Broken Record

It was nice of the NHL to feature us in the Winter Class - what's that?  it was just a regular game, and the only one on? 

We didn't fucking score again and the other team did. We have really lost our mojo coming out of the break, and the schedule guy at the league didn't help at all. The pace of the game was surprisingly quick considering they played less than 24 hours earlier, and were getting decent ozone time, but no real chances as evidenced by the barely 1 xG after the first. They flatlined again in the 2nd, consecutive games AGAIN where we got absolutely zero going through 2 periods and a big fat zero on the scoreboard. 

The Kings scored on a dumbass flip play that should never have materialized how it did, but Luke made a  questionable decision to head man to Palat at the offensive blue line when he had Jack streaking up the wing, then got caught admiring his pass. Palat was flat footed (a theme) and the puck got intercepted, and then flipped over Luke where noted rookie Andre Lee got even, and then behind Pesce (who was also flatfooted) to bury a nice bar down semi-breakaway. This is the second consecutive rough outing for Luke and Pesce where some bad cheating habits are creeping into their game. Also, one thing that drives me crazy is Luke occasionally attempts longer/stretch passes to a motionless person at the blueline.  I realize there is a designed tip-dump-in play, but this one didn't work and I'm not sure what a motionless Palat is supposed to do there with two guys on his back.

I honestly can't think of a single positive play coming from our team -  except for the goal called back. I try to be as impartial as I can and as Bobby mentioned while recording last night (to listen to today, yay!) how would I look at this if the roles were reversed.  The absolute mental gymnastics the LA crew (thanks NHL Network!) were doing to try and sort this out in their favor was laughable, because surely there was way too much time between the goalie contact and the actual shot from Timo, right? Right??! I'm going to beat a dead horse here, but I truly don't get how that gets called back.  Yes there was contact, but Noesen was well clear, and the rebound had already sprung out and Kuemper had plenty of time to reset when Timo shot it.  There doesn't seem to be any sort of time parameter which is ridiculous, because that leaves a pretty open-for-interpretation to the refs. Noesen was pretty blunt in his assessment after the game basical;ly saying he doesn't get it either.

The 3rd was an awful, slow, painful bleed out, where LA added a second after a PP. Pesce (flat footed again) let Byfield get behind him and rip one through Jake. Allen will likely say he wants that one back but honestly the way that developed, I don't fault him - we need to tighten shit up and there is no reason a dangerous guy, who has been on a heater, should get behind the D on that one. 

Empty, netter.  Fuck you LA, they did to us what we had been doing to teams. 

Allen finished the game with almost 2 GSAx and between him and Markstrom have really solidified the position putting us in a position to win game after game. At least we don't have that to complain about. 

The concerns about secondary scoring and the Devils failure to finish has reached neon sign blaring levels.  Here is a chart that shows it falling off a cliff in all situations since late November (also mentioned on the podcast that you should listen to).

I did a little digging to investigate scoring balance on teams, based on the percent of goals coming from the top 5 goal scorers and top 10 goal scorers.

The top 14 teams from 23-24 (15 was the Islanders and lol I'm not including those fucking losers) are below with their total goals, % scored by top 5 and % scored by top 10. it is sorted by final points, so the regular season champion NYR are first etc.. 

As you can see most teams are a little above 50%, with some of the more balanced deeper teams just below 50% (CAR, DAL, WIN) and truly star-heavy teams (NYR, TBL, TOR) above 60%. When looking at top 10, you can see a little less disparity in range, with the fraudulent teams topping out at 83%.

So how about this year's Devils?  Glad you asked:

Not bad right, actually seems kind of balanced.  Well this is for the whole season.  

But if you dig into these a bit and look at the forwards only (not like we get much goal scoring from our D), it's a little more skewed, and gets worse and worse as the season wears on: 

As you can see it gets progressively worse each month as forward scoring dries up, and in fact from 12/1 only 8 forwards had scored, and one of them only has one goal. Of the 31 forward goals since 12/1, 3 guys have 17 of them: 55%.  

So this just shows what we've all seen happening.  And with minimal cap space, and the calculated way Fitz moves in-season, the answer needs to come from inside the room.  Mix shit up.  Do Bratt and Jack need to be split?  What to do with Haula? Cotter-Haula isn't working. Is Mercer a true passenger now? Is there a solution in the AHL? Dig deep boys, we can't fall off now. 

We have seen the best of this team offensively, the best of this team defensively, and the best of this team in goal.  It's there, they just need to find that Mojo again and piece it all together.  I have faith. Enjoy looking at prospects in the 7-12 range, Valiquette.

LGD