Thu 25 Oct 2007
9:20 PM ET: And that’s the puck game kids. 2-0 Rangers. Devils end the nine-game road trip 3-5-1. Shut out three times over the course of said road trip.  However, no points for Scott Gomez, and of course…the road trip is officially OVER. See you at The Rock!Â
9:19 PM ET:Â Devils net empty.Â
9:18 PM ET: For a game in which the Devs haven’t looked that bad, this is very disappointing. 2 minutes left.Â
9:14 PM ET: DAMMIT. Dawes on the power play. 2-0 Rangers.Â
9:12 PM ET: Sigh. Brylin off for holding. 4:50 left in the game, Devs still down 1-0.Â
9:11 PM ET: I say, a Devils goal would be REALLY nice right about now…Â
9:07 PM ET: A Devils goal would be really nice right about now.Â
9:03 PM ET: Devils manage one shot on goal on the PP despite a bunch of chances. Boo.Â
9:01 PM ET: Nigel Dawes follows up a quick shot on goal with an elbowing penalty, Devils on the power play.Â
8:56 PM ET: The PK is alive tonight! Shorthanded chances, denying odd-man rushes. I’m impressed, especially considering how anemic the kill has been. Zajac’s out of the box, remains 1-0 Rangers.Â
8:54 PM ET: Zajac to the sin bin for hooking.Â
8:53 PM ET: Malik - or as my father calls him, The Rangers’ Oduya - nearly gives away one to Parise in the Rangers zone. But not quite.Â
8:52 PM ET: Uh, yeah. Four minutes in and not much going down.Â
8:48 PM ET: Here we go, third period is underway.Â
8:30 PM ET: End of 2 and it’s still 1-0 Rangers. The way the Devils have been getting ransacked in the second period of late, I’ll take it. Stay tuned for period #3!
8:26 PM ET: Not a very good PP so far. So sad.Â
8:22 PM ET: Ryan Hollweg nails Johnny Oduya from behind. Ryan Hollweg goes to the box for this. Devils on the PP, oh-for-two tonight thusfar.
8:19 PM ET: Vishnevsky hit Gomez. I mean, not hard, but it made me giggle.Â
8:16 PM ET: Brendan Shanahan on the doorstep stoned by Marty…twice! I know Shanahan’s been shooting a lot and scoring not much, but those were top notch chances there.  Beautiful glove save on the last one.Â
8:14 PM ET: Pandolfo walks in uncontested only to be stopped by Henrik. Lame. Me no gusta Lundqvist.Â
8:13 PM ET: Marty with the save via helmet. Whatever works.Â
8:07 PM ET: Brodeur stones Drury on a shorthanded breakaway! Hey Marty! Welcome to ‘07-’08! You’re a little late, but hey, what’s a few games amongst friends?Â
8:07 PM ET: Devs creating some chances but zero goals. I’d like to see more goals guys.Â
8:04 PM ET: Sorry for the delay gang, Patricia is not feeling well, so it is I, Josh, taking you through the rest of tonight’s game. Devils on the PP early in the second period.
7:39 PM ET: Not a terrible period. I’d rather the first minute not count, but at least it was only one minute instead of 20. If the boys come out and play like butt for the second, I will poke myself in the eye. Call me Colin White.
7:38 PM ET: Clearly, this game needs a Johnny Oduya hat trick.
7:34 PM ET: Clarkson totally just stripped Jagr of the puck. Niiice.
7:32 PM ET: Man, Brookbank is a skinny mo’fo.
7:29 PM ET: Dare I say, Marty looks relatively solid so far? Don’t let me down, buddy. I will kick your butt.
7:28 PM ET: Whew, Shanahan rips one at Marty, who makes quite the nice save on the former Devil. Woo.
7:24 PM ET: Back and forth hockey! Asham enjoys a 2-on-1 chance, Mara blocks the passing lane, resulting in Asham giving Lundqvist an easy save. Asham appears quite frustrated from this, though, as he then takes a penalty. ‘nother Rangers power play.
7:23 PM ET: It’s gettin’ rough out in these parts. Brookbank, if you can’t play defense, at least hit someone. It’ll be mildly entertaining, if nothing else.
7:23 PM ET: Holy giganto-mush of players in front of Brodeur Batman! I HATE OUR DEFENSE. Seriously.
