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2016-17 Season Thread


MadDevil

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So, two games in and the Devils have 1 point on the season. They currently have 8 players (including half the defense) that weren't with the team last year (Zacha and Wood each only played in the season finale) and it's showed. They just don't look very in synch. I thought they played a really good first against Tampa, but then the Bolts got going and the Devils just couldn't keep up. Of course it didn't help to get a goal called back because of the bullshit offside challenge where the Devils were offside a full 16 seconds before Greene scored. I get it if it's an odd man rush or breakaway that leads directly to a goal, but 15+ seconds of possession before? Stupid.

 

It's only two games, but early impressions...Hall has created several chances his linemates haven't finished. I keep having flashbacks of a young Parise seeing #9 flying around out there. Henrique looks like he's starting out on a cold streak, but that's nothing new. Palmieri can't seem to hit the net so far. Zacha looked good in the season opener but invisible against Tampa. DSP has been terrible. Wood plays like a bull in a china shop but has taken a couple of undisciplined penalties already. Fiddler has been a beast on the PK.

 

As for the defense, they've been kind of hit or miss. Greene hasn't started out particularly well. Severson looks more poised, but got completely manhandled on the OT winner by Florida. Auvitu has been a pleasant surprise creating some offense, but has also made a couple of boneheaded plays in his own end. The rest have been unremarkable. Bit I figure it'll take some time to figure it out.

 

And Schneider is...well...Schneider. He gave up a crappy goal tonight, but as usual without him the Devils probably lose handily.

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Hall with both goals in a 2-1 win over the Ducks in the Devils home opener. This French guy Auvitu has been a nice addition so far. He might just be their Schlemko of this season if he keeps it up. Also, Zacha was really noticeable tonight after being invisible last game. I wouldn't mind them trying him with Hall for a game, although Hall seems to be working well with Zajac.

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Zacha with 2 assists last night (and a smart play driving the net to open up space for Zajac on the GWG). He looks pretty damn good alongside Hall. He's about the only center the Devils have that can keep up with him. Especially since Henrique has started the season in one of his MIA streaks.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

The Devils are doing much better than I thought they would this early. Granted, they've played Carolina and Buffalo in home-and-home series the last 4 games, but points are points.

 

Hall is so much fun to watch, especially for a team that has sorely needed top end skill for years now. He could have more points if guys could finish the chances he creates. Severson has been impressive on defense, now with 11 points in 14 games.

 

About the only real negatives recently are Henrique and the PP. Rico has been a non factor too many nights so far. He usually has at least one stretch like this every season though, so I'm not too worried yet. The PP has been just awful the last 6 games. Just entering the zone is a struggle. Then once they finally set up they can't hit the net or just kind of stand around hoping something will happen. 

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8 hours ago, MadDevil said:

The Devils are doing much better than I thought they would this early. Granted, they've played Carolina and Buffalo in home-and-home series the last 4 games, but points are points.

 

Hall is so much fun to watch, especially for a team that has sorely needed top end skill for years now. He could have more points if guys could finish the chances he creates. Severson has been impressive on defense, now with 11 points in 14 games.

 

About the only real negatives recently are Henrique and the PP. Rico has been a non factor too many nights so far. He usually has at least one stretch like this every season though, so I'm not too worried yet. The PP has been just awful the last 6 games. Just entering the zone is a struggle. Then once they finally set up they can't hit the net or just kind of stand around hoping something will happen. 

 

My own little nickname for him is Chance. Terrific speed with the puck, pushes defensemen way back, and can create quite a bit of havoc in the offensive zone. Underrated passer, and just a lot of fun to watch with the puck.

 

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10 hours ago, JR Ewing said:

 

My own little nickname for him is Chance. Terrific speed with the puck, pushes defensemen way back, and can create quite a bit of havoc in the offensive zone. Underrated passer, and just a lot of fun to watch with the puck.

 

He tried a move last night that I've never seen. He was coming in one-on-one with a defensemen, he purposely threw the puck at the guy's chest, it fell down between the defenseman's legs and Hall nearly went right around him and had a scoring chance. And the pass he made to Lappin was just beautiful. The defender put his stick flat on the ice and Hall just floats it right over his stick and perfectly onto Lappin's.

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47 minutes ago, MadDevil said:

He tried a move last night that I've never seen. He was coming in one-on-one with a defensemen, he purposely threw the puck at the guy's chest, it fell down between the defenseman's legs and Hall nearly went right around him and had a scoring chance. And the pass he made to Lappin was just beautiful. The defender put his stick flat on the ice and Hall just floats it right over his stick and perfectly onto Lappin's.

 

Yup. Yup, that's the kinds of things he'll do. He's not a perfect player, but he's absolutely deadly in the offensive zone.

 

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4 hours ago, yave1964 said:

Good to see Kyle Quincey with his first goal with the Devils the other night, one of the good guys who makes up for diminishing skill with brains and brawn, the old fashioned way.

 

He's been a nice addition on the third pairing. Just a steady reliable guy who more often than not will make the smart play. He's a pretty solid partner for Auvitu, who is more of a risk taker.

