Tuesday, March 31, 2009

How to Waste a Season in Six Easy Steps

I can keep quiet no longer. After five terrible games, my team is clearly in a slump, and it’s because they make the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Despite the fact that no players—or anyone related to the team for that matter—reads these blogs, I’m going to air it all out, for my own sanity more than anything else.

Before I do that, allow me to make a disclaimer, and let’s face it…disclaimers look more official when written in italics.

I realize that every team goes through slumps; it happens to everyone eventually. But there is a huge difference between slumps, and playing your way into losses, and the Devils have been doing the latter. What follows is a comprehensive list of mistakes the Devils have been making. I feel like I’m the only one who notices these things, and that no one who actually has the power to do something about it does.

1. The Devils take way too many stupid, stupid penalties.

There is no better example of this than the March 27th game against the Blackhawks. FIVE penalties in the first period? FIVE?? But the worst part about the sheer volume of penalties is that the opposition is bound to score a lot of powerplay goals, and they have.

2. Wait, we have a powerplay? Seriously??

As if it wasn’t bad enough that our ridiculous volume of penalties is costing us, it’s even worse that when we get powerplays, we do absolutely nothing on them. The formula is sadly the same every time: Lose the first faceoff, puck gets cleared. Gain the zone, make a few bad passes and lose control of the puck without generating any serious scoring chances. Rinse and repeat. More often than not, especially in the Chicago game, converting on one powerplay would have changed the course of the game entirely, and most certainly would have prevented the sloppy play which lead to Chicago’s OT goal.

3. The Devils miss the net on all quality scoring chances.

Pretty self explanatory, but I’ll go on. On breakaways, 2-on-1s, whatever the case may be, whenever the Devils finally have a golden scoring opportunity on their handsand whatever player it may be lets the puck go, and it misses the net entirely. Come on, they teach first graders to hit the net with the shot. Make the goalie do something! The only thing he’s been doing lately is cracking up inside that helmet of his because the Devils once again blew a great scoring chance. Make the goalie make the save! And sometimes, he loses control and there’s a big fat rebound just a-waitin’ for ya! But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Because you’d rather pick corners and be pretty than god forbid play smart and capitalize on a scoring chance! Which leads me to my next point…

4. The phrase “Crash the Net” is not in the Devils’ vocabulary.

Step two of the two-step program “How to Score Goals” is crash the net. Because once you’ve finally managed to hit said net, you’re gonna want to get somewhere near it, because you just never know what that silly puck will do next! When the goalie isn’t able to handle the shot, the puck is sitting right in front of him waiting to be pounded into the net. But do me a favor and look for a Devil within 20 feet of the puck in that situation. Okay, stop looking…didn’t find him did you? That’s because he’s out near the blue line, waiting for the defense to harmlessly carry the puck away. The sheer amount of goals we could have scored if we had just crash the net just blows my mind. Would we be mired in this slump of ours? Doubtful.

5. The Devils rely on Martin Brodeur to do EVERYTHING!

This was a problem I thought for sure was history, but once the novelty of Martin Brodeur’s return wore off, there it was again! A team full of wholly capable hockey players stands there and watches because they think—nay, they know—that the man standing behind them will bail them out every single time. But he doesn’t always bail them out, nor should he. Wasn’t this the group saying all along that contrary to what the media thinks, the Devils are a 20-player team, all for one, one for all? If that’s the case, why exactly is it that the second things get tough, the entire team (Kevin Weekes notwithstanding) just lays down and says “oh well, Marty will save us.” For such a collection of veterans, this team can get nauseatingly lazy. And that, in turn, leads to the next point.