7:21 PM ET: Madden makes a decent play to get the puck to streaking Elias…but the Rangers know how to play defense, so this short handed chance is effectively ruined.
7:18 PM ET: Nice open ice hit by Clarkson…which is said to be a penalty, Rangers pee-pee. Let this not get embarrassing…
7:14 PM ET: And the Devils have life! The boys actually have some relatively decent puck time near Lundqvist, who is forced to make quite a few decent saves.
7:12 PM ET: Jagr is skating circles around said garbage defense.
7:12 PM ET: The defense looks like garbage.
7:09 PM ET: 1-0 Rangers. Yes, already. Absolutely crap-tastsic line change for the Devils, Shanahan takes the loose puck and gets it to Dawes who fires it over the blocker of Martin Brodeur. Poop.
We’re, like, not even a minute into this contest.
7:08 PM ET: How cute. Gomez is on the ice for the opening face off.
6:55 PM ET: Almost there.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Now if We could go right to the 3rd period all will be well, the usual suspects are playing well but as far as D goes, Martin is the only one I’m not ready to kill at this point. Actually Travis Z is the best D man on the ice right now, how F’d up is that? so I’m starting to think that most hits are now a penalty.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
wait a second..did the 2007-2008 New Jersey Devils actually play a second period??? call your mother’s folks..the apocalypse is coming
October 25th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I believe Racoonek (sp?) can be credited with that terrible turn over that gave the rangers that opening goal helping out his old pals? The only devil that looks like he wants to win is Marty imo. The rest of the devils are coasting and leaning after pucks as rangers skate by. Leaning = lazy, leaning = legs not moving leaning tells me alot about their attitude. And it’s not good.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
The devils looked flat after a huge rest they should be flying. Pathetic, if thats the best they can put out there we are gonna be playing second fiddle to the tri-state area teams that look a WHOLE HECK LOT BETTER THAN US.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Fire Sutter
Put Lou behind the bench
we are not a team anymore.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I didn’t know Dominique Dawes played hockey!!
What a heart wrenching game. Ottowa is probably going to do a lot worse to us Saturday. Poor Devs.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
We are gonna get rocked at the rock on Sat night
October 25th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
I’d at least give Sutter a home stand before firing him…Honestly they didn’t look bad tonight. No goals is of course unacceptable, but the team seems to be getting more comfortable in his system. Hopefully it gels quickly.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Rangers suck. What does that make us?
October 25th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Erase 1 min and who knows. At least they moved up from playing 40 min of hockey to 59 min. What the heck happened with that change. If they plug Panasonic one more time I’m going to lose it!!! Can we double shift mad dog and pando…right now they are the devs best goal scores…scary, very scary!!
October 25th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
We didn’t show anything tonight, not even a fight, all I read about this week was how the Devils are gonna show the Rangers we are out to put up a fight, if we cant get up to play them, we won’t do much this year….and that sux, cause this season I thought would be special, going into OUR new building.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Thank god for the Thrashers, cause they’re the only team worse than us.Man am I pissed off at our team this season.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Elias - trade bait, can’t shoot, won’t drive the net
Zubrus - waste of 3.4M, can’t do anything
Rachunek - can’t ever clear the zone, 2nd star for the Rangers tonight
Oduya - at least he drew a penalty this game
Asham - get him off the top 2 lines
Clarkson - fighting too much to get serious attention on top 2 lines
Brylin - who? helpful but too $ for a 4th line utility player
Martin - can’t 1-time a shot if his life depended on it
Brookbank - the best player tonight, just needs to move his feet some more and walk the blue line
October 25th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
We need personel changes, players that ARE good.
not players that were good, or might be good.
I’m tired of having a team that works hard but cant finish.
We cant hit the side of a barn with our shots.
And I’m totally tired about hearing from or about Gomez.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking !!
October 25th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
@ Josh~ System what system? Only time I saw forecheck or offense flurry was on our PK…big whooptydoo.
Our PP up until tonight WAS looking good but tonight it looked so sorry it was like watch the devils all those other years they’d pass it around til they panicked choked and gave it up. NOrmally almost giving up an odd man break in the process (Happened like every PP we had)
Lungwist had to make like two tough saves the whole game worthy of a shut out? Not really the Rangers defense should get the credit I havn’t seen our offense look that sad and uninspired in a long time. I hate when they give the goalie all the credit since he didn’t do much but jam his over-sized pads in the crease.
