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.