Our Good Old New Jersey Devils

by mrgreen on Jan 29, 2010 9:54 AM EST Comment 2 comments

"In Lou We Trust" - we had better trust Lou because he is the one that puts our great team together year after year. We are sitting in second in the east this year (regardless of going 4-5-1 in our last ten) and have the leat goals against with a mind blowing low 115. Our problem, we have less goals than the leafs (who we coincidentally play tonight) with 139. People may believe that our offense is underachieving,but it really isn't no not really. You look at some of high scoring teams in the league like Washington, San Jose, and Chicago. These three teams all have great puck moving and highscoring defensemen. For Washington Mike Green provides a great shot and passing (Ovechkin is often taking his spot on the power play at the point), for Chicago they have proven defensive scorer Brian Campbell and the pair of Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook. Finally Dan Boyle gets the offense started from the back-end with 43 points in 51 games.

As for New jersey we have no defense men who can give us that offensive spark. With Paul Martin gone and Andy Greene cooling off our only blue line offense can be seen in the future. Yes, I am talking about Matthew Corrente and Tyler Eckford being our future of offensive defensemen (I just don't see Mark Fraser doing that job for us). I would also like to talk about two other defensemen, one who played amazing and another who was terrible. Bryce Salvador showed us Devils fans why we are paying him 2.9 million with his outstanding game against Ottawa. Where as Mike Mottau showed us all why we are paying him 775k this year and have intentions on resigning. He deflected the shot from the point into his own net and made a soft play which resulted in a goal.

Back to the forwards now, Dainus Zubrus? I enjoyed Vladimir Zharkov playing on the team more than Zubrus. I don't care if he was out for 30 games. Theoron Fleury played with more edge in the pre-season this year and he hadn't played NHL hockey in more than 5 years, Zubrus' return was dissapointing to say the least. Just want to see if anyone can get a quote on why we are paying Brian Rolston 5 million a year, it must be because of his whopping total of 26 points, weak. He was also supposed to be our powerplay point man, he only has 5 powerplay goals. David Clarkson has played in half the number of games Rolston has and he has three powerplay tallies.

"In Lou We Trust" - who would have thought that Dean McAmmond would have 11 points in his 33 starts this season. He is also plus 1 and has just 16 penalty minutes, now that is a bargain at 500k a year. Let us really thank our goaltender the one and only Martin Brodeur. At 37 years old the guy is an athlete, still. He is going to make his 32 straight start against Toronto (makes you wonder why Yann Danis doesn't want to be traded) and leads the league in wins and shutouts. Talking about bargains, Brodeur makes less than Marty Turco (who has just 15 wins in 37 starts and has recorded just two shutouts) and devils fans should remember that when our Marty has the rare bad game.

The Devils will get back on track and "In Lou We Trust".

- A Green

Poll

Should the Devils make a deal for Dion Phaneuf or Sheldon Souray?

Yes, they need a big name defenseman

14 votes

No, when Paul Martin gets back everything will be alright

11 votes

Get another defenseman Phaneuf and Souray have too big of contracts

18 votes

43 votes | Poll has closed

All FanPosts and FanShots are the respective work of the author and not representative of the writers or other users of In Lou We Trust.

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Comments

You bring up a couple of points in your writing so let me see if I can hit some of the more prominent ones:

1. I agree with you about the defense not being particularly offensive this year. I think most of us expected scoring chances from the blue liner’s to come from Johnny Oduya and Paul Martin. It has been clear up until this point in the season that Johnny is having confidence issues in his game. I have seen a better overall player in the past week or so and I hope Johnny can continue to progress forward in his game. But judging cumulatively throughout the entire season, Oduya has been a dissapointment. Obviously, I can’t say anything about Martin because he hasn’t played in months. That leaves what defensemen to show some offensive skill? Surely we didn’t expect Salvador, White, Mottau, or Fraser to score much (although Salvador has had a couple of goals recently). They are all defensive defensemen. That leaves Greene, a huge surprise for the Devils this year but someone who has been brought back down to reality in the month of January. Ultimately, unless Johnny and Andy step up or Martin makes a huge return, defensive scoring is probably going to stay exactly where it’s been all year long: minimal.

2. It’s hard to hate on Zubrus based on his efforts in Ottawa and Buffalo because he was out for so long. Just look at what he did with Parise and Zajac against Toronto. That line could have easily scored five goals together if Parise capitalized on some of his second period chances. I’m incredibly intrigued to see what the ZZZ line does for us in the future. If there is one thing that Zubrus has always shown, it’s an intensity in the offensive end (forechecking) and his ability to be a two way player. Combining this skill with Zack and Travis may lead to a whole new dynamic of scoring opportunities.

3. Rolston has done better this year than last year. I think we are all a little frustrated by the amount of money he makes compared to his contributions, but overall he really hasn’t had that bad of a year. I’m still convinced that when Elias returns from his injury and plays alongside Rolston, both players will benefit tremendously because they play two different styles of hockey that each has their role.

4. I’m sure Danis realized that he would have a minimal workload when he was signed during the off-season. Marty’s workload has stayed the same throughout his entire career, there was no reason to believe it would change now.

"We aim above the mark to hit the mark." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Tim G on Jan 30, 2010 11:59 AM EST reply actions 0 recs