6. The Devils have no heart.

Look at the three Stanley Cup champion Devils teams…they all had two things in common: Scott Stevens, Ken Daneyko. Two players who gave their all from the very first training camp straight through the Stanley Cup parade. Leaders by example, much like Brodeur or Langenbrunner, but when it came time to rile up the team, really let them know that what they’re doing isn’t acceptable, they let loose. Whether or not this currently goes on in the Devils locker room I do not know, but it sure doesn’t look that way when you see how they follow up those situations with more of the same. Sometimes you need your leaders to stand up and speak from the heart, let the team know that what they’re doing is not acceptable, that they had better step their game up. True, those players are a rare breed and rarely exist in the modern NHL…but is anyone at all calling out his fellow teammates to step their game up? If they are, they need to be replaced, because they are doing a terrible job.

So there you have it. Six things that, if not corrected, will surely lead to another hasty playoff exit, rather than the long run this team was built for. Now some of you will say, “Calm down, you have a playoff spot locked up, I would kill for my team to have that kind of security right now!” or “Slumps happen, get over it!” Well to you I say both statements are true, but when you’re a team like the Devils, your reputation precedes you. Anything short of a Stanley Cup is a failed season, end of story. Even those who still believe we are painstakingly boring will admit that we are, if nothing else, brutally efficient, and that winning is just what we do.

So while this venting may seen unnecessary to some of you, understand that it’s more to get all of this off my chest so I can get back to thinking with a clear head, and hopefully watch the only team in sports that I care about ride out this storm and be better off for it.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

552

Sometimes you just luck out.

This summer, when it was time to pick the games to go to this season, a March 17th meeting with the Chicago Blackhawks was on the top of my list. With the Blackhawks blossoming into a great young team, and having recently added Brian Campbell, I was excited to see one of the NHL’s great success stories in person. Little did I know on that day in August that seven months later, I would be a witness to history.

It almost wasn’t meant to be. Heading into a November 1st meeting in Atlanta, one had to figure that Martin Brodeur would knock off the all-time wins mark by Thanksgiving, and by mid-March would be far closer to 600 than to 552. But the blessing in disguise that brought the Devils team together also saw Brodeur return to action at the end of February, picking up right where he left off. By the time my most anticipated game of the year had arrived, Brodeur was 7-1, and had just come off a big win in Montreal which saw him tie Patrick Roy’s all-time wins mark in front of Patrick himself.

It’s always easy to say after the fact that you had a feeling they would win, but I honestly, truly did have that feeling all day long. And with the eyes of the hockey world settled in on New Jersey’s largest city, the Devils grabbed the lead with the sellout crowd barely in their seats. Just 38 seconds in, Jamie Langenbrunner continued the Devils’ recent trend of scoring within the first 90 seconds of a game. Parise, who set up the Captain’s goal, would also set up Travis Zajac to send the Devils into the locker room after one with a 2-0 lead.

But one of the night’s most memorable highlights came in the 2nd period. On a 2-on-1, Patrik Elias sends a beautiful pass in the direction of Brian Gionta, who placed it perfectly behind Khabibulin, not only giving the Devils a 3-0 lead, but also giving Patrik Elias his 702nd career point, officially making him the Devils’ all-time leading scorer.

Unfortunately, Chicago had to make it a contest. The Blackhawks did not even wait for Kevin Clark to finish announcing the Devils’ third goal, before getting on the board themselves.

With about 12 minutes left in the third period, the Devils, for some reason, began to play four men back, with one forward up challenging for the puck. Surely they didn’t believe they could put the Blackhawks in a stranglehold, did they? Alas, Dustin Byfuglien cut the lead to 3-2 with just over two minutes to go, and suddenly the festive atmosphere become one more of hesitation. Please…just let them hold on.

Chicago threw everything they had at the Devils for the remainder of the game, but one more great save with three seconds to go officially solidified Brodeur’s place as the winningest goaltender in NHL history.

It was teriffic that the fans saluted Patrik Elias, but nothing topped the ceremony for Mr. Franchise. Cutting the net off took a little longer than I think he would have liked, but the victory lap was priceless, and the sellout crowd screaming at the top of their lungs—myself included—really made it a special moment.

