As the Devils pulled a nearly unprecedented feat of blowing a lead in the last two minutes for the third straight game, what came to mind was a scene from The Odd Couple II, the sequel to the hit comedy and play that came out in the late ’90’s with Oscar and Felix still at each other’s throats.  I thought mainly of the scene where they were in jail for the third straight time on the way to their kids’ wedding and when Oscar wanted to know who won the trifecta, the sheriff said ‘Me, you’re my trifecta, you’ve been arrested three different times by my men for three different crimes…you know what the odds on that are?!’.  While I couldn’t find that clip on YouTube, the ending deja vu from the movie will do – since the Devils’ late game struggles represent both deja vu and an odd trifecta of blown leads.

How odd?  According to the Elias Sports Bureau only one other time in history has a team surrendered the game-tying goal in the last two minutes of three straight games…the 1989 Flames.  That number’s actually one higher than I thought to be honest.  Blowing a lead in two straight games in the final minute?  We already did that last year down in Florida.  Three straight games is oddly impressive and inept at the same time.  You have to be playing good enough to get the lead for three straight games – but not too good to run away with the game – and then take a dive off a pier three times in a row.  If it wasn’t for the Devils’ perilous playoff position (13th overall in the East, at least three points behind everyone) it would be comical.  People can harp on the Devils’ 0-8 shootout record all they want but this team continues to shoot itself in the foot time and again.

I get tired of hearing how unlucky we are, even though Monday’s game against the Avs could be classified as one game where fortune didn’t smile on us with three posts hit and a near-goal by Jaromir Jagr in the third period that somehow died in the middle of the goal line without trickling over.  Even coach Pete DeBoer‘s finally getting tired of dismissing our failures as luck, admitting that ‘it’s unlucky until it happens over and over again’.  If our media was more vicious someone would have taken a sarcastic jab asking whether three games could qualify as a trend, after the coach’s mini-rant a few days ago.  Pete has better things to worry about than jabs from the media though, starting with jabs from Jagr himself after the coach broke up the Jagr-Travis Zajac duo despite the fact they’re among the few people producing offensively lately.

Already Jagr was disillusioned after DeBoer took Jacob Josefson off his line despite a very impassioned and public plea to give the kid a chance.  He was set off again yesterday with the move of Zajac off his line, after he’d only put up four goals and nine assists in his last eight games while Travis had two goals and six assists over six games, and really has only produced offensively with Jagr the last two years.   Unconscionably, DeBoer said that having consistent linemates only works ‘if you get consistent production and we haven’t gotten enough there recently’.  That line of reasoning was just as ludicrous to me as it was to the HOF’er to be himself:

“It doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t want to talk about it either,” said Jagr, who lead the Devils with 17 goals, 31 assists and 48 points in 57 games. “I don’t really (care) either.”  So, Jagr’s response to the suggestion that DeBoer made the move in hope of creating more goals, was a sarcastic-sounding, “That makes sense. Me and Travis, we didn’t score many.”

So essentially because the Devils haven’t gotten enough scoring as a team, now the solution is to break up the one line that IS scoring?!  To say this smacks of desperation isn’t entirely accurate, since even desperate moves have some form of logic behind them.  This comes off more as picking lines out of a hat.  Does the coach really think Zajac’s going to produce away from Jagr, when he hasn’t produced with anyone else on the team the last few years?  Or that Jagr’s supposed to score like he did in his prime?

It’s funny how quick DeBoer can be in changing the lines when they’re working but heaven forbid we make changes on a defense that’s been problematic under pressure lately.  Specifically, captain Bryce Salvador who was again on the ice for a crucial goal against – Ryan O’Reilly‘s OT winner.  If you’re a believer in CORSI/Fenwick stats take a look, it isn’t pretty for Sal…but just going by the old-fashioned eye test the captain’s been awful since coming back from injury and really should not be playing (and wouldn’t be playing if it weren’t for the C) over guys like Adam Larsson and even Eric Gelinas, who for all his ills defensively at least adds a lot offensively.  Specifically on the power play which is at 13.6% without Gelinas, and 21.8% with him – a huge reason we’re still sitting at 10th with the man advantage after a miserable start to the season before Gelinas came up in late October.  Gelinas and Larsson were both a fairly significant part of the team in November when the Devils had their one sustained run of excellent play (five wins in six games against tough teams like the Pens, Kings and Ducks) – and yet neither are anywhere to be found now as the slow, unexciting vet brigade is back in full force, including Peter Harrold who’s been restored to the lineup after a return from a broken foot.  With only Andy Greene and a hot-and-cold Marek Zidlicky around to contribute to scoring from the blueline, it only exacerbates the problems up front.

