If it wasn’t time to sound the alarm before today’s 4-3 shootout loss in Buffalo, against a last-place Sabres team missing its best player in Thomas Vanek, then it surely is now.  Or move the DEFCON level, the way they did in Wargames when Armageddon appeared at hand.  Just when you think things can’t get much worse after losing to Team IR (Ottawa) at home on President’s Day, or getting whipped by the Isles and the Caps, or losing two straight to the Jets – all non-playoff teams mind you, until Winnipeg’s recent spurt put them on top of the Southleast division – comes today’s latest wonderful performance against Buffalo.  Yes, they finally scored three goals and yes they ‘only’ lost in a shootout but enough is enough already.  This was another point thrown away in a season where you can’t throw away points.

I’m tired of hearing all these teams aren’t as bad as their record either.  At some point you have to start beating the teams below you in the standings, especially when they’re last-place teams missing their best player!  You’re not always going to beat the good teams, but good teams take care of the cellar-dwellers.  We haven’t been doing that lately.  Even finally having a (mostly) healthy lineup didn’t help, although Martin Brodeur‘s loss is being felt even more than expected with the subpar play of Johan Hedberg.  Whether it’s playing the puck or standing like a statue in the shootout as two wristers go through him, Moose has been a dissapointment when the team needed him to carry the ball with Marty on the shelf with back issues.

Maybe Marty’s back was tired by helping make this team look like it was elite when it really wasn’t early in the season.  Moose had a couple of good starts in that run too, but really Marty’s puckhandling helps the offense out, and Moose has gotten himself into trouble multiple times during this streak trying to overcompensate and use puckhandling skills he doesn’t have.  Not that Marty would have been able to do much with the utter brain cramp during another powerless play at 7:17 of the second period when useless Bobby Boucher Butler drifted away from the slot, and Ilya Kovalchuk and Andy Greene both went toward Cody Hodgson but didn’t take away the passing lane, leaving Jason Pominville wide open in the slot (on a power play, remember!) for as easy a one-timer shorthanded goal as you’re ever going to have.

Ironically it was Pominville’s weak backcheck on Adam Henrique that let him have enough time to score an uncontested shorthanded goal of his own early in the third period to give the Devils the lead, after Steve Bernier had tied the game in the second period with a ‘right place, right time’ goal off his foot.  Did Henrique exchange words with Ryan Miller after scoring his goal?  That is the only thing I can think of that might explain Miller’s bizarre reaction after stoning Henrique to end the shootout a half hour later, when for reasons known only to him the goaltender of a last-place team decided to trash-talk after actually winning a home game for the first time since the Bush administration.

Of course, Buffalo was chippy the whole game from Patrick Kaleta and Steve Ott continually trying to get at Ilya Kovalchuk and David Clarkson.  This is where I don’t understand Pete DeBoer‘s decision to scratch Barch, and for the likes of Butler no less.  You play Krys Barch in like fifteen games where he’s next to useless and don’t play him against a team with big, physical, cheap players that are looking to out-muscle you since they don’t have the personnel to outtalent many teams without Vanek?  Not having Barch around came back to bite us in the first period when Clarkson had to drop the gloves with Ott, then Kovy took a needless penalty against Kaleta (though Kaleta should have gotten one too).

It wasn’t just their big guys either, the smallest Sabre on the ice in Tyler Ennis took a cheapshot at Henrique towards the end of overtime when of course no penalty called would make a difference heading into the shootout.  That kind of penalty should warrant automatic suspension, otherwise you just give every team a license to cheapshot before the skills competition.  To add insult to near-injury, Ennis scored in the shootout.

Honestly, the last time I was annoyed at any other team this much was the Sean Avery Rangers, and I normally root for the Sabres as an unofficial second team, especially feeling for fans like Clown who’ve never seen a major sports championship.  I lost a lot of respect for that organization after today though.  Maybe Ron Rolston wants to bring an edge to get his team out of their season and a half long malaise.  I can understand it from that perspective, but there’s being physical and just being cheap and the Sabres crossed that line a number of times for no good reason.

Being mad at the Sabres isn’t going to help the Devils resolve their own issues though.  Although we outshot them 26-14 in the first two periods, it was the most misleading shot total ever.  Most of the quality chances were by guys in Sabre jerseys and Pominville (one of their few offensive threats) was getting open all night.  Our eight-defenseman merry-go-round continues to accomplish zip, zilch and nothing with the latest scratch being Anton Volchenkov who’s been benched for the last two games.

Not that I have any love for Volchenkov, who’s been a dissapointment in a Devil uniform, but it’s ridiculous to have starting NHL defensemen as healthy scratches while you continually try to plug Stefan Matteau and other assorted role players into the role of first-line winger.  Ironically, Henrik Tallinder‘s been one of the better Devils the last two games since returning to the lineup – some other guys have to step up, starting with Marek Zidlicky who can be counted on for at least a couple of boneheaded plays/penalties a game.  Adam Larsson‘s game has regressed a little and Andy Greene is pulling his usual ‘hot for a few weeks, cold for another few’ that’s marked his career.

And yes our offense managed three goals today – with of course Andrei Loktionov scoring the tying goal in the third period for seemingly his nine hundredth straight game with a point.  What does it say when four castoffs (Loktionov and the entire CBGB line, reunited with the return of Ryan Carter from a concussion) are your entire scoring right now?  If it wasn’t for the Kings’ ridiculous center depth and perhaps buddy Dean Lombardi doing Lou Lamoriello a little bit of a favor by letting us have Lokti for a mere fifth-rounder, we’d literally have been shut out a handful of times already.

Lou’s going to have to pull a couple more guys like Lokti out of his hat for this team to get anywhere.  Even having Danius Zubrus get healthy doesn’t give this team a real first-line winger although Zubrus can fill that role better than the guys that have been doing it.  Zubrus slots in best as a second-third liner.  This team needs a goalscorer from somewhere, anywhere.  David Clarkson‘s dissapeared since he started getting banged up in Washington, Kovalchuk has been on and off, in part due to having the rotating mystery winger of the day on his other side that doesn’t belong on a first line, and Patrik Elias has also gone cold lately.  Nevermind the lack of production from centers Henrique (despite his goal today) and Travis Zajac, who looks utterly lost without Zach Parise, the way he did two years ago when he struggled to a 44-point season when Parise was out most of the season with injury.

Even though the season’s nearly half over (!) I wouldn’t say time is running out yet for Lou and Pete to figure out how to fix this team’s issues.  Certainly however, these losses to subpar teams have run out the cushion they built with their 8-1-3 start.