GDT: Sabres @ Devils, 7 PM, MSG+

[NJDevs26]

No, he wasn't.

The power play, which he was supposed to fix, was equally dreadful at the beginning of the year.


Banging shots off the glass and getting caught out of position has nothing to do with injury or wearing a face mask.

So do we give Bratt, Nico and Hughes blame for the sucky PP too? When you’ve got three forwards who have been aces five on five and the PP is still struggling I don’t think you can blame one defenseman who’s been in and out of the lineup. Nobody was fixing this system, even Crosby and Malkin had an average PP at best with Johnny MacRecchi

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

One thing for sure we miss Hughes and his ability to make the other team play more cautious against us....

Really?

Devils just went 3-1-1 on a fairly tough road trip - with only one stinker (the game in Seattle).

A far cry from the 6 and 7 goals against blowouts that were occurring when he was regularly seeing 20+ minutes of ice time a game.

Not sure a handful of highlights make up for the constant losses and irresponsible play everywhere else on the ice.

 

[Nubmer6]

So do we give Bratt, Nico and Hughes blame for the sucky PP too? When you’ve got three forwards who have been aces five on five and the PP is still struggling I don’t think you can blame one defenseman who’s been in and out of the lineup. Nobody was fixing this system, even Crosby and Malkin had an average PP at best with Johnny MacRecchi

Actually, if I remember correctly, it was slightly below average (17th or so?)

I think the problem is that our 5v5 scoring is generally off the rush. We're not very good at scoring after setting up in the offensive zone, and we're not very good at cycling, both of which I'd imagine are key to good PPs.

The thing that annoys me is that both the wings seem to play very high. It's almost as if we had 3 defensemen on the PP. I'm guessing it's part of the system since all our wingers do it. It just seems to keep the puck to the perimeter, and if you get a shot blocked, you're off to the races the other way, hence the short handed goals.

 

[Guttersniped]

Also Wedgewood is playing the best hockey of his career in Dallas? He’s played in 7 games and is 7-1-2 with a .917 SV%, 19 GA and 1 SO.

In 2020-21, in his first 9 games for us Wedgewood was 3-3-3 with a .920 SV%, 23 GA and 2 SO.

In his last 7 games that season he was 0-5-0 with a .865 SV%, 23 GA and no SO. (That included the wild b2b Pens games with goalies swaps in both. Good times.)

He played a grand total of 8 periods for us this season. It was against a Caps team that didn’t lose in regulation until Nov, mop up duty against a Calgary team that won all 5 games on their Eastern road trip (and he only gave up 2 GA in his 2 periods), and a loss in a SO to a Columbus team that was weirdly sort of successful because they had one of the best SH% in the league.

This idea that Wedge is some Rosetta Stone where our team can be judged because he won games elsewhere after his incredibly brief stint here is goofy.

We’ve all seen that movie before, he’s capable have some great games and then playing like crap.

Here’s a Dallas fan who already knows the score:

And Bowness does play a more defensive-minded system and many of their fans are not fans of it or him (to say the least).

Hammond coming back from an injury isn’t the same Hammond Montreal got at the beginning. He had two big games to start in February, against the NYI and OTT, when both of them were losing a lot.

He was 2-0-0, with .949 SV%, 2 GA and no SO.

His last two games there he was 1-0-0, with a .878 SV%, 5 GA and that was one game and part of one period in another. He had mop up duty against WPG (1 GA) and gave up for 4 GA against CGY in a 5-4 win.

Not a ton of history there either. I don’t think Hammond played poorly against the Sabres until weird fluky shit happened and then the wheels came off. I also don’t care that much now. I don’t take it as proof that Montreal, of all f***ing teams, is better defensively than we are.

All Goalies playing inconsistently to some extent, the question is how much good goaltending can you get out of them.

Well, there are rare exceptions who never play well for you (like Schmid for us) or guys who are incapable of it after a while due to injury but are still played (like Blackwood for us).

 

[NjdevilfanJim]

Really?

Devils just went 3-1-1 on a fairly tough road trip - with only one stinker (the game in Seattle).

A far cry from the 6 and 7 goals against blowouts that were occurring when he was regularly seeing 20+ minutes of ice time a game.

Not sure a handful of highlights make up for the constant losses and irresponsible play everywhere else on the ice.

Really yeah really....The year without Hughes and the steps he took this year would have been a lot worse....he is only going to get better and grow as an all around player once he matures as a player

 

[Bleedred]

Also Wedgewood is playing the best hockey of his career in Dallas? He’s played in 7 games and is 7-1-2 with a .917 SV%, 19 GA and 1 SO.

In 2020-21, in his first 9 games for us Wedgewood was 3-3-3 with a .920 SV%, 23 GA and 2 SO.

In his last 7 games that season he was 0-5-0 with a .865 SV%, 23 GA and no SO. (That included the wild b2b Pens games with goalies swaps in both. Good times.)

He played a grand total of 8 periods for us this season. It was against a Caps team that didn’t lose in regulation until Nov, mop up duty against a Calgary team that won all 5 games on their Eastern road trip (and he only gave up 2 GA in his 2 periods), and a loss in a SO to a Columbus team that was weirdly sort of successful because they had one of the best SH% in the league.