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Well that California trip sucked. It looked good being up 2-0 on Anaheim, then they gave up 2 goals in 16 seconds to blow the lead and the wheels came off the rest of the trip with two pretty pitiful performances against LA and San Jose.

 

No Hall, no Cammalleri, and then no Palmieri. The one thing they really couldn't afford was injury issues in the top 6 and of course that's exactly what's happened. It would help too if Henrique would figure out whether he's hot or cold. It looked like he was starting to wake up a few games ago, but has since gone cold again (he got himself benched against the Kings). Hall can't come back soon enough.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I really can't say enough how fun Hall is to watch, especially for a team like the Devils who haven't had very many highly skilled and entertaining forwards over the years. He's just such a pace setter for them this year. Had 2 points again tonight in a 3-2 win.

 

I hope Larsen is okay. That hit, while clean, was rather unfortunate. Thankfully the game didn't spiral out of control like it was threatening to at the time. And I must say, Erik Gudbranson is a knuckle dragging neanderthal.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The wheels have officially come off. After a 9-3-3 start the Devils are now 3-8-3 in their last 14 games, and have given up 3 or more goals in 13 of those games. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a Devils team that is this bad defensively. There is absolutely no cohesion between the forwards and the defense. There are gaps in coverage seemingly every night that a Zamboni could drive through. Then you've got the normally steady Andy Greene playing like trash lately, and the equally normally steady Schneider giving up goals left and right. The defense isn't helping him at all, but this is the worst he's ever looked as a Devil.

 

The most damning thing though is that the team looks like it's tuned Hynes out, and I don't really see why that would be. It's not like he's some hardass that constantly punishes players. In fact I think he could actually be more strict on certain players (Adam Henrique, I'm looking at you). And why would they tune him out after they got off to a better than expected start? It just doesn't make any sense.

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On 12/16/2016 at 3:27 AM, MadDevil said:

The wheels have officially come off. After a 9-3-3 start the Devils are now 3-8-3 in their last 14 games, and have given up 3 or more goals in 13 of those games. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a Devils team that is this bad defensively. There is absolutely no cohesion between the forwards and the defense. There are gaps in coverage seemingly every night that a Zamboni could drive through. Then you've got the normally steady Andy Greene playing like trash lately, and the equally normally steady Schneider giving up goals left and right. The defense isn't helping him at all, but this is the worst he's ever looked as a Devil.

 

The most damning thing though is that the team looks like it's tuned Hynes out, and I don't really see why that would be. It's not like he's some hardass that constantly punishes players. In fact I think he could actually be more strict on certain players (Adam Henrique, I'm looking at you). And why would they tune him out after they got off to a better than expected start? It just doesn't make any sense.

 

 It is quite stunning to see a Devils team "this" bad in it's own zone. The Devils have been a lot of things in their time, but besides the early years, the trend of not giving up goals at an alarming rate and having stingy goaltending have been staples...until this year. The games I have seen, there is a real problem getting the pucks out of their own end and up to the forwards efficiently. Another startling thing is the defensive zone coverage. It is a mess. Schneider has not been playing up to expectations, but this team has hung him out to dry many times, way to many odd man rushes.

 

He was young and all, but this team REALLY misses the steady presence of Larsson. They got a good return and all, but Larsson had more of an impact on games that the Devils management would like to admit.

 

 I saw they called up Quenville, has he played a lot?  That kid is money, very nice all round player. The real prize is McLeod, last years first rounder....that kid is a star, plain and simple.

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Quenneville only played a couple games and didn't play very much, but I've liked what I've seen from him between training camp and his limited time in the NHL. He doesn't do anything really flashy, but he seems to do a lot of little things pretty well. He reminds me a little of Henrique actually, although I don't know if he'll ever have the scoring touch Rico has (when he's not being publicly called out by the GM anyway).

 

The kid who has impressed me the most this season for them has been Miles Wood. The kid has incredible wheels, and just goes all out all the time. If his hands ever catch up to his feet he's going to be a good one.

 

Zacha on the other hand has been a little disappointing, but he's still only 19, so I'm not too worried. He needs to work on his positioning (which can be said for a lot of rookies). When he's in good position he almost always makes the smart play and clearly has the skill to be good at this level, but sometimes he looks lost in terms of knowing where to be. He should probably be in the AHL, but it's either the NHL or Junior for him.

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I don't even know what to say anymore. This has gone beyond merely a slump. They've given up 5 goals in 4 of their last 8 games, and have allowed at least 3 goals in 18 of their last 20 games.:blink[1]:

 

I like Hynes, but I don't know how much longer Shero can let this continue before being forced to shake things up. I thought the defense would drop off at least some this year, but it's starting to get ridiculous how bad they are defensively. And then you've got Cory Schneider who has had like 2 good games since the middle of November. It's just bizarre how quickly everything went so wrong.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@MadDevil

 

Seriously, what is wrong with Schneider? I know that their big offseason netted Hall for Larsson and the defense is vanilla to put it mildly. Severson is turning into quite the puckmover but is not the worlds greatest shut down guy and the replacing Larsson with Quincey truly is subtraction by addition but wow.

