I think a few on this blog are up in Albany. I'm working up there this week. If anyone wants to meet to watch, could be fun. I'm open to anywhere. I have been to the Recover Room, but my luck there is not so good.

Gotta support the team. This is the playoffs.

My fan post needs to be 75 words. So I'll just wrap up with Go Devils. Go Devils, Go Devils, Go.

Many participants in this board, as well as other Devils forums have been highly critical of the Devils D. Certainly, there is room for improvement there, and this is not the D of the pre-lockout Devils. However, my position is that the offensive ability of the defense is a much bigger liability.

The Devils rank 18th in Goals Against / Game. If you take out the anomaly of the ridiculously high number of SHG, which is not really a defensive issue, they would move up a few notches.

In goal scoring, the Devils rank 27th. I'm a simple guy, and when I see that a team is middle of the pack in scoring defense, and at the bottom in scoring, there's a pretty clear indication of where the problem lies.

So what to do to get the scoring up. Many will point to Kovalchuk and Parise. While it would also be great if their numbers were a bit higher, I don't see this as the biggest cause of the issues. It is in part made up for by Elias, who is probably scoring more points than we might expect at his age, as he is on pace 70 this year.

You have several other teams doing well this year that have guys leading the team that are not that far ahead of the Devils. Minnesota's Mikko Koivu leads their team with 26. Tyler Seguin leads Boston with 26. Marian Gaborik and Brad Richards were right around Elias' numbers.

The Devils defensive core is where the numbers clearly stand out, in terms of contributing to the offense. The Devils D in total has 25 points. In contrast, let's take a look at just the TOP 3 Defensemen other top teams - Flyers 45, Bruins 40, Panthers 58 (whoa), Penguins 38, Rangers 38, Black Hawks 44, Red Wings 45, Blues 32.

There is alot of talk about lines, and Kovy and Zach not fitting together, Tedenby needing to move around, etc. To me the biggest problem is there is NOBODY on the blue line who can help set up and take the pressure off the forwards. Fayne has probably been the most consistent overall. Greene has to be viewed as a big disappointment. Larsson leads the team and shows promise, but its a pretty undesirable situation to be depending on a rookie to be the man.

Personally, I hope and think Taormina will help. But that is not enough. And the problem is there is nobody else on the roster who appears to have the potential to do so. Definitely not Volchenkov, nor Salvador (on a separate note, clearly based on his performance Bryce should not be offered a new deal after this year). Tallinder is really a big letdown here, he has two points for the season. Ugh.

A move is going to need to be made for a d-man who can at least ad a moderate amount of offensive punch. The only options I can really see are trying to deal Tallinder and perhaps a prospect for somebody, anybody. More than a third of the season is now burned, some of the issues are becoming clear. Action should come soon in my view, hopefully in January. Thoughts?

So with the season nearly a third gone, I got to thinking about how insanely good the Devils PK has been. At nearly 95%, the Devils are far ahead of any other team. Any time there is an outlier statistic like that, I always wonder about the dreaded reversion to the mean. So I did a little research

Continue reading this post »

So both were waived and cleared waivers back on October 4.  However, neither was sent down, as it looks like the Devils (who also own the Albany team) do not want to pay NHL salaries for playes in the AHL. 

Under the waiver rules, as I understand it, they can only stay up for 30 days or 10 games, whichever is sooner.  I am not sure if games where they are scratched count toward the 10 games, I would think they do.  Regardless, at the most, in early November, something has to happen with them.

What is the consensus among this group?  Will Lou just immediately put them on recall waivers, in which case either could be picked up by another team, and if I finally have the waiver process figured out, we will be stuck with half their cap hit and half their salary?  Or will they get sent to the minors at that point? 

What if they get put on re-entry and nobody takes them, then what?  Do they end up just staying up for the season?  If the decision has not been made that they are not considered viable players, then why were they waived in the first place?  Just as a favor to the players to allow them to get picked up with another team?

Sorry with all the questions.

Can anyone comment on how an NHL player's pay is actually calculated?  Curious about it for the guys moving back and forth between the AHL.  So Henrique for example has an AHL salary of $65k, but an NHL salary of $612,500.  Obviously a huge difference.  So did he get paid his NHL salary based on playing 3 out of 82 games, or is it based on the number of days up in the NHL.  If it is number of days, when does the season run for pay purposes?

Finally, is the pay only paid out over the regular season?  What happens during playoff time.

Sorry, I'm a Finance guy.  This kind of stuff always interests me

Saw on ESPN that Doughty got 56 million over 8 years, so $7 mil a year cap hit.  Any thoughts on how this might impact what it will take to land Parise?  Seems like it will take similar numbers at least to get Zach.  I did not realize Doughty was that young.  

My impression was that this will mean the Devils will need to come up with slightly more than I would have thought a few weeks ago.

I was noticing that the Devils don't seem to have any players who post on Twitter.  Given that the organization is generally a pretty tight ship, I wonder if this is formal team policy?  Does anybody know?  What are the opinions of this group on whether allowing players to tweet is a plus or a minus for the sport?  I wonder if this will come up as a collective bargaining item.

From my point of view, if there are a few rules for the players on permissible topics/language it is a big plus.  Its another way for the players to connect with the fans

So its been a fine and respectable run for the Devils this year after the horrible start, and what is of course enjoyable is the promise for next year that the 2nd half surge has provided.  However, there is now a big change on the way for us in just one season and 9 games, the likely end of the Marty Brodeur era.  My wife swears I will be crying for days.  Marty still seems to be in great shape, so who knows, maybe he signs a short deal and plays beyond his current contract.  But some of his comments lead me to believe he will just play out the current one and hang them up before he starts to slip.  The guy has been everything anyone can ask for, so I feel a bit weird in a way having the discussion, but I guess I just decided to see what everyone thought.