I am extremely proud to have been a witness to history, and tonight’s game has now officially become the greatest Devils game I’ve ever attended in person.

Sometimes you just luck out.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Misconceptions

Anyone who has ever read a blog of mine probably knows my biggest pet peeve by now, people who still refer to the Devils as a boring, trapping team. While the truth is that the Devils haven’t full-on “trapped” since Jacques Lemaire stepped down in 1998, I will accept an admittance that the Devils have not done so since the lockout.

Recently, however, I’ve started to come around to the fact that there’s no escaping the shadow which the rest of the NHL casts upon us. And that’s not a bad thing. Because every team’s got something…every team has an image they cannot shake, for better or worse. For example, we may be a boring team, but the Toronto Maple Leafs will go another 42 years without getting to the Finals, let alone win a Cup, the Flyers are nothing but a team of goons, the Ducks can only do one thing well and that’s take penalties, the Islanders have no fans, the Canucks have no players, the Blue Jackets aren’t an actual NHL team are they?, the Lightning run themselves like a fantasy team minus actual talent, the Wild are more boring than the Devils, etc. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Whether or not any of these media stereotypes are actually true, I’m not going to attempt to answer, because if you’re a fan of that team, you know they probably aren’t.

But there is a point to that ridiculous rant, and it is this: NHL.com writer Phil Coffey wrote an article one week ago declaring that Zach Parise “ruins a perfectly good image for Devils,” a “carefully honed image as a boring, defense-only team.”

Phil…really?

Now, I can only pray that your comments were sarcastic in nature and meant to poke fun at our bad rap, but by reading the rest of your article, it sure does not seem that way. That can only mean that you, sir, actually believe that we love being berated by the entire hockey media, especially Mike Brophy, the only human I’ve ever truly despised without actually meeting.

You think we take pride in being the NHL’s punching bag? Do you also believe you’re related to Paul Coffey, that Evgeni Malkin is on his way to the Kings, that Gary Bettman is doing a hell of a job running the NHL? (Personally I don’t dislike him, but it seems like everyone else does.)

I submit this to you, Mr. Coffey: Thanks for your praise of Zach Parise, but you are still a moron for even thinking for a second that we enjoy the unfair image that we have.

And so, I get to the REAL point of this blog, the top five misconceptions about the Devils. If you believe that any of these are true, please do some fact-checking and/or cease reproducing at once.

1. “The Devils play a boring, trap game.” (Not really, no, sorry. Especially not this season. Clearly the media does not watch our games, or refuses to admit that we’re done with that nonsense because they have nothing else to say about us.)

2. “Martin Brodeur is the only reason the Devils have had any success.” (Allow me to introduce to you, one Scott Clemmensen. Clearly the fact that we retained our division lead the entire time Brodeur was hurt speaks to the contrary. And we did it all without the hall-of-fame defense we used to have.)

3. “The Devils are just some team who plays in a swamp.” (Well this used to be true, until we moved into the Prudential Center in 2007. Yet, why is it that every hockey writer did not get that memo, and still refer to our home turf as “the swamp”?)

4. “The Devils will never be able to lure free agents.” (Well, we don’t really want them, and there’s two reasons for that. First, we build from within unlike the Rangers, who love to sign big names and wonder why they never win. Secondly, big name free agents don’t want to be on a good hockey team, they just want to get paid. That is the precise reason they go to the Rangers instead of us.)

5. “No one comes to Devils games.” (They never used to because our old arena sucks, and was in the middle of nowhere. They don’t now because they have a false image of Newark as a giant cesspool. Parts of Newark are extremely safe, but some people are afraid of their own shadow, so forget trying to convince them. Also, the Rangers predate us by a good 60 years, therefore have a much broader fanbase. Unfortunate, but it is the truth. When kids who grew up on the Devils, like myself, are old enough to afford their own season tickets, perhaps the tide will change.)