Roberto Luongo and Cory Schnieder last year in different ‘uniforms’

Perhaps the only good news from last night’s 3-2 shootout loss to Vancouver is I don’t have to sit here and bash the team en masse.  Except perhaps for their pathetic shootouts (now 0-12 on the season in shootout attempts), but I’ll get to that later.  Last night however, the team played arguably its best defensive game of the season, only allowing seventeen shots in regulation and twenty-one overall.  Offensively, it wasn’t great again but two goals on thirty shots is about par for the course with this group, especially against an actual upper-echelon NHL goalie like Roberto Luongo.  If we can’t score against scrub backups, why should I expect us to roast Bobby Lou/Strombone/Thing 1?  Still, this game should have been a 2-0 or at worst 2-1 win.

Once again, a losing team finds a way to lose another game though.  Last night, the clear goat was Cory Schnieder (a.k.a. Thing 2), who was clearly at fault on both goals and put on a puckhandling display that would have made Johan Hedberg cringe.  It wasn’t just his first goal against – a freebee to Ryan Kesler at 6:07 when Schnieder tried to pass the puck to an unsuspecting Andy Greene and flubbed it right onto the stick of Henrik Sedin, who found a wide open Kesler on the left side of the goal for a tap-in.  It seemed as if that mistake hung over Schnieder all night, as he passed up several other easy chances to play the puck (and nearly flubbed a couple others) including falling down on a loose puck in the crease to get a faceoff with literally nobody around him, something I’ve never seen before.  As current creasemate Martin Brodeur will tell you, the ability to shrug off mistakes is what makes the difference between a goalie who can have good streaks, and a consistently elite player.

Kesler’s goal wasn’t even Schnieder’s worst mistake of the night though, as Daniel Sedin‘s blast from the boards after a dump-in from twin brother Henrik somehow found room under Schnieder’s pad at 12:37 of the second period – again tying the game for Vancouver.  Schnieder even admitted he was ready for the play since it was something the Sedins did but still failed to get his pad down in time and Cory took the blame for both goals and the loss after the game.  As it turned out, that was the last goal of the actual hockey game even though the Devils pounded seventeen shots at Luongo in the third period, and the Canucks dominated the 4-on-4 OT but couldn’t score there.

What was particularly galling about Schnieder’s game last night is it marred what was clearly our best defensive performance of the season.  I don’t want to say not having captain Bryce Salvador (death in the family) was a net positive – especially since Salvador’s had a bounceback season – but it isn’t a coincidence the defense was more efficient and moving the puck better last night with youngsters Eric Gelinas and Adam Larsson in the lineup in place of Salvador and Pete’s Pet (Peter Harrold).  Gelinas in particular was an eye-opener in his second NHL game last night with no less an authority than Jaromir Jagr calling him ‘the best player on the ice’ last night.  Jagr was pretty good himself too, but last night’s highlight was Gelinas’s first NHL goal on the power play at 9:41 of the first, firing a slapper through traffic and past Luongo.  Making perhaps his only contribution last night aside from getting the primary assist on Gelinas’s laser, Travis Zajac went to get Gelinas the puck for a keepsake.

Overall, Gelinas played 16:27, getting credited with three SOG and three hits while d-partner Larsson got nineteen plus minutes and was an E, so coach Pete DeBoer couldn’t harp on Larsson’s plus-minus the way he did before the game when he got ‘defensive’ over a question of how Larsson was being managed this season, bringing up how he wanted Larsson to make the simple play and not be a -6 in five games.  And yet he said nothing about Harrold’s -6 when he talked about benching him, instead claiming it was because he was a small guy that was beaten up with the workload.  Despite Pete’s lineup idiosyncrascies, every d-pairing worked last night, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens when Salvador returns either on Saturday or early next week.

