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

[devilsblood]

My point was really no goalie at that time would've been the answer here while we played "look out" defense...you know , the defense just yelling to the goalie "look out here they come"

That was definitely at play for a couple years in NJ, but not his last year when Vitek and Schmid were both good.

Unfortuneately we rode with Vitek and Schmid while moving Blackwood, and of course the guys we rolled with then proceeded to fall off a cliff while Blackwood found his footing.

There is also the whole injury/covid/not wanting to get the vaccine issue's, and the team was not patient enough to see if he could work through all that. I don't blame them really, as I say above, Vitek and Schmid both outplayed him by a wide stretch in 22-23.

 

[Call Me Al]

My point was really no goalie at that time would've been the answer here while we played "look out" defense...you know , the defense just yelling to the goalie "look out here they come"

goalie conversations consistently focus on the individual goalie performance and seldom the team in front of them. no one was going to put up crazy numbers in front of ruff’s team, but somehow even the goalies who looked last year are putting up stellar numbers in front of this team.

having a good system fixes a lot of goaltending issues. i don’t wish that we still had blackwood but it’s not hard to see why he’d have better numbers on other teams. i also think we overpaid for markstrom who has looked very good at times, but so have all of our other goalies. he’s also put up the worst performances of all of them and is now a question mark heading towards the postseason

 

[Comparison Ford]

what is the magic number for making the playoffs in the east this year?

just trying to see when i can feel relaxed about making the playoffs (answer is probably never)

 

[Bleedred]

what is the magic number for making the playoffs in the east this year?

just trying to see when i can feel relaxed about making the playoffs (answer is probably never)

It looks like 90 points could do it. I think the current wild card 2 team based on points percentage is only somehow on pace for 88 points, but I think it's probably gonna take 90 and maybe even 92-94 just to be safe. Because for some reason ALL of the teams at the bottom have had heaters of some kind in the last two months, other than Buffalo, Philly and maybe Pittsburgh. And even Pittsburgh just won 4 in a row, but they're so far out of it.

Montreal was hot in December and January, then fell off a lot, now their heater is back on. Columbus was mostly hot since December, but just had a bad week.

The Islanders had that 7 game winning streak before that balloon popped again. Detroit had a really hot stretch after McLellan took over, that has since been popped.

Even the Rangers were so far down the toilet around the new year and have worked their way back onto the playoff line.

Funny thing is that almost all of these teams below us are greatly overachieving. Columbus, Detroit, Montreal, all poor numbers and intravenously banging a lot of PDO to put these heaters together. Stupid high shooting percentages, but funny enough that the goalie numbers on these teams aren't even good. They're probably decent in Detroit, but are bad in Columbus and Montreal.

 

[Bleedred]

I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm kind of looking to explain myself. I posted about it before a couple weeks back, but I'm going through some kind of weird depression where I'm just whatever about everything. I'm not real sad, but I'm more just apathetic right now. I've been saying recently it's maybe the male version of menopause, I don't know.

So I know I've been super insufferable at times on this board lately, but I have absolutely LITTLE patience for what's been happening in Devils land since about December 28th. So I'm probably really going off the rocker more than I normally would. That's all. There's really nothing I can really do right now. I'll snap out of whatever moods I'm going through, but I just hope this team doesn't completely fall out this season.

However, I don't think I was exaggerating or hyperbolizing when I said Markstrom's game yesterday was a bottom 5 (or top 5 BAD) goalie game for the Devils this decade.

Yeah, the October of 2019 Cory Schneider game was worse, but that was pre-this decade.

 

[Devs3cups]

I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm kind of looking to explain myself. I posted about it before a couple weeks back, but I'm going through some kind of weird depression where I'm just whatever about everything. I'm not real sad, but I'm more just apathetic right now. I've been saying recently it's maybe the male version of menopause, I don't know.

So I know I've been super insufferable at times on this board lately, but I have absolutely LITTLE patience for what's been happening in Devils land since about December 28th. So I'm probably really going off the rocker more than I normally would. That's all. There's really nothing I can really do right now. I'll snap out of whatever moods I'm going through, but I just hope this team doesn't completely fall out this season.

