What would a Devil season be without me posting the Wargames Defcon 1 clip at least once? I was holding off on it as long as I could…but after the Devils’ 4-1 meltdown in Columbus tonight it’s time to batten down the hatches and launch the nukes.  This isn’t pretty and there’s no way of masking this anymore, no matter what depressing stat you want to use.  Tonight, I’ll cite our wonderful road record which now stands at 2-13-8 in our last twenty three road games.  Two road wins in twenty-three games is Ron Low Devils-type bad.  And if you think our record this season (1-5-3) is bad, just take a look at our schedule until Thanksgiving.  You’ll really be depressed if you’re a Devils fan:

Canucks, at Boston, Tampa, Flyers, at Wild, at Flyers, at Toronto, Nashville, at Rangers, Kings, Penguins, at Anaheim/LA/San Jose during Thanksgiving weekend.

Exactly how many wins is this Devil team going to get among that group of teams?  Right now the only ones you could even argue they have a slightly better than 50-50 chance in are (ironically) the Ranger/Flyer games, since both those teams are somehow below us in the standings.  It’s scary to ponder just how many steps backward this team has taken without Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk though.  Certainly coach Pete DeBoer‘s taken a major hit without assistants Larry Robinson and Adam Oates.

I’m not even really going to recap tonight much, being I paid only passing attention to it for the most part.  I didn’t even get to hear any of the first period, but by the time I turned the radio on driving home during the second period the Devils had started out guns ablazing, dominating play and even getting a power play goal when Michael Ryder roofed one from the slot.  Silly me, after the illusory win over a bad Rangers team the other night, I actually allowed myself to believe that maybe this Devils team had turned a corner and was coming out of its malaise.  Then BANG – the latter half of the game provided a reality check since it was a utter disaster of epic proportions.  Columbus started to get more pressure after a couple of Devil penalties turned the tide, and Brandon Dubinsky gained position on Mark Fayne and scored off a rebound to tie the game on one of those power plays.  Then Cam Atkinson floated a backhander through (or around) traffic and past Cory Schneider after a failed clear by Mattias Tedenby.

Our comedy of errors continued in the third period when Peter Harrold threw a blind pass from behind his blueline directly into the slot that Andrei Loiktionov wasn’t expecting and could only deflect away – right onto the stick of James Wisniewski, who beat Schnieder with a wrister from the point again through traffic.  Typically, Pete absolved one of his pets (Harrold) of blame after the game, instead choosing to point out the pass was on target and essentially threw the blame on Loiktionov.  Funny I somehow think if the shoe’d been on the other foot with Loiktionov throwing the pass out to Harrold, it would still be Loiktonov getting the blame.  That proved to be the game and the Devils sustained little in the way of pressure, although DeBoer didn’t help by putting out the fourth line for seemingly half the third period.  Eventually you have to play your more offensive players when you’re behind, no?  Not if you’re stuck in 2012, only without Oates/Larry providing brainpower behind the bench and Kovalchuk/Parise providing scoring up front.

I’ve been chomping at the bit the last few days to go to the game Thursday, since I’ve only been to Opening Night since I let a couple of friends buy my Devil-Ranger tickets. However, now that familiar feeling of dread is coming back, a similar feeling that I had during the MacLean dark ages.  A feeling of dread that isn’t helped by the attempted sanitization of the arena by the new owners and CEO, who reportedly weren’t happy with the fans defying their wishes and chanting you suck with one of the goal song ‘finalists’ Saturday night.  To the point where they’re threatening the fan section (the Diablos) with explusion if they participate in the chants.  To be fair, the Diablos get $100 season tickets, so in a way they’re kind of beholden to management’s wishes but still – even if you succesfully control a 150-200 fan area you’re not exactly going to control the arena.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…new management could not have possibly picked a worse time to pick a fight with a fanbase that was already testy over the events of the last eighteen months.

At least Patrik Elias will be back Thursday, odds are in favor of Tedenby – with Loiktonov probably taking a seat for Jacob Josefson as we continue to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Bryce Salvador aggravated a hip issue so maybe Adam Larsson can get back in the lineup by default, but with this head coach it wouldn’t shock me if they called up some AHL vet scrub and had him play instead.  God knows it’ll take Pete getting fired to get Harrold out of the lineup, no matter how badly he plays.  Maybe Martin Brodeur will be back in net Thursday, and maybe Schnieder will make his third consecutive start…does it even matter anymore?  It’s seriously at the point where Lou Lamoriello is going to have to consider a coaching change even if there’s few viable alternatives out there, unless the GM has another ‘buddy pass’ to play with Jacques Lemaire to drag him out of retirement yet again.  Things literally could not get worse, at least on the ice.