Around the League 47: Vancouver Collects All The Petterssons

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Devils claw back to tie their game against Dallas in the 3rd and then a tough icing call goes against them and they lose in regulation with under 5 seconds remaining. Haula looked so sad.

Two posts crossing in the night.

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Devils claw back to tie their game against Dallas in the 3rd and then a tough icing call goes against them and they lose in regulation with under 5 seconds remaining. Haula looked so sad.

Man, that icing play was just stupid.



He literally just had to take a stride forward and gain the red line. Yeah, there’s token pressure from Johnston (I believe), but it definitely seems like the Devils defenseman was playing for OT there.
 
Man, that icing play was just stupid.



He literally just had to take a stride forward and gain the red line. Yeah, there’s token pressure from Johnston (I believe), but it definitely seems like the Devils defenseman was playing for OT there.

No doubt. It's one of those things where you can be frustrated by the call but he didn't need to shoot it from there and you also only needed to kill like 15 seconds of clock even with that icing to secure the point. Tough call but they still blew it.
 
Haven't followed hockey outside our team too closely.

Devils certainly are underachieving. It's hard to envision a roster with

Meier - Hughes - Bratt
Palat - Hiscier - Tatar
Haula - Mercer - Noesen
Cotter - Lazar - Bastian

L Hughes - Hamilton
Pesce - Kovasevic
Nemec - Dillon

Markstrom
Allen

missing the playoffs. That's a damn fine looking roster. Their goaltending and forwards look better on paper than our roster. Our defenses seem comparable, though ours is more experienced. I get Hughes and Siegenthaler are out now, but they were mediocre with Hughes in.

Good news for them is most of their core is locked in. They have ~$18M in cap space next year to sign Luke Hughes and fill out their bottom forwards.
 
Man, that icing play was just stupid.



He literally just had to take a stride forward and gain the red line. Yeah, there’s token pressure from Johnston (I believe), but it definitely seems like the Devils defenseman was playing for OT there.


In my opinion icing should’ve been waived off. 55 on the Stars attempted to bat it down and had a fair chance in doing so.

Based on the NHL rule book:

“If, in the opinion of the Linesperson, any player (other than the goalkeeper) of the opposing team is able to play the puck before it passes his goal line, but has not done so, play shall continue and the icing violation shall not be called.”

The rule is written so it’s open to interpretation but it always sort of irks me when the defending team misses or whiffes an attempt at the puck and the still call it. If it’s a really hard dump, sure call it, but that was totally playable and Dallas attempted to play the puck.
 
Haven't followed hockey outside our team too closely.

Devils certainly are underachieving. It's hard to envision a roster with

Meier - Hughes - Bratt
Palat - Hiscier - Tatar
Haula - Mercer - Noesen
Cotter - Lazar - Bastian

L Hughes - Hamilton
Pesce - Kovasevic
Nemec - Dillon

Markstrom
Allen

missing the playoffs. That's a damn fine looking roster. Their goaltending and forwards look better on paper than our roster. Our defenses seem comparable, though ours is more experienced. I get Hughes and Siegenthaler are out now, but they were mediocre with Hughes in.

Good news for them is most of their core is locked in. They have ~$18M in cap space next year to sign Luke Hughes and fill out their bottom forwards.
Looking at game logs, there are a bunch of Devil fans that are very unhappy with Dougie but they believe Nemec over the last few games finally looks NHL capable.

I'd add, save the Hughes brothers, much of their top players on the roster are at a "prime age" with a few on the other side of 30.

Thus, unless they use their cap space wisely I don't think their window is as long as many think (both goalies mid 30's, Palat, Hamilton, Pesce, Noesen, Haula, Tatar, Dillon aging out)
 
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Meier has been such a terrible fit for them. Complete square peg in a round hole that is really holding him back.

He would have been so much better here. I don't blame him for taking the money he did, but I would be surprised if he finishes out that contract with them if he doesn't dramatically turn things around in the next couple years.
 
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In my opinion icing should’ve been waived off. 55 on the Stars attempted to bat it down and had a fair chance in doing so.

Based on the NHL rule book:

“If, in the opinion of the Linesperson, any player (other than the goalkeeper) of the opposing team is able to play the puck before it passes his goal line, but has not done so, play shall continue and the icing violation shall not be called.”

The rule is written so it’s open to interpretation but it always sort of irks me when the defending team misses or whiffes an attempt at the puck and the still call it. If it’s a really hard dump, sure call it, but that was totally playable and Dallas attempted to play the puck.