However, I don't think I was exaggerating or hyperbolizing when I said Markstrom's game yesterday was a bottom 5 (or top 5 BAD) goalie game for the Devils this decade.

Yeah, the October of 2019 Cory Schneider game was worse, but that was pre-this decade.

Hopefully this team gives you something to cheer about soon Bleed! Always love your contributions here, as I've told you plenty of times!

 

[Bleedred]

Hopefully this team gives you something to cheer about soon Bleed! Always love your contributions here, as I've told you plenty of times!

Thanks! I appreciate it and all the posters on here.

I really do love this place. I have to say, there's not a single poster that I really don't like here. At least nobody that's still currently active.

It's definitely the best internet community I've been on and I've been on quite a few.

And any time I've ever posted ''Eh, I'm not feeling that good'' there's never been a shortage of people hitting me up reaching out and asking if I'm okay. I was wayyyyyyy worse off than this 4-5 years ago (pandemic years, though nothing at all to do with the pandemic) and I kind of stopped posting for a little during the fall of 2020 and summer of 2021 when there was no hockey at all. A lot of people noticed I wasn't active and would message me. I did at least lurk daily, so I always saw and responded to the messages. Thankfully I'm not in that kind of a state.

But I am in enough of a state that Devils games are making me feel worse. There's plenty of days where I go ''I'm feeling okay, I'm good!'' and some of these games just send me 180 the other way.

 

[Triumph]

goalie conversations consistently focus on the individual goalie performance and seldom the team in front of them. no one was going to put up crazy numbers in front of ruff’s team, but somehow even the goalies who looked last year are putting up stellar numbers in front of this team.

Most of the goalies who were here last year aren't anymore. The Devils got 49 starts in 2023-24 out of goalies who are no longer on the roster or in the system. Schmid is a backup goalie in Vegas's farm system, Vanecek was awful for San Jose and was then traded to Florida for nothing, and Kahkonen has been bouncing around the league on waivers and has started exactly one NHL game this year. I'm skeptical that any of these guys start the year on an NHL roster next season, so I'm not sure this is the conclusion you really want to make - yes obviously Daws has been lights out this season but he's played 5 games and he has not been anything special in the AHL.

Obviously there can 'team in front of them' issues and last year's team was certainly not good defensively, but these guys can't hack it here and it turns out they couldn't hack it anywhere, for the time being. It can be both things.

having a good system fixes a lot of goaltending issues. i don’t wish that we still had blackwood but it’s not hard to see why he’d have better numbers on other teams. i also think we overpaid for markstrom who has looked very good at times, but so have all of our other goalies. he’s also put up the worst performances of all of them and is now a question mark heading towards the postseason

Markstrom's bad performances are almost certainly injury related, before that injury he was headed towards possibly being Sweden's starter in the 4 Nations and a top 10 goalie around the league. Obviously injury risk is part of acquiring any goalie and more so with an older player, but I can't get behind the idea that we overpaid for Markstrom - a good portion of that payment was for Calgary to retain salary on him.

 

[TrufleShufle]

Thanks! I appreciate it and all the posters on here.

I really do love this place. I have to say, there's not a single poster that I really don't like here. At least nobody that's still currently active.

It's definitely the best internet community I've been on and I've been on quite a few.

And any time I've ever posted ''Eh, I'm not feeling that good'' there's never been a shortage of people hitting me up reaching out and asking if I'm okay. I was wayyyyyyy worse off than this 4-5 years ago (pandemic years, though nothing at all to do with the pandemic) and I kind of stopped posting for a little during the fall of 2020 and summer of 2021 when there was no hockey at all. A lot of people noticed I wasn't active and would message me. I did at least lurk daily, so I always saw and responded to the messages. Thankfully I'm not in that kind of a state.

But I am in enough of a state that Devils games are making me feel worse. There's plenty of days where I go ''I'm feeling okay, I'm good!'' and some of these games just send me 180 the other way.

I don't post a ton, but I am definitely still currently active.

 

[Bleedred]

I don't post a ton, but I am definitely still currently active.

