GDT: Devils @ Hurricanes - 2025 Playoffs! RD1 GM5 - 7:30 PM - MSG, TBS, MAX

[Camille the Eel]

Yea I mean no one really argued Markstrom wasn't gonna be an upgrade this year. The argument was it was an overpay that should only be made by a team set to seriously contend immediately considering his age/asset value sent. The issue of course is this roster was never going to seriously contend this season, even with Jack. If you make the Markstrom move, you need to be prepared to throw your chips in the middle for a high-end 3C at a minimum before the season starts as well. No half measures. If you can't materially improved the C depth because of silly contracts or whatever reason(s), then you don't overpay for a 35 year old goalie.

A mid 1st and cost controlled giant #4 dman still not in his prime was a general overpay given the goalie market values. Then consider the actual situation for the Devs and it really didn't make sense. Devs got near realistic best case performance out of Markstrom for most of the season....and it still didn't matter. If he was 28, this would be fine. But he wasn't/isn't.

I disagree we overpaid for Markstrom. Bahl has done shit this year and our D was strong. The 2025 pick hasn’t been made yet and it isn’t a high one. We needed to stabilize the goalie position and we did. I don’t consider we gave up much to fix the biggest problem we had for several preceding years. Markstrom may have won like the 2d most games of any goalie in the league, despite missing some time after a Boston guy crunched him. The price we paid in this trade was not high, nor was it a factor in how we played this year. Give us Bahl and the pick back and we aren’t any better in 2024-25 and take away Markstrom and we are a lot worse.

 

[MartyOwns]

should've started allen, but the result of the series was always going to be the same...the injuries were just too much to overcome. change the bottom 6 over the summer and get a scoring winger.

 

[Buggsy]

i thought nico, pesce, dumo, timo and nemec all came to play and brought their A games, everyone else can lick my balls.

for $4m mercer is fine, it’s disappointing he’s not more but his salary doesn’t require more. haula blech, let’s get him off the team. palat looked good in the playoffs, i think we can keep him for one more season just to keep the buyout more palatable (hehehe) next summer.

i think we should try to move Dougie, i know he’s probably not 100% so assessing his playoffs may be unfair, but Nemec showed his potential here - there’s a top pairing all situations d man there waiting to develop. we can use dougie salary elsewhere to fill holes.

the bottom 6 is space crap and should be rocketed to the sun and never seen again. it this is where you need some draft picks that can step up and fill these roles on ELCs, the million and change thrown to all of these guys adds up.

markstrom? blech. I didn’t like the trade from the start and i absolutely hate it now. we paid a premium for 2 seasons of him as a 34 year old - this season we got a .900 save percentage and he single-handedly cost us two playoff games. makes great saves and looks amazing sometimes but it’s like his brain doesn’t start on time and gives up early goals or it takes a vacation mid game and coughs up the game. you’ll never convince me we couldn’t get the same or better results from any other decent goalie that has a strong defensive system in front of them.

It's interesting to me that people are blaming Markstrom for the loss in the past 2 games.

He clearly let in some bad goals, but he also made insane saves. When the game is 3-3, the devil's players couldn't generate anything at all.

You can call them deflating for sure but take the 2nd goal last night for example, why is Blake completely untouched coming to the slot from behind the net? 2 defenceman go at him, lose and Bratt doesn't attack the puck carrier.

The Devils lost because they had no special teams. That's it and a big part of that is that those rely more heavily on individual players that were hurt.

It lays on them all and was a tall task from the get go.

Rearrange the bottom 6, and cut bait with Dougie however they can.

 

[Triumph]

They were finally just exhausted. Still, the power play fixes itself with good health, as does the penalty kill - missing critical players on either unit really sank them there. Putting Casey on PP1 in the final game is an acknowledgement of the awareness of exactly what was wrong with the unit and a desperation move.

If last night was the last game Brian Dumoulin plays here, that will be a shame but also we will get to remember him fondly - just an incredibly solid series from a guy who was called a 3rd pairing D on a bad team.

Markstrom had his ups and downs and that second goal against last night is brutal. I think he had an overall fine series, but his best games were when the Devils had no offense.

