Preview of Toronto Maple Leafs @ New Jersey Devils 12/10/24
Chris (00:01)
Hey there, what's up, Devil fans? This is Chris from the Uncle Pucker New Jersey Devil Podcast. Gonna get out a quick little preview for tonight's big game against the Toronto Maple Leafs at home at the Rock. A couple things, just little housekeeping. So Jake Allen went out with an injury. We don't know exactly the extent of it. There's nothing out just yet, but Isaac Poulter has been brought up from the Utica Comets, so he'll be backing up Jacob Markstrom. For the time being, hopefully it's not
that long. Isaac Poulter is 23 years old. He played nine games so far with Utica. Now if you guys know, if you follow the AHL team at all, Utica struggled mightily for a huge chunk of this season so far. They just started kind of themselves on track when his numbers aren't good. They're three, he's got a 3-3-2 goals against and an 8-71 save percentage. Now if Jake Allen is out,
for a considerable amount of time. We might see Isaac Poulter in a game or two or in relief if, know, God forbid Markstrom gets hurt or ends up with a big giant clunker and Poulter comes in for relief, but let's hope that doesn't happen. I actually, the little bit that I've seen of Isaac Poulter, I like him and I'm kind of curious to see how he would do, excuse me, behind this defense this year with this team that does play pretty good defense.
when it's on its game, let's talk about the clunker that was on Sunday night there, the four nothing loss against the Colorado Avalanche where the Devils just, they look bad. There's really no other way to put it, right? They looked bad. They looked at a sink. just, was a rough game and that happens. It just seems like the shutouts happened to the Devils a lot. Already five on the year and I,
I don't know, I don't have any explanation for it, it's just weird. I've been following this team since the early mid 90s and I've kind of never seen this where you can be an offensive dynamo like the devils are and then just throughout the course of a year throw up these games where you just can't get anything right. And this is how it's been.
with these last what we've lost the last six losses five of them have been shutouts but there's a huge positive here this devil team is resilient they seem to bounce back after these games you know you go back to the calgary game excuse me when the devils are on their west coast swing western canadian swing they lost three nothing they came back next game and they beat the emminton oilers three nothing and then they get shut out by the san jose sharks one nothing
And then they come back and look at this, right? They said they lose to Calgary, three, nothing. And they come back and they beat the Western Conference champion, Emmett and Oilers, three, nothing. Then they get shut out, one, nothing to the shark or jumps yet to the sharks. And then they come back and beat the Eastern Conference slash Stanley Cup champion, Florida Panthers, four to one. And then they lose to Tampa Bay, four, nothing. And they come back and beat the Carolina Hurricanes four to two in the very next game.
shut out by the St. Louis Blues 3-0 and they come back and win a 5-4 game against Detroit. Then they lost 6-5 to Washington and they come back and win 5-1 against the Dirty Dirty Rangers. Then they lose 4-0 last night or Sunday night rather to the Colorado Avalanche and
TBD on how we are going to play tonight against Toronto Toronto played us once already this year It was the first game of the year It's a first home game of the year the third game of the season Devils were coming off that trip from Europe against Buffalo and They beat us and the Devils did not look particularly good I know that there's a lot kind of going around about this Colorado game where it was yeah We've been shut out before but this one seems different this seems like it was a worse loss and
I don't know. mean, no, all losses are not created equal and all wins are not created equal. And I understand that. And yes, the Devils look bad, but it was not just the fact that Colorado is a very good team and they played it. But a lot of our guys just didn't play good. So do you expect, you know, Brendan Dillon, Dougie Hamilton?
Mercer, Pilate, you expect these guys to continue playing badly? I don't. mean, like I said, this is the third game of a five game homestand. You have got to kind of get right on this game, but you're playing a very, very, very good Toronto Maple Leaf team. So Toronto right now, they are 16-9 and two. They have 34 points. They have a 6-30 winning percentage. That's good for ninth in the NHL.
They are sitting at a power play of 20%. That's good for 18th in the league. They're sitting at a penalty kill at 82.3. That's good for eighth in the league. They have a goal differential of plus nine. That's good for 11th. Their team save percentage is a 908. Now the Devils team save percentage has dropped below 900. It's now, I think like 899.
