Devils discussion (news, notes and speculation) - part II

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

"the entire point"

You made that the entire point because someone had a different definition of "upper echelon." Not one person has said this team is bad.

save em Truff. They need you!

 

[TrufleShufle]

save em Truff. They need you!

You get yourself too worked up man. None of this is that serious. I'm all set here.

 

[Satans Hockey]

we're literally 2nd in the league?

we've put it togehter for 40 games so far?

why is it so hard for you boomers to admit this team is really good?

Ya I don't get comparing this team to the past seasons of frauds we've seen. This team has been super consistent besides the 4 game losing streak in October and one set of 2 loses in a row this team has followed a loss with a win every time so far.

 

[Bleedred]

Didn't we all talk about how the Canes appeared to have gotten worse this offseason when guys left? And it appears that they kind of have. They're not exactly at the top of the division or in second like they normally are this time of year.

That doesn't mean they still can't beat us. We've seen teams that couldn't get over the hump seemingly get worse and then BAM! It was their year finally. Weren't the few teams the Capitals had prior to the 2018 cup team better than that team that won the cup? At least on paper I think they were.

The Panthers appeared to get worse in 22-23 from the team they finished the playoffs with in 2022. They even almost missed the playoffs the next year, but squeaked in and got to the finals

Maybe that's a bad example though, as Tkachuk is a huge upgrade over Huberdeau (I sat here trying to think of his name for 30 seconds, that's how irrelevant that player is anymore, outside of his shitty contract) and they somehow finished the 2022 playoffs with Ben Chiarot, who was 224 pounds of deadweight they didn't have to suffer through the next season.

 

[JimEIV]

Nothing is as bad as watching this Jets game

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

I mean Carolina was one injury from Ty Smith being in their lineup on D. And while they always seem to be able to roll 4 lines, take a look at their center depth if they lose Aho. Kotkaniemi, Staal, Jost behind him. Necas and Roslovic are both poor at C like Mercer.

Fitz should add some depth if he can, but there’s nothing he can do to offset a big loss to a top guy. Most the league’s odds of winning anything are at risk of getting one shotted by a bad injury.

 

[Emperoreddy]

The only teams in the East that have been consistently good through 40 games are Washington, us, and probably Tampa.

Florida has been weirdly inconsistent. Toronto as well. Canes have not been playing very good hockey over the last month.

But also come playoff time pretty much anyone can beat anyone and everyone has question marks.

Can Tampa and Washington keep up their play when their shooting percentages cool off? Who is going to be healthy. What team's players find a second gear in April vs who disappears. What are even the match ups? We haven't shown we can beat Tampa this year, but we might not need to.

Point being is our team is as good as any team in the East. Past results do not predict future success.

And most teams can't absorb injuries to there true top guys very well. It's part of the luck you need to win in this league.

 

[Bleedred]

Bob isn't having a good year, which is nothing new for him since he came to Florida. He's probably had more mediocre to bad regular seasons there than good ones.

And Spencer Knight hasn't been good in the NHL since about 3 years ago. I can't help but cringe at several suggestions I heard from people back in 2019 (I don't think any of them were Devils fans) that we should probably draft Spencer Knight because he's a stud, and this one time it might actually be worth it to take a goalie at 5th or 6th overall or wherever we were supposed to draft before we won the lottery.

That's like $15 million dollars spent on pretty f***in mediocre goaltending.

And yesterday they got shutout by a guy making his NHL debut, and the last game before the break they got shutout by the Lightning, only it was Jonas Johansson doing the shutting out, not Vasilevskiy. So now they've been shutout two games in a row. The Rangers may be the cure for that.

I think Tampa is actually a strong contender in the East, but they also have an even more inflated shooting percentage than Washington the last I checked.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Why we arguing

 

[Bleedred]

Nothing is as bad as watching this Jets game

They're having a really good year and had that 14 or 15 game winning streak earlier this year, so I'm not sure how it can be that bad!

 

[theoptimist]

Just glad no one’s posting analytics to prove a point.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Florida has been shut out 4 times in December alone. Just information to throw out there

 

[NjDevsRR]

Florida has been shut out 4 times in December alone. Just information to throw out there

Just in time for Rangers tomorrow lmao that’s another 5-1 loss for NYR

Just glad no one’s posting analytics to prove a point.

I am holding the OhMys per 60 statline for a better conversation

 

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

Just glad no one’s posting analytics to prove a point.

why does information bother you?

 

[guitarguyvic]

Carolina has made the playoffs 6 out of the last 6 years.

They've won the Division 3 out of the last 6 years.

They've gotten to the 2nd round of the playoffs 5 of the last 6 years

They've gotten to ECF twice in the last 6 years.

We don't have this track record. In fact we've haven't had this much success in 20 years ....we aren't in this class.