This idea that Wedge is some Rosetta Stone where our team can be judged because he won games elsewhere after his incredibly brief stint here is goofy.

We’ve all seen that movie before, he’s capable have some great games and then playing like crap.

Here’s a Dallas fan who already knows the score:

View attachment 534249

And Bowness does play a more defensive-minded system and many of their fans are not fans of it or him (to say the least).

Hammond coming back from an injury isn’t the same Hammond Montreal got at the beginning. He had two big games to start in February, against the NYI and OTT, when both of them were losing a lot.

He was 2-0-0, with .949 SV%, 2 GA and no SO.

His last two games there he was 1-0-0, with a .878 SV%, 5 GA and that was one game and part of one period in another. He had mop up duty against WPG (1 GA) and gave up for 4 GA against CGY in a 5-4 win.

Not a ton of history there either. I don’t think Hammond played poorly against the Sabres until weird fluky shit happened and then the wheels came off. I also don’t care that much now. I don’t take it as proof that Montreal, of all f***ing teams, is better defensively than we are.

All Goalies playing inconsistently to some extent, the question is how much good goaltending can you get out of them.

Well, there are rare exceptions who never play well for you (like Schmid for us) or guys who are incapable of it after a while due to injury but are still played (like Blackwood for us).

Funny thing is that Hammond's .920% is considerably better than ANY goalie that's played a second for Montreal this year and by a SIGNIFICANT stretch to Jake Allen's .905% which is the second best.

Are we to believe that Andrew Hammond is better than Allen or Carey Price? I mean, Jake Allen isn't a very good goalie, I definitely don't think he is, but he's had an okay NHL career. Hammond's NHL career looks pretty good, if you can get past the fact that he only really played 2 actual seasons as a full time NHL goalie and it was in his very late 20's. And that was clearly because his 2015 run was a completely and utter fluke. He never had any NHL projections before this fluke stretch that I think happened due to somebody getting injured in Ottawa and eventually they let Hammond roll with the starting job over Anderson until they came out and lost the first 2 games of the playoff series against Montreal in the first round and went with Anderson again.

In 206 minutes and 6 games played in 16-17, Andrew Hammond had an .837%, which is worse than his 5 games and 281 minutes of .858% this year for the Devils, which only went down with last night's game. It was higher than (in about 221 minutes played) than Hammond's .837% in 5 games/206 minutes played in 16-17.

And regarding Wedgewood, I think it's fair to say that 2021-2022 is the best season of his NHL career, but that isn't exactly an accomplishment for a 29 year old that hasn't played many seasons full time in the NHL until this year. This is really only Wedgewood's second season that he's spent the entirety of it in the NHL, isn't it?

Last year was probably the first and that only happened because Crawford retired and last season was only even 56 games.

So this year is the first 82 game season that Scott Wedgewood (who is now 29 years old) has spent the entirety of in the NHL. He played most of the 17-18 season in the NHL, but started out in the AHL with us and then I think he even ended that season in the AHL with LA after he BOMBED in NHL Arizona and was part of the Darcy Kuemper trade.

And even in this career year for Wedgewood, it's only been a little bit above the league average. Keith Kinkaid's 2017-2018 was better than this.

What's that? Arizona makes him look worse? Yeah, you're right. Maybe he is really good, considering how much better he was there than Karel Vejmelka, and we all know Karel Vejmelka is clearly NOT A BAD GOALTENDER, RIGHT?!!!!?

One other Wedgewood-like goalie that's had an absolute FLUKE year (like even better than Wedgewood, but it's clearly even flukier than Wedgewood) is Anton Forsberg. Another goalie that's the same age as Wedgewood and has played the last 8 years in the NHL, but can never keep a job full time and has spent a lot of that time in the minors (and maybe even Europe for a year in between? I forgot, I'm not looking it up right now, because it's not that relevant and doesn't change the fact that he hasn't been able to keep a consistent NHL career before this season) and he made the idiots in Ottawa (and we KNOW they're idiots up there, look what they gave Matt Murray in dollars) give him a 3 year extension.

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

Really yeah really....The year without Hughes and the steps he took this year would have been a lot worse....he is only going to get better and grow as an all around player once he matures as a player

And yet this season, as was the case last season, the Devils had a better winning percentage when he was OUT of the lineup.

True it is an oversimplification but there is some merit.

Much like when Carmelo Anthony played for the Knicks (or pretty much every team), the rest of the team is able to play a balanced game when everything is not designed strictly for one player.

To his credit, he has shown much improvement since his rookie year. But until he learns to trust the players around him and starts to do the less fun things that are key to winning, the results are not likely to change.

 

[NjdevilfanJim]

And yet this season, as was the case last season, the Devils had a better winning percentage when he was OUT of the lineup.

True it is an oversimplification but there is some merit.

Much like when Carmelo Anthony played for the Knicks (or pretty much every team), the rest of the team is able to play a balanced game when everything is not designed strictly for one player.

To his credit, he has shown much improvement since his rookie year. But until he learns to trust the players around him and starts to do the less fun things that are key to winning, the results are not likely to change.

Toughest league in the world very few step right in like McJesus ....Hughes had to answer the bell this year especially after getting hurt and then signing long term deal imo he did....Is he a finished product no....Will he continue to round out his game yes....He showed us he can be a super star for this franchise this year.....