, Tatar, Johnsson & Boqvist). I wouldn't be too surprised if any of those last 7 guys listed were not in the opening night lineup.

A big selling point of McLeod is his faceoffs, which Haula addresses. Though, I'm not really sure who would take his spot on the PK, considering McLeod led forwards in PK TOI last season and guys like Vesey, Kuokkanen, & Studenic/Gauthier (who all had at least 1:00 PK ATOI) are all gone, leaving just Nico and Sharangovich as the only two with over a minute PK ATOI (followed by Haula at 0:44, then Mercer/Palat at 0:18). That alone might just solidify a spot for McLeod.

Bastian's biggest asset is his size, which the return of Wood negates to a degree. Bastian was also featured on the PP to screen and get rebounds, so it'll be interesting to see if he gets used in that capacity again this season. Bastian was 5th among regulars in PP ATOI last season - behind the now departed Zacha, while Palat and Holtz (if on the team) would certainly surpass him this season. Not to mention we have a competent PP coach, so who knows how the units will be deployed.

Looking at those last few open spots in the lineup, special teams will certainly have an impact which I think gives McLeod and Bastian an advantage right now. Will be interesting to see how various players are used on these units the rest of preseason.

I don't see any scenario where bastian is not on this team... a fourth liner with size and snarl that actually put the puck in the net a bit.. he is just as on this team as anyone..... i think johnson is in trouble ... holtz will need to have a productive pre season .. to start out in NJ.. mcleod on too unless his off ice stuff prevents it.. from i saw from zetterlund last year he has a shot.. then you have guys like foote, thompson, bovquist who are all solid NHL ready players in my opinion.. I thought Foote looked like he added a step speed wise.. but he is a long shot.. team shaping up nicely once again feel good going into the season ... said that last year too though

The reality is that we probably have 8 forwards guaranteed a spot in the lineup (Hughes, Bratt, Nico, Palat, Sharangovich, Mercer, Haula & Wood) and another 7 guys fighting for those last 4 spots (McLeod, Bastian, Holtz, Zetterlund, Tatar, Johnsson & Boqvist). I wouldn't be too surprised if any of those last 7 guys listed were not in the opening night lineup.

A big selling point of McLeod is his faceoffs, which Haula addresses. Though, I'm not really sure who would take his spot on the PK, considering McLeod led forwards in PK TOI last season and guys like Vesey, Kuokkanen, & Studenic/Gauthier (who all had at least 1:00 PK ATOI) are all gone, leaving just Nico and Sharangovich as the only two with over a minute PK ATOI (followed by Haula at 0:44, then Mercer/Palat at 0:18). That alone might just solidify a spot for McLeod.

Bastian's biggest asset is his size, which the return of Wood negates to a degree. Bastian was also featured on the PP to screen and get rebounds, so it'll be interesting to see if he gets used in that capacity again this season. Bastian was 5th among regulars in PP ATOI last season - behind the now departed Zacha, while Palat and Holtz (if on the team) would certainly surpass him this season. Not to mention we have a competent PP coach, so who knows how the units will be deployed.

Looking at those last few open spots in the lineup, special teams will certainly have an impact which I think gives McLeod and Bastian an advantage right now. Will be interesting to see how various players are used on these units the rest of preseason.

I believe you left out one mason geersten my friend...

 

[Xirik]

will be interesting to see how much different he Islanders style is now with a new headcoach. If it its still the shot block everything approach then that should be fun. Holtz be breakin kneecaps for days.