 

[Call Me Al]

I disagree we overpaid for Markstrom. Bahl has done shit this year and our D was strong. The 2025 pick hasn’t been made yet and it isn’t a high one. We needed to stabilize the goalie position and we did. I don’t consider we gave up much to fix the biggest problem we had for several preceding years. Markstrom may have won like the 2d most games of any goalie in the league, despite missing some time after a Boston guy crunched him. The price we paid in this trade was not high, nor was it a factor in how we played this year. Give us Bahl and the pick back and we aren’t any better in 2024-25 and take away Markstrom and we are a lot worse.

we didn’t need markstrom specifically to stabilize the goalie position. and maybe smaller samples but our other goalies on this roster had as good of not better numbers. not saying they’re better, but having a strong defensive system and a full team buy-in was probably more important than having a “top 10” goalie.

besides that, fitz telegraphed exactly what he was going to do and who he was going after which put him in the worse negotiating position. and he went after a 34 year old with 2 years left - first year done and wasted.

that mid first round pick could still be a valuable, cheap piece on a roster where our stars go into their second and third contracts, you need those and we don’t really have many.

i understand on paper the need to “stabilize the goaltending” but saying this is your guy before the trade happens isn’t great

 

[Call Me Al]

It's interesting to me that people are blaming Markstrom for the loss in the past 2 games.

He clearly let in some bad goals, but he also made insane saves. When the game is 3-3, the devil's players couldn't generate anything at all.

You can call them deflating for sure but take the 2nd goal last night for example, why is Blake completely untouched coming to the slot from behind the net? 2 defenceman go at him, lose and Bratt doesn't attack the puck carrier.

The Devils lost because they had no special teams. That's it and a big part of that is that those rely more heavily on individual players that were hurt.

It lays on them all and was a tall task from the get go.

Rearrange the bottom 6, and cut bait with Dougie however they can.

the game was 3-3 because he checked out for 5 minutes in an elimination game

 

[HellOnIce]

It's interesting to me that people are blaming Markstrom for the loss in the past 2 games.

He clearly let in some bad goals, but he also made insane saves. When the game is 3-3, the devil's players couldn't generate anything at all.

You can call them deflating for sure but take the 2nd goal last night for example, why is Blake completely untouched coming to the slot from behind the net? 2 defenceman go at him, lose and Bratt doesn't attack the puck carrier.

The Devils lost because they had no special teams. That's it and a big part of that is that those rely more heavily on individual players that were hurt.

It lays on them all and was a tall task from the get go.

Rearrange the bottom 6, and cut bait with Dougie however they can.

Goalies aren't going to be perfect. Markstrom was great all things considered.

Specials were just killed. Carolina is good PK, but not having Jack and Luke was just too much of an ask, especially with a Dougie who was just not himself - guy didn't play for months and thrown in there at who knows what health.

PK wasn't that much better and again - Kovacevic and Dillon were PK stalwarts for 82 games. Take a PK pair away, and it's just not going to be the same. Add-in a 'rushed' back 71, a clearly not healthy Pesce - and you get what you get.

Depth was very difficult here. Depth scoring, speed, skill needs to be addressed. I imagine if we had better health at the TDL, maybe Tom would've swung harder. You can't lose the war of attrition and having guys who played all 82 games in Dilly and Kova, and Luke who played every game since November 1st pretty much - all out within two weeks - no team is going to be able to really handle that well.

 

[HellOnIce]

we didn’t need markstrom specifically to stabilize the goalie position. and maybe smaller samples but our other goalies on this roster had as good of not better numbers. not saying they’re better, but having a strong defensive system and a full team buy-in was probably more important than having a “top 10” goalie.

besides that, fitz telegraphed exactly what he was going to do and who he was going after which put him in the worse negotiating position. and he went after a 34 year old with 2 years left - first year done and wasted.

that mid first round pick could still be a valuable, cheap piece on a roster where our stars go into their second and third contracts, you need those and we don’t really have many.

i understand on paper the need to “stabilize the goaltending” but saying this is your guy before the trade happens isn’t great

Easy to play hindsight when for a decade we've had shit goaltending, and this year was the first in a long time it was great. You make that trade everyday.

 

[Buggsy]

the game was 3-3 because he checked out for 5 minutes in an elimination game

The game was 3-3 because everyone checked out for 5 mins.

Goal 1 is on the PK. Dump misses the easy rim around and no one covers the one timer man.

Goal 2 had 3 people unable to contain Blake and then Markstrom shits the bed.

Goal 3 is everyone reeling and a screened shot from the point.

They all blew that lead.

 

[Call Me Al]

Easy to play hindsight when for a decade we've had shit goaltending, and this year was the first in a long time it was great. You make that trade everyday.

it’s not hindsight to say i didn’t like it at the time?

if you trade futures for a 34 year old goalie with 2 years when you’re already thin on futures you should be contenders. just barely making the playoffs and losing in 5 isn’t worth that to me. maybe next year he’ll change my mind but he hasn’t so far. sorry

 

[njdevils1982]

A SHITACULAR CHOKE!

3 minutes and 54 seconds

 

[FooteBahl]

A SHITACULAR CHOKE!

3 minutes and 54 seconds

You aren’t kidding…I went from “oh shit, we’re bringing this bitch back home and who knows what could happen” to “burn this muthaf***a down” in 4 minutes.