They averaged 28.63 shots on goal and they have some studs. I mean, there's really no other way to put it, right? We know that some of these dudes can, you know, a lot of these dudes can score. They're a great team with a guys that can put the puck in the net. Mitch Marner is leading them right now. He has 10 goals, 28 assists, 38 points. He's a plus four. You got William Nylander sitting at 17 goals and 11 assists for 28 points.
john to barris is resurgence of john to barris you take the captain see often you change the system up a little bit and john to barris looks like he just took a time machine back ten years he's got twelve goals eleven assists these twenty three points austin matthews who is sat out i think he's you know what he's played eighteen games this year so he's think that the maple leaves a plate so he's sat out nine games and he's already has eight goals and ten assists and eighteen points
and then you also have Matthew Nyes is sitting at 10 goals, 6 assists, 16 points these guys can put the puck in the back of the net Craig Berube has him playing some great hockey so okay, keys to the game this is a Sheldon Keefe look you you had him early on in the season right you came out of Toronto you had them come into your barn we knew all the things that
kinda we're going against the devils in that third game of the season and they ended up losing it so this is kinda not only a get right game to get back in it's a to revenge game if you will for shelving chief part two toronto got the better of them in part one so let's see how the devils to devils have to play better than they did against colorado or this is going to be the exact same thing you know the defense is got a you know it it look it's a you saw what happened in that colorado game right they
couldn't handle the speed colorado got up early and once they got up on us they just sat back they played their one three one date they'll didn't give us any anything off the russian that the devils had kind of started off early this year playing really well on the the dumping chase in the four check and everything they seem to kind of be getting away from that right now get back on that you are just as fast as toronto this could very well be in up-and-down game
a lot of chances at ronald has some good goaltending we know that and of course at the solar jersey kid is he gonna come in and do what everybody who either live in jersey grill born in jersey or played for jersey does to us which is you know just dominate us i just want to see devils come back come back strong it was a tough game against the the colorado avalanche now can you come back and
do what you did these last five losses, right? This is a resilient team. They don't let the bad habits pile up and they get right back into the W column. We'll see what happens. They're not good at home. They need to be better at home. There's a lot that this devil team needs to do. It's really awesome to see how good they are right now without kind of the final tweaks. And it's really exciting to see what this team's gonna look like.
come march and the changes that are going to be made and how much better they're going to be jack and brad need to do their thing they're gonna have to be able to i guess go toe to toe with whatever you know neil and mariner matthews are doing so you know that we have all scores on our into either are few guys i'm kind of expecting big nights from writing need to have big nights for the devils to win and and that's team of myer and nico he sure
not just defensively against those top Toronto lines they need to really contribute offensively it looks like they took that Sheldon Keefe put Dawson Mercer up on that line with Meyer and Heescher and moved Stephen Nason down to the third line with Cotter and Holla. Okay we'll see how that goes you know I like Nason up there but it also I like Nason on that third line so we'll see if you know they can get
Mercer jumpstarted a little bit. He definitely needs it. So that'll be something to watch for. We know what Jesper Bratt and Jack Hughes are going to do when they are at their game and just flying around. are so much fun to watch. The bottom line is, you know, we talked about it on the show that posted early this morning that we did last night. The Uncle Puckers, you can find out wherever you get your podcasts. And we talked about the
the bottom six and this depth and it just hasn't been deep. So yeah, we thought they were going to be a lot better off. I get it. The injuries, Baschen, Lazar, but I'm not convinced that Nate Baschen is going to come and solve our depth problem, the bottom six. I like the kid, Ligari, that we brought up, number 16. I thought he played very well. Curious to see how he keeps doing and maybe Nosik playing on that line with
You know, Holla, maybe he can get him going a little bit. And Tatar needs to get going. We knew that he wasn't going to be the Tatar he was two years ago for New Jersey, but these guys got to start contributing. They got to start putting the puck in the net. They got to start getting some assists. They have to start contributing offensively. And I think everything else will work itself out. Jacob Markstrom tonight, we know he's going to go. Allen's hurt. So either.
jaco mark strom is going to get the lion share huge bulk of the starts going forward if this injury is anything significant or you know like we said maybe we're gonna see polter which could be fun look at seven o'clock game at the rock it's huge it's going to be a ton of fun let's see if the devils can kinda get off that snide every team and toronto i didn't even mention this right the maple leafs are coming off a two game losing streak so they're gonna want to get right against us so both teams i think are playing
to kinda get on the right side here and this game serves as an after dinner mint after that colorado game right you just need it to get that horrible taste out of your mouth that's what this game could be we'll see they're playing a really good team if you guys are at all interested in one of these awesome uncle pucker new jersey devil stickers new jersey double podcast stickers by all means you can go to the uncle puckers dot com
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then you can just get the show off of the Uncle Puckers. That's about it. We're going to be posting another show most likely tomorrow where we'll recap this game and look forward to the upcoming schedule. That's about it. Thank you guys so much for listening. Talk to you soon.