The way I see it, and the way it's typically called, is if a player attempts to play it, but it's missed or whiffed, it's still an icing play because the player DID make an effort to play the puck. If no effort was made, then icing would be waived off.

The puck was in the air, the Dallas player attempted to knock it down despite that, so an effort was made to play the puck. The fact that they whiffed on a difficult to play puck shouldn't be a knock against them.

Ultimately, the Devils player f***ed up by not gaining the red line. Any results after that came directly from that decision.
 
Have to say even though the Canes have been fairly mid the last couple of months but honestly would feel decent going into the playoffs. Like if we get matched up in the 1st round against NJ we can take them. If we get Washington in the 2nd round we could win that.

Conference Finals? Sure, we will get swept but as long as it's not to the Leafs then it's fine.

Also, the East in general is just so meh. I do expect Florida and Tampa to level up and I could definitely see the Panthers going back to the finals 3 years in a row but that west is such a blood bath by comparision.

Winnipeg, Dallas, Vegas, Minnesota, Edmonton, Colorado, LA... just no easy match-ups there but whoever gets in for WC2 is probably gonna get smoked.
 
Haven't followed hockey outside our team too closely.

Devils certainly are underachieving. It's hard to envision a roster with

Meier - Hughes - Bratt
Palat - Hiscier - Tatar
Haula - Mercer - Noesen
Cotter - Lazar - Bastian

L Hughes - Hamilton
Pesce - Kovasevic
Nemec - Dillon

Markstrom
Allen

missing the playoffs. That's a damn fine looking roster. Their goaltending and forwards look better on paper than our roster. Our defenses seem comparable, though ours is more experienced. I get Hughes and Siegenthaler are out now, but they were mediocre with Hughes in.

Good news for them is most of their core is locked in. They have ~$18M in cap space next year to sign Luke Hughes and fill out their bottom forwards.

Jack Hughes just had shoulder surgery and is out for the year.

So now we're probably the biggest NJD fans in the world. Would love for us to hold onto 2 and them 3, lol.
 
Part of me wonders: would it be smart for the Devils to sell this season after this Jack Hughes news? Considering how cheap Kovacevic's cap hit is, his very good year, and the RHD market always being extra-fruitful, he could get a 1st rounder from somebody as a rental.
 
Wow I didn’t realize that this is his 3rd shoulder operation at a very young age
I think this is a different shoulder, and it’s actually hard to use this as evidence of him being injury prone as he slammed it into the boards.

Part of me wonders: would it be smart for the Devils to sell this season after this Jack Hughes news? Considering how cheap Kovacevic's cap hit is, his very good year, and the RHD market always being extra-fruitful, he could get a 1st rounder from somebody as a rental.
They’re 9 games over .500 and squarely in a playoff spot. You can’t sell and end a season because one guy went down. Even if it’s your top center. They still have Hischier and Mercer.

RF getting 2 1sts and a 2nd for a rental bottom six guy and a second liner with one year left is an impressive haul. I don’t know that we’d get much more than that for Rants.
 
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I think this is a different shoulder, and it’s actually hard to use this as evidence of him being injury prone as he slammed it into the boards.


They’re 9 games over .500 and squarely in a playoff spot. You can’t sell and end a season because one guy went down. Even if it’s your top center. They still have Hischier and Mercer.

It's a playoff odds sort of question, in the sense of whether they have the tools to go deep. I'm not saying that they should sell guys with term. I'm talking about a guy with an expiring contract who has had a surprising season in a premium position.
 
It's a playoff odds sort of question, in the sense of whether they have the tools to go deep. I'm not saying that they should sell guys with term. I'm talking about a guy with an expiring contract who has had a surprising season in a premium position.
You can’t sell when you’re in the playoffs. The point is to do your best every year, not hedge your bets to gain assets for someday. I’d stop buying season tickets over them folding at this point if I was a fan. You need to keep the impressive bargain player you have because it’s helping you now.
 
If I'm the Devils I'm not exactly "selling" but I would consider moves that make the team better the next few years even if it does hurt them this year. That said, those moves aren't very likely or easy to come by at the deadline as the teams "buying" are generally really only giving far out futures -- picks/prospects that are not near being ready to contribute to a contending team. So the Devils shouldn't really be interested in that type of a return which is what they would get. So yeah, they probably just stand pat.
 

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