Being a bipolar devils fan is hard on us.

 

[njdevils1982]

You aren’t kidding…I went from “oh shit, we’re bringing this bitch back home and who knows what could happen” to “burn this muthaf***a down” in 4 minutes

just add it to the list of failure vs them. so annoying

 

[TheUnseenHand]

All things considered I don't think we could have asked much more from the series. They won one game which was more than I expected. I can't fault the team for playing fairly well while being severely undermanned.

That said, wtf is with the collapses? It's been multiple years now where, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. Like clockwork, the second a tiny bit of adversity happens, they completely and utterly fold. I have never seen a team so consistent at folding under pressure.

 

[ahmedou]

 

[Richer's Ghost]

Luckily our second daughter was born last night right before the game so this series loss means nothing to me. Life has a funny way of putting things in perspective.

I have faith that the team will address the glaring needs this offseason (depth, depth, and more depth!). Hopefully Grits helps with that and the brothers Hughes get bionic shoulders. Oh and f*** the canes and their embarrassing brand of hockey! Can’t wait to see a real team stomp them.

Well congrats !!!!

Not everything was crappy last night!!

Name her Phoenix for being the brightness rising from the charred remains of our playoffs lol.

 

[Devs3cups]

That said, wtf is with the collapses? It's been multiple years now where, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. Like clockwork, the second a tiny bit of adversity happens, they completely and utterly fold. I have never seen a team so consistent at folding under pressure.

Yup. It’s unavoidable. Yesterday I didn’t watch the first, commented in the GDT saying I wouldn't watch the rest of the game and said “Hopefully I’ll be back to some good vibes”. I just knew the odds they’d crumble were immense. Just super disappointing.

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

Yup. It’s unavoidable. Yesterday I didn’t watch the first, commented in the GDT saying I wouldn't watch the rest of the game and said “Hopefully I’ll be back to some good vibes”. I just knew the odds they’d crumble were immense. Just super disappointing.

They had very few blown leads this season. One of the better teams in the league at shutting down games.

 

[Dylan9z9]

Zero offense in both overtimes absolute bullshit to defend just waiting to get scored on .....Unacceptable!

 

[Whaddagoal]

Hamilton smiling after the game going over to Markstrom still pisses me off.

Yeah. That one hits.

Nico, Nemec, Markstrom literally devastated on the ice, and then you have a few guys hamming it up with their oppoents/buddies a few mins later

From the camera angles, players like Bratt, Cotter, Meier, a few others were cordial but serious in the hand shake line, and you had Haula, Hamilton, Pesce, Noesen smiling it up with their former chums literally 2 minutes after the whistle.

What a contrast. I forgive pesce and Noesen as its fresh for them last season, but man it doesn't look good to me as a fan of this team.

 

[Devs3cups]

They had very few blown leads this season. One of the better teams in the league at shutting down games.

The blew 2 multiple goal leads in this series alone. Looms large in my mind. As for the regular season, I suppose the Calgary Flames meltdown sticks out in my head. They’re about 20th in the number of blown leads, a bit worse for 3rd period blown leads.

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

Yeah. That one hits.

Nico, Nemec, Markstrom literally devastated on the ice, and then you have a few guys hamming it up with their oppoents/buddies a few mins later

From the camera angles, players like Bratt, Cotter, Meier, a few others were cordial but serious in the hand shake line, and you had Haula, Hamilton, Pesce, Noesen smiling it up with their former chums literally 2 minutes after the whistle.

What a contrast. (I forgive pesce and Noesen as its fresh for them last season, but man it doesn't look good to me as a fan)

Pesce and Noesen were Canes last year, like you said, it's fine. I'm not expecting them to be angry after a series or show bad blood towards the former teammates. They probably don't understand the Carolina NJ rivalry like we do as fans.

Hamliton is a bit socially awkward so I don't fault him too much either.

 

[Call Me Al]

you guys are reading too much into the handshake line. i wouldn’t accuse any of those guys from not trying their hardest, but the games over and the series is done. none of them were happy about losing

 

[Devils731]

“Hamilton smiled!” is the new “the team ate dinner!”

Hamilton likely came back early from his injury to try and help the team but he doesn’t have the correct facial expression so it’s a problem.

 

[NJDevs26]

Pesce and Noesen were Canes last year, like you said, it's fine. I'm not expecting them to be angry after a series or show bad blood towards the former teammates. They probably don't understand the Carolina NJ rivalry like we do as fans.

Hamliton is a bit socially awkward so I don't fault him too much either.

I wager they do understand it cause their fans HATE us the way we hate them and love getting over on us. They were also there when Haula was and have heard him getting booed time and again. Of course that POS is now hated by both fanbases after no-showing yet again lol.