There have been a few discussions around goaltending future.  I thought about this when I saw an article about Bryzgalov and Vokoun both being available after this year.  So who is available after 2012, given that it does not look like we have the guy in our system - Frazee has had injury issues from what i have read and in general just seems to have not stepped up yet.  So who will be available after the 11/12 season?  Note - all contract terms per Capgeek.

Continue reading this post »

I won't be saying anything new here when I characterize the first half of this season as a disaster worse than any nightmare any of us could have imagined, and even significantly worse than the biggest Devil haters out there.  But that does not mean we cannot still get a lot of enjoyment out of the 2nd half of the season.  I think that starts with a change in mindset for us as fans, which I will touch on later in the post.  But here are my 5 goals for the 2nd half that can give us confidence going into next year

Continue reading this post »

So I have been to opening night and then also against Colorado last Friday.  Opening night was technically a sellout, but there were a ton of no-shows, way more than opening night last year.  That is a bit understandable since last year opened with Philly.  My brother in law went to the Penguins game and indicated it was a lousy crowd.

The game last Friday against the Avalanche was the worst crowd I have been to at the Rock.  I went to a comparable early game last year against the Thrashers and that was not even as bad as Colorado, and Colorado should be a better draw.

I did the calculations and for the last two games, attendance is down more than 13% compared to last year.  The games are similar (nights and opponents).  In fact this year of Colorado and Boston are arguable better than last year's Atlanta and Carolina.

That made me look up overall attendance, which can be found here.  Devils are 4th worst in the league in percent of capacity, only ahead of the Islanders, Thrashers and Blue Jackets. 

I really feel bad for the Team's management and for the players.  The fact that the team took the initiative to sign one of the biggest free agents ever available shows their committment to this market and fans.  Maybe the ticket prices should come down a bit, I have to admit I gulp a little bit at how much a game costs.  But to be close to last bluntly sucks, and it makes our fan base look like garbage.  Philly fans are always ragging on us at games about our crappy fan base, and you know what, this makes me think they are right.

Then read some of today's posts and the players actually sound more exicited to be going to Montreal to go play in a full arena (see for example Marty's quotes today)

I suppose this just a bit of a pointless rant, since there is really not much the members of this board can do.  It is just frustrating as hell.  We are asking the players to take a look at themselves and do better.  Our fanbase needs to do a hell of alot better too.

So, other than hit refresh 10,000 times, hoping Kovy is finally officially a Devil, what is one to do in August.  How about waste time with somewhat pointless hockey stats

Continue reading this post »

My understanding is that the cap his each year is based on the average salary over the life of the contract.  From what I read on capgeek, it seems that most of the contracts are relatively flat amounts, though some vary a bit year to year.  My question is about the cap impact if a player is traded if the contract is significantly different in the later years than the early years.  So for example let's look at a player with a 5 year contract at salaries of $8 million, 8, 6, 5 and 3.  That's a total of $30 million, or an cap hit each year of $6 mil.

But what happens if the player is traded after year 3 - the original team will have only booked $18 million in cap hit, but will have paid $22 million in cash - what happens to the $4 million.  Furthermore, what is the cap hit for the acquiring team - I would assume it is based on the remaining contract of 2 years $8 million combined, or $4 million per year

All - forgive my lack of knowledge, but can someone clarify for me why the Rolston situation is unresolvable?

Continue reading this post »

OK, so I have been as pessimistic as most regarding what has now gone beyond a slump and to outright, this is not a good team

But I happened to take a quick look a the 20 games again since that great win over the Rangers.  Check this out

We know the Devils are 6-12-2 in that 20 game stretch

But here is what I did not realize before looking at it.  Of that, road record is 2-10-1.  Even in this hideous stretch, they are 4-2-1 at home. 

They do play 10 of the last 18 at home.

I am at the game on Wednesday.  I am definitely discouraged, and definitely lacking in confidence, but I am going to be screaming my head off against the Rangers.  Whether we are frustrated or not, as fans, the only thing we can do at this point is get behind this team and try to help them get their confidence back.

I believe that the game next Wednesday against Florida will be Jamie Langenbrunner's 500th as a Devil.  I am pretty sure he has not been a scratch in any games this year.  He had 452 coming in to this season. 

I think there have been only 15 or so players who hit that mark with the team, so it is pretty impressive.

Wonder if it will garner any mention by the team at the game?

So I was looking at the recap of the Flyers game, and the attendance was 15700 - nearly 2k below capacity.  On a Saturday night.  Against a key rival.

It really pains me that our great, successful team is not doing better in attendance. I saw a quote from Lou back 7 or 8 years ago that "once we get our own building with access to mass transit you won't get a seat".  Atttendance overall is up, but if you look at the numbers closely, it really has alot to do with the fact that the Flyers opening night did alot better than the Islanders last year (obviously it should have) and then we played the Rangers in game 2.  Outside of that, the attendance is down alot of nights compared to similar games last year (though not by much)

Continue reading this post »

I do not like that Elias did not get included in the "Secret Six" trip to the HHOF for Lou's induction.  Maybe I am making too much of it, but those are the kinds of things that can fester in the locker room.  I am a Brodeur fanatic, but his answer that Patrik was not around is kind of lame.  He doesn't have a phone? I just think that speaks volumes.  Very odd.  Hopefully it is nothing but I have a weird feeling this is not the last we have heard of this.

A couple weeks back, John put together a post addressing the frustration and dare I say negativity of some fans about the Devils playoff record since the team last won the Stanley Cup.

That made me put together this little chart of what the Devils have accomplished.

(Manager Note: Chart is after the jump because it needs to be fully seen. Also, only minor spelling/grammar edits have been made.  Now hit that "Continue reading this post" link!)

Continue reading this post »