I was gonna sit here and not focus on the negative tonight.  I’ve been focusing on the negative for two weeks while the Devils’ slump has been ongoing, since that home-and-home sweep of Pittsburgh.  It should be said we’re still in a good position with a 10-5-4 record and with a five-six point cushion over the playoff bubble for the moment.  I’m sure Derek would trade positions with me in a second considering the state of his Rangers, both record-wise and injury-wise…or Brian for that matter with his Sabres not exactly getting the ‘new coach’ bounce after Lindy Ruff‘s dismissal.  With our playoff cushion, there’s still time to resolve our issues before we go to DEFCON 1.

That said, as the losses to bad-mediocre teams are piling up it’s getting harder to ignore the negative returns during this Devils’ 2-4-1 stretch against not exactly the beasts of the East.  Specifically our horrendous ‘special’ teams, which continue to cost this team games.  Granted, today’s game wasn’t exactly a power play orgy with only four minor penalties in the contest.  However, the Devils’ two power plays were predictably infuriating with too much cycling over to players’ non-shooting sides.  I really don’t get the concept of Brad Shaw’s power play, or how it ever worked in San Jose.  Obviously they had better power play personnel, but from what I’ve seen of our man advantage, we put our players in positions to fail.  Ilya Kovalchuk in particular spends too much time off the right wing, cycling back toward the left or passing instead of ripping a one-timer from the left side or the center point, or being able to get off a clean shot.  They have been effective five-on-three (five for eight), propping up their overall percentage from what would be a bottom third to12th in the league, but you can’t count on 5-on-3’s in the playoffs.

And the penalty kill?  The less said, the better.  Our overall numbers in our last nine games (13 PP goals allowed in 32 chances) say it all.  No matter what the Devils do, they haven’t been able to kill a penalty seemingly since last March.  It would be easy to pin our hideous PK this year on the loss of Zach Parise to free agency and Danius Zubrus to injury, as they were two of our six key forwards last year on Dave Barr‘s record-breaking regular season penalty kill.  However, even with Parise and Zubrus around they were undressed repeatedly in last year’s postseason and it hasn’t been quite the same since.  I don’t know if I can pin this on system, as much as personnel and mental mistakes – such as Jacob Josefson drifting over to the right side when Stephen Gionta was already there on our ill-fated first PK today.  Gionta’s failed clear led to Grant Clitsome getting a wide open shot on Johan Hedberg and firing a wrister that somehow muscled out of Hedberg’s glove and in for the tying goal in the second period.

Why Hedberg was even in was a cause for concern, as Martin Brodeur was supposed to start but his back tightened up in warmups and Hedberg had to play a back-to-back.  After Moose’s first three starts were outstanding, his last three have been anything but, particularly playing the puck.  For a guy that doesn’t play the puck very well Moose still tries to emulate Marty too much at times and gets in trouble, the way he did with Eric Fehr‘s shorthanded goal yesterday.  Moose’s overagressiveness to make stick plays hurt him again late in the second period when a weak Adam Larsson shot was blocked, and suddenly Evander Kane was streaking down the middle past Larsson and Andy Greene, as if he hit the turbo button in NHL13.  Larsson and Greene were both a step behind him and could have possibly disrupted Kane’s shot but instead, Moose made a desperate attempt at a poke check and Kane sidestepped him and put it in the vacated net to give the Jets a 3-2 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

Perhaps the Devils still hadn’t recovered from giving up yet another PP goal earlier in the period.  There was a certain amount of drop in their play from the first half of the game before Clitsome’s goal to the latter half.  At 2-2 that goal shouldn’t have been a killer but maybe this team’s had enough of hearing and reading about their lousy penalty kill and it affected the rest of their game.  Then again, the Devils made their share of mental mistakes even before that point, specifically the Jets’ first goal 2:30 into the game, indirectly caused by a fight between Krys Barch and Anthony Peluso.  With Barch serving his five minutes, Kovy had to get out on the ice for a second consecutive shift when the fourth line was out there.  Kovy and Gionta both got tied up in the attacking corner, and Kovy coasted back as Zach Bogosian beat both fowards into the zone by a mile and fired a one-timer home from the point to get Winnipeg on the board first.

There were positives to be sure, starting with the play of Andrei Loikotonov.  For the third straight game, the former Kings washout has continued to gain notice with his offensive creativity, nearly scoring in the first period on a breakaway when he deked out Ondrej Pavelec, but didn’t quite have enough of an angle to put it in the open net.  Our pocket Russian dynamo did get on the board for the third straight game later on, when his shot rebounded to Steve Bernier for a goal at 17:10 of the first period, giving the Devils a 2-1 lead.  Perhaps more crucially Travis Zajac finally got on the board before that, when Patrik Elias‘s pretty backhand feed on a two-on-one gave Zajac enough time and space to beat Pavelec with a wrister at 9:52.  Even Steve Cangelosi would say later on this game had the look of a great night for the Devils after the first period.

Of course, it was not to be.  Perhaps the only good news besides the fact Brodeur’s injury is supposedly not serious – if you believe him and coach Pete DeBoer – is that the team has nearly four full days off before the return match of our home-and-home in Winnipeg.  Conversely, the Jets have to play their fifth game on the East coast Tuesday against the Rangers.  You could say the Devils need to take advantage of a Jets team that might be flat, as teams usually are in the first home game back after a long road trip, but also the break itself is important to iron out issues that have cropped up.  Many of the Devils’ problems are correctable.  Perhaps an acquisition would help, specifically a third-line grinder who can win faceoffs and kill penalties…things neither Gionta or Josefson have done very well this season.  Another scoring/creative forward might help too, although reinforcements are eventually going to be available with Zubrus and Ryan Carter coming off the injury list before the end of the regular season.