If Gelinas was the surprise star last night, it was Jagr’s line with Andrei Loiktionov and Patrik Elias that was the best line on the ice.  All three forwards combined for a goal with some beautiful passing with Loiktionov finding a wide-open Elias at the right side of the net for a one-timer goal.  Somehow Elias was named first star last night, but it was really his older Czech linemate that was the best forward – something DeBoer even alluded to after the game when he called Jagr consistently the best forward on the team.  That line showed instant chemistry with possession and creativity, and should have had a second goal late in the second period when Loiktionov had a wide-open net but rushed a backhander high.  Although the Devils controlled play for much of the night against a Canucks team on a sixth-game of a seven game road trip and down to only nine healthy forwards last night, the Jagr-led line was really the only one creating chances for the most part, other than a couple of lasers by Michael Ryder that Luongo was up to the task on.

Of course once Schnieder gave up two leads and the game went into overtime, the result was pretty much predictable.  At least DeBoer tried a couple of new things in the shootout, deferring to get the last shot and giving Adam Henrique an attempt.  Though he had another miserable game, to his credit Henrique did actually fool Luongo on his attempt, something I can’t say about most of the Devils’ other twelve shots on goal during the skills competition this year.  Unfortunately Henrique somehow put a puck wide with an open net to shoot at.  Although Schnieder stopped D. Sedin and Alex Edler in the shootout, the immortal Mike Santorelli abusing him on the first attempt was enough to beat the Devils’ popgun offense which again went 0-for-3 and is 0-for the season in twelve shootout attempts.  I would have given Marek Zidlicky an attempt…he’s actually scored several shootout goals and has a better percentage than some guys who’ve gotten attempts this year but apparently of the two coaches last night only John Tortorella knows you can run defensemen out in the shootout.  Then again with how pitiful we are at the shootout, DeBoer’d probably have more success picking the lineup out of a hat.

And what would a home Devils recap be without yet more talk about the goal song and the atmosphere at the arena?  Last night’s ‘fan choice’ was Righteous Smoke by Monster Truck, which was a total dud, just like the 13k crowd last night.  I wasn’t even sure if they decided to change the goal song at the last minute because I kept hearing ‘Oh oh oh oh’ like the more popular SNA choice.  Unfortunately it seems as if the owners didn’t take too kindly to the crowd chanting you suck on Saturday night and laid down the law picking a song I doubt five fans voted for, and warning the Diablos section in 122 that if they chanted ‘you suck’ (among other things) they’d be ejected and have their season tickets revoked.  Granted, if you’re getting $100 season tickets you’re pretty much beholden to the team’s wishes but still, you can tell they were puppets of the team when they tried a ‘We are…JERSEY!’ chant in the third period, and started ‘Let’s Go Devils!’ chants when the inevitable ‘Rangers Suck!’ whistles finally started in the third period.

Bad feelings were evident all over the arena, with one guy a few rows in front of me going to the trouble to tape on the back of his jersey (three seperate pieces of tape):

#Harris Sucks, #Blitzer Sucks, #I don’t usually say suck

I’ve come down on the fans’ behavior a few different times but the fact the owners are being as childish and defiant as the fans is not going to make anyone happy in the end.  Unfortunately last night the boos returned after this dreadful goal song choice, and it seems as if the owners are determined to find a generic song choice that the fans can’t chant ‘you suck’ to.  Pretty much the only thing keeping me in good spirits in spite of the atmosphere was getting to spend the game talking with my former seatmate and his girlfriend in 120 since the three seats between us were unoccupied.  That and the fact I was just glad to be there after going almost a full three weeks in between games since I let my friend and his wife buy the Saturday game off me (he’s not a huge hockey fan himself, but he’s trying to get her into it).  Maybe I should beg them to buy more tickets off me if the team’s going to play that well when I don’t go.  Then again, it was against the Rangers who have their own problems right now.  As one guy on HF Boards cleverly put it, we were scoring against some guy dressed up in a Lundqvist jersey on his way to a Halloween party.

Right now most of the NHL is laughing at both our teams though.