  I do not watch every Devil game but from what I have seen on NHL Network and the half a dozen or more NJD that I have seen, Schneider seems to be out of sync with his defense, almost every goal he flips his mask up and glares at one of his defense which is rare and unusual in this game. There is a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher named Gaylord Perry who used to do that when a fielder behind him made an error or failed to hit the cutoff man he would stand on the mound staring for an uncomfortable amount of time simply withering the poor schmuck who made the misplay. That is what I have seen from Schneider more than once this season.

  I still see him as a top five goalie and think he will hit a hot streak and get it together but perhaps they should follow the Rangers lead, when the King struggled Raanta was given like three pr four starts in a row, maybe Kinkaid should do the same.

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Well, Cory did have almost a week off last week and he's been better since then (not counting his puckhandling blunder against Toronto). I think it's kind of helped that they've dialed back a bit in front of him and are playing a more conservative system (or as I like to call it the "turtle and pray" system).

 

The rest of the team is still a disaster though. Henrique is back to skating around like he doesn't give a ****, Cammalleri looks old and done, even Hall has been guilty of floating lately. He tried an idiotic 1-on-4 move last night that made me want to throw something at the TV.

 

Now you throw in both Greene and Moore being injured and they're basically icing Severson and an AHL caliber defense. They've actually done a pretty respectable job so far, but that's only going to last so long.

 

The thing that truly pisses me off is the apparent lack of care this team has. It's like they've just accepted losing and don't care what happens anymore. It's pretty sad that 75 games removed from prep school hockey Miles Wood has shown more leadership than established NHL players.

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  • 4 weeks later...

This team is hard to figure out. They won 8 of their first 10 at home, but only won 4 of their first 21 on the road. Since then they've won just 2 of their last 13 at home, but have won 8 of their last 9 on the road.

 

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  • 1 month later...

This team sucks. 9 straight losses going into tonight. If they lose it would be back to back losses to Colorado and Arizona. Of course this is the year they completely bottom out, when there's no McDavid, Eichel, Matthews, Laine, etc. Wonderful timing as always.:rage:

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@MadDevil

 

The numbers as a whole for this team ARE horrendous and certainly show why the team is where they are.

That said, perhaps a gleam of light for ya:

 

The Devils have a bunch of RFA contracts (mainly on the forward units, but Severson is an RFA as well on defense), so if the team really doesn't feel these guys are the ones to help move them forward, they can rid themselves of any number of them...which leads to...

 

The team will have more cap space than most this coming off season (according to capfriendly.com), which means they can be a bit more aggressive on the FA market.

 

Also, even though this upcoming draft isn't considered "deep", NJ does have two 2nd round picks, two 3rd round picks, and two 4th round picks, in addition to their own 1st rounder.....and the following draft year, they will have two 2nd rounders again, two 3rd rounders again, and still have their own 1st rounder as well.

 

Nothing here will auto-fix the Devils, but some careful discarding/retaining of RFA's, smart selection of free agents, and some damned good drafting, and this team could be on the up in about two seasons or so.

 

At the very  least, the goaltending is still pretty solid with Schneider, though maybe its just me, but if I were the Devils FO, I would look into getting a backup goalie who can play more than Kincaid, reduce Schneider's games played just a bit to give him a bit more longevity during this rebuild/transition....otherwise, Schneider's best years and play could be wasted on years where the team absolutely goes nowhere the whole time.

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21 hours ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

@MadDevil

 

The numbers as a whole for this team ARE horrendous and certainly show why the team is where they are.

That said, perhaps a gleam of light for ya:

 

The Devils have a bunch of RFA contracts (mainly on the forward units, but Severson is an RFA as well on defense), so if the team really doesn't feel these guys are the ones to help move them forward, they can rid themselves of any number of them...which leads to...

 

The team will have more cap space than most this coming off season (according to capfriendly.com), which means they can be a bit more aggressive on the FA market.

 

Also, even though this upcoming draft isn't considered "deep", NJ does have two 2nd round picks, two 3rd round picks, and two 4th round picks, in addition to their own 1st rounder.....and the following draft year, they will have two 2nd rounders again, two 3rd rounders again, and still have their own 1st rounder as well.

 

Nothing here will auto-fix the Devils, but some careful discarding/retaining of RFA's, smart selection of free agents, and some damned good drafting, and this team could be on the up in about two seasons or so.

 

At the very  least, the goaltending is still pretty solid with Schneider, though maybe its just me, but if I were the Devils FO, I would look into getting a backup goalie who can play more than Kincaid, reduce Schneider's games played just a bit to give him a bit more longevity during this rebuild/transition....otherwise, Schneider's best years and play could be wasted on years where the team absolutely goes nowhere the whole time.

Is it possible to see what the 2018 and 2019 draft will be like? (Barring a contastraphe)

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3 minutes ago, notfondajane said:

Is it possible to see what the 2018 and 2019 draft will be like? (Barring a contastraphe)

 

If you mean who has what picks, go to capfriendly.com , click on a team, and across the top, it shows what draft picks they have for the upcoming three draft years.

 

Devils look to be in good shape there....provided they scout and draft well of course.

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