I'm not sure if your post may have been implying we've ever been at odds (which I don't think we ever have?) or that you may be a poster I didn't like, but that's certainly not the case!

 

[NjDevsRR]

I am confident this team can get 6 points out of the next 10 coming up

Big one tomorrow. Yesterday’s gm doesn’t take away that they have been playing better than they did in Jan-Feb. Onward.

Ride Allen

 

[My3Sons]

I am confident this team can get 6 points out of the next 10 coming up

Big one tomorrow. Yesterday’s gm doesn’t take away that they have been playing better than they did in Jan-Feb. Onward.

Ride Allen

Like a trained squirrel on a surfboard

 

[BahlDeep]

I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm kind of looking to explain myself. I posted about it before a couple weeks back, but I'm going through some kind of weird depression where I'm just whatever about everything. I'm not real sad, but I'm more just apathetic right now. I've been saying recently it's maybe the male version of menopause, I don't know.

So I know I've been super insufferable at times on this board lately, but I have absolutely LITTLE patience for what's been happening in Devils land since about December 28th. So I'm probably really going off the rocker more than I normally would. That's all. There's really nothing I can really do right now. I'll snap out of whatever moods I'm going through, but I just hope this team doesn't completely fall out this season.

However, I don't think I was exaggerating or hyperbolizing when I said Markstrom's game yesterday was a bottom 5 (or top 5 BAD) goalie game for the Devils this decade.

Yeah, the October of 2019 Cory Schneider game was worse, but that was pre-this decade.

Stop masterbating for 7 days.

 

[Figgie]

Just asking: If we trade Hamilton at summer and we can trade him to 10 teams.

If we trade him to team X so can team Y retain some of his salary even if team Y is not on his trade list or does it matter?

 

[Comparison Ford]

Just asking: If we trade Hamilton at summer and we can trade him to 10 teams.

If we trade him to team X so can team Y retain some of his salary even if team Y is not on his trade list or does it matter?

i think he would just have to approve it no?

 

[Guttersniped]

I hilariously typed this stupid thing up while the board went down and then couldn’t post it.

Here's a chart to show who provided goals over the last 3 years. It lists every player who scored more than 1 goal in a season. Apologies to Willman and Bahl fans!

Each year is only for the 68 first games.

l included goals scored on other teams (in parentheses) and again those are only goals in the first 68 games.

Short observation: Our top guys all had massive years in 2022-23, that's difficult to replicate and Fitz hasn't done a very good job of replacing/improving the secondary scoring.

It's a team building flaw.

Player	22-23	23-24	24-25
JHug	37	21	28
NHisc	28	22	27
JBratt	27	22	19
DMerc	22	17	15
DHam	18	5	9
TTatar	16	N/A (8)	6
YShar	12	N/A (22)	N/A (12)
MWood	11	N/A (9)	N/A (2)
EHaula	8	14	6
OPalat	8	9	13
JBoq	7	N/A (4)	N/A (12)
RGves	6	N/A (3)	N/A (1)
FZett	6	N/A (18)	N/A (17)
NBast	6	5	3
DSev	6	N/A (6)	N/A (6)
MMcL	4	10	N/A (X)
JMari	4	4	N/A (1)
JSig	3	1	2
AHoltz	3	14	N/A (3)
TMeier	3 (31)	19	19
BSmith	0	3	N/A (0)
TToff	N/A (28)	26	N/A (25)
LHug	N/A (X)	8	6
CLaz	0 (3)	6	2
CMiller	N/A (3)	4	N/A (2)
SNemec	N/A (X)	3	1
CTney	N/A (3)	3	N/A (X)
JDowl	N/A (X)	1	2
SNoes	N/A (10)	N/A (14)	19
PCot	N/A (12)	N/A (7)	14
SCsey	N/A (X)	N/A (X)	4
BPesce	N/A (4)	N/A (3)	3
BDill	N/A (2)	N/A (7)	2
CGlass	N/A (9)	N/A (5)	2 (4)
TOTAL	239	220	203

2024-25
68 GP 36-26-6 78 Pts (13th) .574 (14th)
203 GF (T-12th)
2.96 GF/60 (T-14th)
176 GA (T-5th)
2.57 GA/60 (4th)
53.56 GF% (9th)

