No, this isn’t highlights of the Devils game tonight although it might as well have been.  If you’re an avid sports movie watcher, you know this montage is from Major League 2 when the fictional Indians once again couldn’t do anything right.  Right now that’s basically what the Devils have become once again, just like in the 2010 part of the ’09-10 and ’10-11 seasons, this franchise is in a total collective malaise right now now at the tail end of an embarassing road trip where they lost games to Joey MacDonald, Al Montoya and Jason LaBarbera – journeyman goalies on non-playoff teams, all of them.  Technically there is one more game still to come on the trip in Ottawa on Thursday but for all intents and purposes the team will come home to sleep in their own beds for a couple of nights and face the music for their horrendous start of the season.  While it’s true they haven’t been blown out in any game yet – though tonight should have been one – we haven’t exactly been playing the Blackhawks and the Bruins either.

I haven’t come to terms with the Devils’ bad start (coupled with a lousy finish to last season) enough to reach acceptance yet that this team is just not very good.  I still believe this team has enough talent to be better than the prognosticators think and can contend for a playoff spot.  Right now they’re not playing like it though.  Tonight’s game in Winnipeg was really the low point of the season although the score didn’t reflect it for a long time only because Cory Schnieder hasn’t forgotten how to play goal in his short tenure here. Over the last several months I’ve been so tired of hearing how we dominated shots, possession, everything…at some point if you don’t start winning games you’re just not any good, period.  I don’t care what CORSI, Fenwick or what any of the new-age stats say.  WIN SOME GAMES!

Maybe the experts were right after all when we were predicted anywhere from 12th-14th in the conference.  Despite all the changes (forced and not) this offseason, last year’s final thirty-five games is clearly carrying into this year with the lack of finish in crucial moments, untimely defensive mistakes and scared coaching.  Astonishingly, the Devils have nine regulation/OT wins in their last 41 games.  And two of them came during the final, meaningless week of last season after we’d been eliminated from the playoffs.  I know this roster has limitations and I’ll get to them but I’m sorry, that just isn’t good enough for the talent on this roster.  When you see sequences like a god-awful power play in the third period where Travis Zajac of all people looked drunk trying to keep the puck in and giving up a breakaway, or Andy Greene of all people looking slow and getting blown by Evander Kane to create another shorthanded breakaway on the same shift, you really wonder where this team’s confidence and head is right now.  New Jersey was outshot 4-0 on a two-minute power play shift all told…I would not have thought that possible if I didn’t see it.  After I did, I knew I didn’t need to see any more of this game really.

While it’s true Kane does have blinding speed, this Devils team is slow as a whole, which is no surprise considering they’re the oldest team in the league – as pointed out by Chico Resch during the telecast.  When you ice five 30+ defensemen speed is going to be a problem in your own zone, and when many of your key forwards are either old or slow it’s going to be a problem in the offensive zone too.  Even our lone non 30+ defenseman (Adam Larsson) looks like he’s skating in quicksand when he tries to go backwards, and was culpable on the first goal as the ruinization of a #4 overall pick continues under this staff.  Winnipeg is not a playoff team, but they are fast (same with Edmonton the other night for that matter) and that matchup’s been a huge problem with us in four straight defeats over the last two seasons.  We do have some speed on the roster in Jacob Josefson, Mattias Tedenby and even Mark Fayne is faster than most of the defensemen who played tonight. Of course they’re all sitting in suits upstairs, as Pete DeBoer‘s continued allegiance to the vets and stubborness in caring more about getting lefties on the left side than icing the best roster is going to sink his job into the abyss sooner rather than later.

And yes it’s time and fair game to suggest DeBoer’s job is on the line, GM Lou Lamoriello may be more patient than he used to be, but all of his changes in the offseason suggest he expects results with this team sooner rather than later.  Especially with the potential embarassment of forefiting a top five pick.  I realize it’s only six games into the season, but when you think of streaks like the Isles’ fourteen game winless streak a couple of years ago, I really don’t think DeBoer would survive anything close to that.  If it wasn’t for last year, maybe it’d be different but last year did happen and canceled out the honeymoon from the ’12 playoff run.  Yes, most of the rest of the Metro division is bad now, Derek knows the Rangers are also doing their best John MacLean Devils-like impression too although at least the Rangers are losing to the West teams that actually made the playoffs last year and they actually (gasp) WON a game.  Other than Vancouver, this wasn’t exactly a murderer’s row trip in terms of who we were playing.  Two loser points – and in games where we gave up multiple-goal leads – is just not acceptable.  You can’t count on the rest of the division being bad for the whole season either, no division is bad enough to keep you in the race if you can’t win a game.

With the quality of play getting worse and results staying depressingly similar, you no longer wonder when the other shoe will drop, but how quick.