The “track record” really has nothing to do with assessing how good our team is THIS YEAR compared to them. If you think Carolina is better because they’ve shown themselves to be better THIS YEAR, ok that’s a fine argument. Citing what they did the previous six years though…not so much. Carolina is not the exact same team they were six years ago…yes they’ve built a reputation as a consistently good team but each season is different. You are conflating two different things.

And for the record, I don’t think NJ has shown enough in this season to make me believe they have the advantage over Carolina. But it has nothing to do with Carolina’s success in previous seasons.

 

[Bleedred]

Like officiating, I really try not to complain about things like this, but this is pretty ridiculous.

I'm not sure how we STILL have played that many more games than almost everyone else and at least one more than everyone else? The answer isn't Prague. Buffalo has played 3 fewer games than us.

On a night where only half the teams in the league played coming out of the Christmas break, we were one of the 16 teams. Yesterday was one of the quietest Saturday's I can remember in a very long time. Only 11 games/22 teams played. And once again we were one of them.

There's only one game on New Year's Day this year and it isn't even the winter classic. It's us vs LA.

This road trip is pretty spread out, outside of the two back to back's. We have two days between these two games, we have two days in between the second game of the back to back until we play again. And we have two days between Seattle and the Rangers, but there's also a cross country flight involved.

We're going to hit the halfway point of the season on January 1st.

 

[Emperoreddy]

If we are basing everything on past success then all Carolina has shown is they can't get past the 2nd round.

 

[JimEIV]

The “track record” really has nothing to do with assessing how good our team is THIS YEAR compared to them. If you think Carolina is better because they’ve shown themselves to be better THIS YEAR, ok that’s a fine argument. Citing what they did the previous six years though…not so much. Carolina is not the exact same team they were six years ago…yes they’ve built a reputation as a consistently good team but each season is different. You are conflating two different things.

And for the record, I don’t think NJ has shown enough in this season to make me believe they have the advantage over Carolina. But it has nothing to do with Carolina’s success in previous seasons.

Past has a lot to do with THIS YEAR.

When you know from the past there are certain guys who perform extremely well and others that completely disappear in tight heavy games...that track record means something. And it means more and more as the playoffs wear on

 

[Emperoreddy]

Past has a lot to do with THIS YEAR.

When you know from the past there are certain guys who perform extremely well and others that completely disappear in tight heavy games...that track record means something. And it means more and more as the playoffs wear on

Carolina lost a few of those guys in the offseason though. Two of those guys play for us now. They aren't the same team, you can't solely rely on what past versions of that team did.

The same can be said about us both from our good year and last year. Our D is completely different. Our goalies are different. Our coach is different.

 

[Comparison Ford]

^this.

I will never like us against Washington as they put us into that hesitant small guy mode and get us off our game and I don't want to fight Ovi history game mgmt by the refs.

it’s interesting cuz the way the playoffs are set up right now it’s most likely we play carolina in 1st round and capitals in round 2.

no one ever said it was easy i guess

 

[JimEIV]

Carolina lost a few of those guys in the offseason though. Two of those guys play for us now. They aren't the same team, you can't solely rely on what past versions of that team did.

The same can be said about us both from our good year and last year. Our D is completely different. Our goalies are different. Our coach is different.

Sure...there is no doubt that we made big strides. I'm not saying anything different.

But we are pretending if we are making believe that we don't see the problems in heavy tight checking games. It's glaring. And we haven't fully solved the problem yet. I think we can do somethings with line combos to address some of it but I think we still need an addition or two also.

 

[forceten]

What are the odds that Quinn Hughes signs with us after next-next-season ?

Re: Carolina - Losing Brady Skjei after losing Pesce was addition by subtraction, since he was protected by Pesce. Chatfield was ready for a bigger role. Gostisbehere is one of those guys that seems to do better in Carolina than elsewhere, but I actually thought he was good in Detroit. Walker was whatever.

 

[My3Sons]

Florida has been shut out 4 times in December alone. Just information to throw out there

My dogs eat the cat’s poop if we don’t beat them to it. We can’t even get the automatic litter box because the dogs are there within moments. Just information to throw out there.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Sure...there is no doubt that we made big strides. I'm not saying anything different.

But we are pretending if we are making believe that we don't see the problems in heavy tight checking games. It's glaring. And we haven't fully solved the problem yet. I think we can do somethings with line combos to address some of it but think we still need an addition or two also.

Issue i see is we need to figure out how to break through Rod's line matching when playing in their barn.

We have shown we can beat them in our barn. We did it twice.

We have shown we can hang and beat Washington as well.

Doesn't mean it will be easy, but these potential series are not insurmountable hills to climb.

 

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

we literally split with Carolina AND Washington, did we not?

this "We can't solve them" stuff is so overblown