225.86 xGF (3rd)
3.30 xGF/60 (5th)
197.01 xGA (17th)
2.87 xGA/60 (T-12th)
53.41 xGF% (3rd)

10.42 SH% (T-15th)
90.19 SV% (7th)
1.006 PDO (7th)

2023-24
68 GP 32-32-4 68 Pts (T-24th) .500 (25th)
220 GF (12th)
3.22 GF/60 (12th)
235 GA (28th)
3.44 GA/60 (27th)
48.35 GF% (22nd)

226.32 xGF (6th)
3.31 xGF/60 (6th)
218.04 xGA (24th)
3.19 xGA/60 (23rd)
50.93 xGF% (16th)

10.23 SH% (13th)
88.38 SV% (31st)
.986 PDO (27th)

2022-23
68 GP 44-17-7 95 Pts (3rd) .699 (3rd)
237 GF (5th)
3.44 GF/60 (T-4th)
181 GA (5th)
2.62 GA/60 (4th)
56.70 GF% (3rd)

243.69 xGF (3rd)
3.53 xGF/60 (4th)
193.71 xGA (4th)
2.81 xGA/60 (5th)
55.71 xGF% (2nd)

10.16 SH% (14th)
90.54 SV% (10th)
1.007 PDO (12th)

 

[devsfan8]

Serious folly if you think douglas is going to complete a season uninterrupted. Obviously you feel you know better. Carry on

Hamilton played all 82 games, 2 seasons ago 22-23 season. Just saying.

 

[Devs3cups]

Secondary scoring, more specifically the bottom 6. Fitz needs to fix the bottom 6.

 

[Billdo]

Hamilton played all 82 games, 2 seasons ago 22-23 season. Just saying.

Fair but it's also not acknowledging that he's missed 101 out of a possible 328 regular season games since he's been here.

 

[My3Sons]

Secondary scoring, more specifically the bottom 6. Fitz needs to fix the bottom 6.

Noesen and Cotter have scored well enough. I think it’s a patchwork lineup. Palat plays top six minutes and isn’t a top six player. Replace him and Cotter and Noesen are decent in their roles. Hopefully Glass can play well enough as a 3C and provide stability that Haula can’t anymore.

 

[njdevils1982]

.

Noesen and Cotter have scored well enough. I think it’s a patchwork lineup. Palat plays top six minutes and isn’t a top six player. Replace him and Cotter and Noesen are decent in their roles. Hopefully Glass can play well enough as a 3C and provide stability that Haula can’t anymore.

noesen's gone cold. last non-PP goal was dec 23..... in the 29 games since then he has 3 PPG

 

[Devs3cups]

Noesen and Cotter have scored well enough. I think it’s a patchwork lineup. Palat plays top six minutes and isn’t a top six player. Replace him and Cotter and Noesen are decent in their roles. Hopefully Glass can play well enough as a 3C and provide stability that Haula can’t anymore.

Overall yes, although I'd say Cotter went on a bit of a shooting bender to start the year, it's been tougher since then (scored 5 in his first 7 games, then scored 2 in his next 31 games). Noesen has done most of his work on the PP it seems (10 of his 19 goals on the PP). Haula, Tatar, Bastian and Lazar have a combined 17 goals, that's barely 4 goals each on average. That's simply not enough imo. With 2-3 more goals from every single one of these guys (which isn't an unreasonable ask imo), we're probably comfortably in the 2nd spot in the division right now.

 

[JimEIV]

Holy s*** I don't think I've ever been this drunk I'm in Salem Massachusetts and these f****** people make him believe they're witches is just f****** weird but a party good

 

[Derps]

Holy s*** I don't think I've ever been this drunk I'm in Salem Massachusetts and these f****** people make him believe they're witches is just f****** weird but a party good

Absolutely elite post.

 

[Mr Bojanglez]

Holy s*** I don't think I've ever been this drunk I'm in Salem Massachusetts and these f****** people make him believe they're witches is just f****** weird but a party good

First Witch party eh?