Brodeur looked great but I’ll trade Brodeur off his game for the rest of our offense on their game any day, you know why cuz brodeur can stand on his head do a cartwheel and cure world hunger in the crease it isn’t gonna matter much if we can’t score!!!
oh yeah and Madden’s offense ability looked exactly like what it looked like last year. Either centering it to nobody or Whiffing like there’s no tomorrow! KEEP SWINGING MADDEN MAYBE YOU’LL GIVE THE GUY A COLD!
PISSED PISSED PISSED!
October 25th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Ok Devils fans lets stay more optimistic.Todays game showed us that Marty can steel be very good,
Asham playing good but not on the second line(should be playing with Mad/Pando)I think its going to change when #15 comes back.Clarkson not good yet, Zubrus-need more time to get used to it and he will be ok. Elias- agree, not a $6 mil. player. Deffence-OH BOY,well you know.The new system is good just need more time, remember at the start of the season everybody were saying need 10-15 games to udjust. Let’s wait and see.(Sorry for speling)
October 26th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I loved Pat’s breakdown. Simply put, no one on the team is stepping up. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Asham is NOT a 2nd liner.
Elias, Zubrus, Gionta
Parise, Zajac, Clarkson
Pando, Madden, Asham
Rupp, Pelly, Bergfors.
We can’t fire Sutter. That’s not the answer, we haven’t even played a home game yet. We’re implementing a new system it does take time, but how long is the real question? Plus if we fire Sutter, what’s that say about us? No one would even dare take the job coaching us. They’d be worried the whole time. If a Sutter can’t get it done in NJ, there’s going to be a ton of questioning around the league about us.
We aren’t playing well, D especially. I thought Brookbank was our best Dman last night. Are you guys finally agreeing with me, Paul Martin is overrated? Racunick isn’t good. Vishnevski is aaahhh, Odoya is ok, Paul is overrated, Greene is pretty good and I think Mattao and Brookbank are our two best Dmen.
Offense- These guys aren’t playing well. We need to solidify lines. Get the same guys working with each other. That’s what Patty needs. Someone he knows will feed him the puck and will know where he’ll be. With that being said, might be time for a trade for another O man. Maybe wait for Jamie? Who knows, but something positive needs to happen soon or else we’re F’ed.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Oh and can we stop talking about Gomez? Seriously, he’s gone. Stop talking about, oh we have to do this to him, or this or that.
Gomez made a business decision. A very smart business decision. He wanted out last year but signed a 1 year deal. Lou’s cheap and Gomer knew he’d get more money elsewhere, so he did what anyone of you would do. Take more money. He’s won the cup, he’s not going to win one with the Rangers, but he’s going to make a ton of money. Plus his fiance’ is from Essex Fells, so they’re close to her family.
We have more important issues to worry about than Gomez. He’s gone. We should be concentrating on what we have on our team, compared to what we don’t have.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:58 am
agreed we definitely need a shakeup. Starting Saturday, Rachunek needs to sit in favor of Mottau, and the lines need to be shaken up. Bring up Bergfors and another AHL player, and bench one of the veteran forwards, to make a point. Elias and Gionta miss Gomez so much, they lost completely lost. How about at least putting them back together. Also, since Zajac and Parise had chemistry together last year, what about moving Zach back to LW with TZ. Zubrus doesn’t look like anything better than a 3rd line player, but we have plenty of those player types. We need a finesse playmaker that can setup our other guys. So many problems with this team, hopefully Lou will go back to concentrating on this team rather than the new arena after Saturday
and about firing Sutter, how come Lou never gets crap about the moves he makes. Other than Asham, Lou has made some aweful free agent signings since the lockout (Zubrus, Rachunek, Mogilny, Malakhov, McGillis, etc) yet he wouldn’t offer $5m/season to keep Rafalski. Maybe it’s time for Lou to step back from the GM seat and let Sutter build his own team. Then you’d see slackers like Rachunek, Oduya, Greene, Elias, etc banished to Siberia and replaced with some skilled hockey players who know how to play hockey.
