http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6lK_a4NV2Q

It seems like every other week we as Devil fans have this debate on whether the glass is half full or half empty with our hockey team.  Never has that been more crystalized than in the last two games, where the Devils held a lead in the final minute of games at Dallas and Nashville, blew both but still wound up with three points out of a possible four at the back end of a four game in six night road trip.  A fact coach Pete DeBoer was eager to harp on in what turned out to be a tense, barely minute long press conference after last night’s OT loss in Nashville.  While correctly pointing out the bad bounce off of Jaromir Jagr‘s stick that caromed right to an open David Legwand in the final ten seconds of regulation last night that resulted in Nashville’s tying goal, he got testy when an unnamed beat writer (it sounded a lot like Tom Gulutti) made a comment about how the puck could have been cleared then, it set the coach off on a mini-Tortsish rant:

http://www.msg.com/videos/index.html?vid=2434270887

At one point, DeBoer told the reporter to ‘apply for a coaching job’, and then ranted on about how these things happen to every team in an 82-game schedule.  While factually correct, these kind of things do seem to happen to the Devils more often than your average team.  Our last two games brought back memories of our ill-fated Florida trip last year, where we also blew leads in the final minute of both games (and wound up losing both in OT, a trip that spiraled our season out of control).  Thankfully the Devils did at least rebound from a blown two-goal lead in Dallas on Thursday to win in OT.  Even in 2012 the Devils made a habit of blowing multi-goal leads but frequently overcame that tick due to heart and talent.  Pete might be tired of hearing the press look for patterns, but it’s hard to miss when a certain pattern – like blowing late leads and not scoring – becomes so prevalent that it stares at you in front of your face.

Speaking of longstanding problems, after a couple of games of goal support it seems as if ‘Goals for Cory’ needs to become a charity again, last night was the first time Cory Schnieder allowed three goals in a game during his last eleven games.  And yet he’s only 6-3-2 in those games. Six wins in eleven games allowing two goals or less in ten of them, and having a 2-1 lead late last night.  While he was certainly culpable on Shea Weber‘s first goal of the game following a puckhandling snafu, he did make 30 saves in the game and nearly carried a tired Devils team over the finish line up 2-1 late.  Of course the offense sputtered as usual, only scoring goals because Predators goalie Carter Hutton is god-awful, allowing weak shots from Patrik Elias and Jaromir Jagr to get past him in the second period.  Even after blowing another lead, the Devils still had a chance to win in OT when Michael Ryder got a breakaway…but someone must have told him it was a shootout because he fired a weak wrister into the glove of Hutton.

Ironically DeBoer was closer to the truth earlier in the week in St. Louis when he admitted the time for moral victories was past.  With every contender around us continuing to win it’s imperative we keep up, especially in winnable games like last night.  While Nashville can be tough they’re certainly not a playoff team without Pekka Rinne.  Hutton was the same goalie we chased in November with four quick early goals in a 5-0 win over the Predators at the Rock. Last night he became the latest in a series of backup goalies to beat us this year…at least eleven by my count.  Ray Emery, Antti Raanta and Curtis McIlhenney all beat us twice, as well as Jonas Gustavsson, Peter Budaj, Ben Scrivens, Josh Harding, Al Montoya, Jason LaBarbara, Joey MacDonald and now Hutton.  That’s fourteen of our thirty-three losses to backup goaltenders this year.  Which makes our scoring woes that much worse.

Like Pete I’m cutting this post short…there isn’t really much to say at this point.  Yeah we’re still in the thick of it and at least the win in Dallas temporarily stemmed the tide of what seemed to be a tsunami of negativity earlier this week.  With three games next week before the break it’s imperative the Devils at least get four points out of them.  Monday against the Avs is going to be a tough challenge at the Rock, but the weekend games – Friday at home against the Oilers and Saturday on the road against a struggling Caps team – are more feasible to hope for a win against.  Still, they need to find a way to overcome their late-game foibles and bizarre roster decisions like sending a clearly in the doghouse Eric Gelinas down a few days after the deadline to where he could have played in the AHL during the Olympic break.  While the staff continues to harp on the mistakes of Gelinas and most of the other young players, somehow the mistakes made by Bryce Salvador continue to escape notice.  Pete’s lucky he’s not coaching in Montreal or Toronto, if he thinks the media here’s being rough on him, the media there would have called him out long ago for his double-standard treatment of the vets compared to the kids.