Less than 36 hours before their season opener, the Devils made news by announcing that Cory Schnieder would get the nod tomorrow in Pittsburgh, the first time someone other than Martin Brodeur has started a season opener since 1993-94.  Brodeur won’t have to wait long to get back into action though, since he’ll be getting the home opener on Friday night against the Isles.  Brodeur had initially been slated to start tomorrow night, but his father’s untimely death changed the timetable as Marty was away from the team for a few days at the end of the preseason.  In any case I sort of expected each goalie would get two of the first four games, with two straight back-to-backs to open the season.

Of more pressing importance the Devils needed to clear room to take Patrik Elias off of IR and finally did so by waiving 22-year old Alexander Urbom.  It’s questionable whether anyone will take Urbom, who does have some skills to be sure but his celing is limited and his NHL play hasn’t been great to this point.  Plus team’s rosters are mostly set right now and it’s this fact that Lou Lamoriello is counting on by exposing Urbom to waivers.  Most of my sturm und drang towards the lineup is over coach Pete DeBoer‘s lines in practice today, which is usually a pretty good indicator of the lineup the next night:

Forward lines: Henrique-Zajac-Jagr, Clowe-Elias-Brunner, Zubrus-Loiktionov-Ryder, Carter-Gionta-Bernier, Olesz-Josefson-Tedenby

Defense pairs: Salvador-Zidlicky, Greene-Larsson, Volchenkov-Harrold, Stevens-Fayne

So apparently our 22-year old former first-round pick (Josefson) is going to be a healthy scratch in the box along with our 23-year old former first rounder (Tedenby), who’s a ‘non-roster injury’.  Although I’m a bit queasy over the fact Stephen Gionta has turned from a feel-good fill-in to an indispensable regular and would rather get one more look at Josefson at the start of the season, at least you could justify having Gio in the lineup over Josefson based on their play last year.  Having Elias back at center and shifting Henrique to wing is interesting, and gives the Devils left-handed sticks at each LW position in the lineup.  Really the top three lines could all play 15+ minutes a night (with CBGB resuming their rightful fourth-line energy role), which the Devils are going to need to have happen without anyone around to suck up 20+ minutes on a consistent basis anymore.  Arguably Travis Zajac is our only forward that’s both worthy and capable of doing so left on the roster, but his offense has to improve this year. 

Really, most of my angst is the continued marginalization of Mark Fayne, who is clearly in the doghouse now.  I can understand having Anton Volchenkov in the lineup over him, based on contract and the fact he’s a left-handed defenseman and the staff’s obsessed with having lefties on the left side and vice-versa, fine.  But playing Peter Harrold over him, really?  Don’t get me wrong, Harrold’s a nice little fill-in, and a decent puck-mover but it’s not as if he’s some great defenseman himself that has to be in the lineup night in and night out.  With Zidlicky, Greene and Larsson the team should have enough puck-moving lineup to subsist on that front, unless of course they’re going to play Harrold over Larsson on the PP again, which would be yet another source of angst. Back to Fayne though, the last time he was playing consistently he was on a lockdown defensive pair with Andy Greene during the ’12 playoffs.  I honestly don’t know where it went south with Fayne and this staff, but sometimes things just break down for whatever reason I guess.  I wasn’t a fan of John Tortorella by the end of his Ranger tenure but even I felt a tad sorry for him describing his damaged relationship with Brad Richards recently, a guy he grew up with in Tampa.  In the case of Fayne, this constant yo-yoing out of the lineup will almost certainly result in him walking by the end of the year and yes, there are defensemen with more talent in the pipeline but it’s still a shame to completely waste a guy who at his best was a smart, capable defenseman.

Of course the lineup won’t be set until after tomorrow’s morning skate so maybe my angst is for naught…and to be fair to Pete, the forward depth is going to make lineup decisions extremely difficult.  That’s not even accounting for perhaps the most important nightly decisions of all – goaltending, and today Brodeur reiterated he’d be ‘happy’ with 50 games, which would basically mean starting 75% of games that aren’t on a back-to-back. It’ll be interesting to see how the coach handles it if (as was the case in preseason and in prior years judging by their stats) Schnieder does outplay Brodeur and how long it takes for the torch to be passed and everyone to be accepting of it.  Or whether Marty gets off to a fast start and Cory doesn’t, will the shiny new toy be put in the doghouse along with Fayne and Josefson?