Other than the Devils’ home opener on the 4th, neither us or the Rangers have played a game in the tri-state area this season.  While the Rangers are still in the midst of their season opening nine-game road trip during the finishing touches of MSG’s gagillion-dollar renovation, the Devils return to their arena after their own five-game trip into the Twilight Zone.  The left/north coast wasn’t kind to either team, as the Devils remain the only winless team in the NHL after seven games while the Rangers started 1-4 (being outscored 25-9 in the process) before their now-typical manhandling of the Caps in a 2-0 shutout.  Still, the Rangers have issues with captain Ryan Callahan again on the shelf – this time with a broken thumb.  Callahan and a rejuvanated Brad Richards are the only Rangers with multiple goals to this point as the Alain Vigneault high-tempo offense hasn’t really upped the team’s goal total so far with just eleven in six games.

Going by the old axiom your best players have to be your best players, the Rangers have come up short in that area (Callahan aside), with defensemen Marc Staal and Dan Girardi combining for a -13 and just one point while Derek Stepan is goal-less with a -7 in six games – though he does have five assists.  It doesn’t help that forwards Rick Nash and Carl Hagelin are also on the shelf.  Perennial Vezina nominee Henrik Lundqvist has ugly numbers too – a 3.33 GAA and .902 save percentage, and that’s after his shutout Wednesday.  At least he still has a job unlike former caddy Martin Biron, who was given the axe after two subpar games.

It’s not like things are a bowl of cherries for the Devils either…in fact they’re actually worse.  While the Rangers have two wins and four points after six games, the Devils are still stuck on zero wins and three points through seven games.  While we’ve played our majority of the games on the road too, we were supposed to have the easier West Coast trip compared to the Rangers’ California to St. Louis gauntlet.  Our BC-Alberta-Ontario swing didn’t exactly help though, as the Devils lost multi-goal leads in a pair of games (the only ones we even got a point on during the trip!), and the whole trip was an exercise in Murphy’s Law – whatever could go wrong did.  We lost a close game we were dominated in and a blowout where we outshot Ottawa by nearly twenty.  A shootout loss, an OT loss, and a loss where we had a contreversial disallowed goal go against us at a key point in the Calgary game.  I’m just tired of talking about it all.

Hard to believe these are the same two teams that met in a stirring Conference Finals just eighteen months ago. Or that the landscape of the NHL has changed to the point where another such meeting is extremely unlikely in the near future (thanks to the new division-weighted playoff system).  To be sure, both teams have changed significantly in the last year and a half…in our case we’ve had to try and pick up the pieces after the stunning twin departures of Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk in successive offseasons, while the Rangers’ changes were mostly of their own doing – first dealing for Rick Nash, then dealing away Marian Gaborik and finally axing coach John Tortorella after a second-round exit last spring.  If both teams don’t pick it up soon I’m sure more changes will be made, although in the Rangers’ case there’s not a lot that can really be done apart from the Biron and Aaron Asham cuts the other day.  Vigneault is not getting fired, though he may have to adjust his system to fit the talent on his team (and they may have already started to do that in Washington).

New Jersey may be facing the bigger changes though, with the questions getting louder about Pete DeBoer‘s job security after the Devils’ slow start combined with a terrible finish last year that equals a mere eleven wins in forty-two games.  Although the team is still trying for the most part – which is half the battle for a coach in keeping his job – the personnel decisions remain bizarre and slanted.  DeBoer’s blind adherence to the ‘left on left, right on right’ way of stacking his wings and defense pairings have led to us continuing to ice a nightmare third defensive pairing of Anton Volchenkov and Peter Harrold, while Mark Fayne and Adam Larsson continue to get yo-yoed in and out of the lineup.  Volchenkov probably won’t get benched because heaven forbid we play a right-handed guy on the left side, while Harrold probably won’t get benched because heaven forbid we play Fayne and Larsson over a career AHL/fill-in defenseman.  Ostensibly, Harrold serves as a point on the power play and provides offensive punch but he hasn’t put up a single point in seven games – even the cement-footed Volchenkov has two.

In defense of the head coach, it’s not like our best players have been our best players for the most part either.  Patrik Elias and Damien Brunner are our only forwards with as many as four points through seven games.  Despite all the changes up front and touting depth over stars, the Devil offense continues to struggle with or without Kovalchuk and Parise, putting up just thirteen goals in the first seven games.  In a big surprise to no one, former Ranger Ryane Clowe is already out of the lineup, being placed on IR for ‘precautionary reasons’ after getting a headache following a hit to the head last Sunday in Winnipeg.  Maybe it’s just as well he get some time off since Clowe has only one assist and a -5 in six games anyway, showing that maybe his lack of offensive production last year may be the new norm rather than an abberation…a scary thought considering the tough Newfie is signed for the next five seasons at big money.

Our goaltending has also been a mixed bag, with Cory Schnieder (2.65 GAA, .908 save) playing well but not getting support offensively or defensively in his three games while Martin Brodeur (3.40, .865) has been dreadful in his four games.  Essentially they’ve been rotating to this point, perhaps until one finally wins a game.  Tonight is Schnieder’s ‘turn’, which is noteworthy in itself since it’s been a while from the time a healthy Brodeur was benched against the Rangers.  We’ll see how the team responds for Cory tonight, after his not-so-veiled anger with his teammates over a clear lack of effort in Winnipeg.

Another interesting aspect of tonight’s game is the crowd…and no I don’t mean the percentage of Ranger fans to Devil fans, although with the Rangers not having a home game for most of the month it’s reasonable to think there might be more blue than usual in the regular season, especially with a Saturday night start time.  Devil fans aren’t happy about a lot these days – stars leaving, the team’s play, increasing ticket prices, and also losing Rock and Roll part 2 as a goal song.  A few days ago, the team sent out a letter finally spelling out in no uncertain terms that the goal song would be changing and because people complained about the ‘you suck’ part of it.  Despite the fact that they’re letting fans vote on the new song (I voted for ‘Raise Your Hands’ from Bon Jovi but don’t expect it to win), Devil fans are incensed and many are vowing to boo every single goal song until RR2 comes back.

I already made my feelings known on this matter after the home opener, when this de facto protest started.  While I like the goal song itself, many Devil fans have given it a disproportionate amount of importance given the state of the team and how the change was enacted.  From afar it’s a fascinating soap opera but now that everyone at the arena is being forced into what’s essentially a political fight, I’m dreading the atmosphere at games until either the team gives in or the fans come to their senses – and not too unhappy that I’m not going tonight.  Devil fans protesting the goal song + Ranger fans booing anyway will send a loud message to management (assuming we actually score a goal tonight), though it’ll also embarass the fanbase. Unfortunately, nobody seems to care about how much of a joke this stupid fight will make us into either, so long as we get our thirty-second song back.

As far as the on-ice importance of tonight…yes, it’s still early and most of the Metro division is bad – but if the division remains bad that means only three teams will make the playoffs as opposed to four or five.  Either way, the Rangers and Devils have to pick it up if they want to contend for a playoff spot this year. As the Devils proved two years ago, you can’t win a Cup in October and November but you can sink your season in a hurry.