October 26th, 2007 at 10:39 am
am i the only one getting very, very, VERY frustrated with paul martin?
He’s got a stick, why dosen’t he shoot?
October 26th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I see valid points in all your post’s
Lou isn’t great at signing players anymore, and he’s even worse at trading away players of value BEFORE they leave on their own and we get nothing in return.
If Sutter can get involved in signing the players his system needs than do it NOW, our team has never been this disoriented.
Paul Martin…moves the puck good into the offensive zone than freezes up..doesn’t shoot or make a good pass…totally frustrating.
We all know we have a terrible “D”, they can’t do anything positive…I accept that Sutter wants “mobile” D men for his system, but our guys dont get the puck to be mobile, and are always out of position to “defend”.Horrible
And as much as I like Elias, I think a change of scenery would be good, remember when we traded Arnott, I didnt think it was a good idea, but it worked out for both teams.
How about getting Arnott back?? or Brian Rolston back. These guys have been very good since we traded them away. We need something.
October 26th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
With the Wild’s hot start, Rolston won’t be going anywhere. He is a UFA next summer, but I doubt we’d have the cap space to sign him.
If the Preds sale to local ownership doesn’t go through, then there’s always a possiblity they will hold another firesale, making Arnott available, but they are barely over the cap minimum, so we’d need to send back as much salary as we’d take on from Arnott. As a matter of fact, their coach just benched Zidlicky (scratched from game) last night, how about getting Arnott AND Zidlicky to help out our team, send them Zubrus, Martin and a bag of pucks…
October 26th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Mike I’ll take that Zubrus trade in a heartbeat, but I think Lou loves martin (for some reason) but as far as Rolston, theres a lot of talk the Wild are gonna try to move him before the end of this year because they have 2 potential UFA’s and Rolston is the older of the 2 there-for expendable.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Seriously folks, you can have Scott Gomez back - as rookie Nigel Dawes in one game has scored as many goals as Gomez playing all season thus far. Wow.
A couple of comments….and I promise, no rubbing in the ‘win’ last night as both our teams look treacherously equal.
Rachunek sucks. He did as a Ranger, not sure why Lou took him on.
Marty is awesome. He commands respect for anyone that loves hockey, and two huge saves later, the score could have been 4-0. He is a huge asset that is sorely being compromised by your blueline. Sort of like my Ranger’s offense.
Rangers rule and good luck with the new opening Devils Lovers…see you there!
The Dark Ranger
October 26th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I see Danny Markov signed with Moscow Dynamo today……….so scratch him from the list of available D-men.
October 26th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Rolston is a multi-talented asset. That’s why I keep drafting him on my fantasy teams. He scores 5-5, PP and SH. Not sure if he would be a fit as a #1 center though. Isn’t he playing the LW now?
Markov is off the market, I guess we didn’t sign him in the summer for a reason. What a loser, he took
October 26th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Dark Ranger…your comments are acceptable (for a Ranger fan), we all told you Ranger fans this..”you totally overpaid Gomez”, he is a good puck handler, but he doesnt score that many goals, I dont care what system he is in, cause with us he got tons of ice time, PP time and he never played a defensive style himself, so he always was in the offensive mode.
As far as Rachunek, he was a knee jerk signing by Lou to replace Rafalski as a puck moving D-man. and your right he does suck…too many blunders doesnt equal his so-called offensive skills. And Marty is as good as you can get, you know there at least 5 goalies paid MORE than Marty..so he is a bargain really. Henrik is very good and Sather should have saved Gomez’s salary to pay Henry when he’s free, cause he’s worth a lot more than Gomer….hey maybe we’ll sign him away from you guys next year!!!
October 27th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Rolston would look great at LW on a line with Parise and Gionta, that’s for sure. I think the organization wants to move forward with Parise and Zajac as their top 2 centers, so why not start now, and leave them there.
Sutter finally called out Elias in the press, stating that he needs to step up for the $$$ he’s making.
What I don’t get is that Tom Giuletti reported that there are no lineup changes for tonight’s game. Why is Mottau not playing instead of Rachunek ????!!!
October 27th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
There are a lot of questions that need to be answered about Sutter and this team.
The players playing and the players not playing, and the trades we need to make. Only time will tell with whats really going on with this team. I guess only better things can be down the road (I really hope)