Problems that DeBoer also alluded to in Monday’s postgame when he remarked about having too many players go ten games or more without a goal.  Specifically Michael Ryder, who’s counted on to be the team’s best pure goalscorer aside from Jagr and who also earned the coach’s ire for a careless giveaway toward regulation that nearly cost us both points late, and did set up the game-deciding power play in OT.  That’s another problem with the Devils…too many one-dimensional players.  Ryder and Brunner don’t contribute much back-checking, other forwards don’t contribute much offensively.  Zidlicky and Gelinas are both primarily offensive defensemen, while Sal, Anton Volchenkov and Mark Fayne are clearly one-dimensional at the other end though Volch and Fayne are at least doing their one job better than the captain.  At least goaltending with Cory Schnieder can’t be pointed to as a problem though he didn’t have his best game in Nashville he still had a 2-1 lead late and certainly can’t be faulted for the breakdowns in the other two games.  Schnieder’s frustration nearly boiled over Monday night as he broke his stick on the ice after the game, and you could tell was clearly counting to ten while he was talking to reporters in the postgame:

“We keep saying we have a veteran team and guys who have been there before and a lot of these were on the team that went to the Stanley Cup Finals a couple years ago,” a frustrated Schneider said. “It doesn’t mean anything now, but you’d think we’d have the experience and the knowhow to close out tight games this time of year. Myself too, I’ve got to find a way to finish these off and win these games and come up with that big save in the last two minutes. It’s all of us.

Ironically he’s wrong in one sense though…we were having these problems even in 2012.  Blown leads have been a staple in DeBoer’s tenure.  Just think back to Game 3 against Florida in the first round, or Game 5 against the Rangers where Stephen Gionta and Ryan Carter bailed us out late in what could have been a series-turning game.  Or the twin fiascoes in the final minute against Florida and Tampa Bay last year that sent our season spiraling out of control.  DeBoer’s system does a good job of keeping both teams in the game, but you would have liked to have seen a slightly less agressive (and low-percentage) forecheck from Gionta and Carter late Monday night when they didn’t really need to go after the puck in the Avs’ end, and that set up our ill-fated shift where we got pinned in our own end for a minute and adriotly coach Patrick Roy saw that and pulled the goalie.  With two and a half minutes left.  In a one-goal game pulling a goalie two and a half minutes early is unconventional, and yet smart considering they were putting pressure on one of our weakest lines defensively.  And that pressure paid off when P.A. Parenteau‘s deflection tied the game.

At that point I was glad our umpteenth snowstorm kept me from going to that game.  There’s probably no getting away from Friday’s game though, unless our third snowstorm this week decides to make an earlier than forecasted appearance.  I could certainly use the break.  After all these blown leads I’m sure so could the team, but these two games are absolutely vital in terms of remaining in the playoff race enough for the trade deadline to matter.  Considering we’re playing one of the worst teams in hockey in the Oilers on Friday, that’s a game that needs to be won though I don’t expect it to be easy considering speed kills our fossilized team and that’s the one thing the Oilers do have.  As well as a goalie in Ben Scrivens that already shut us out this year – albeit with the Kings.  And Saturday’s game is against one of our myriad of competitors for a bubble spot, so getting a win out of Washington is vital too.

I might go so far as to say if the Devils do not get four points out of this weekend, Lou Lamoriello seriously needs to consider selling at the deadline.  We may ‘only’ be three points out now but that’s three points out with a number of other teams having games in hand.  And we’re not just behind one team either, we’re behind a bunch.  It’s almost better to be six points behind one team than three behind a multitude of them.  That makes it much harder to gain ground considering usually a couple of them are winning any given night.  Look at 2011, when we got to ten points back in early February and still had a month of great hockey in front of us, we were only able to pick up four points in the standings.

To win however, we have to start holding leads.  Or scoring enough to put games away.  Since we’re clearly lackingin talent for the latter, the former becomes much more imperative.  You have to play to your strength which is defense and goaltending.  But that doesn’t mean you should entirely give up on having any offense or mobility on the blueline.  Whatever happens in the next two games, it’s shameful if Lou doesn’t clear up the defensive logjam one way or another by the deadline.  There’s zero excuse to be wasting Gelinas and Larsson in Albany when you have UFA vets in Zidlicky and Fayne and another vet in Sal that’s playing like crap.  Jon Merrill should be in Albany too, working on his all-around game but since he’s better than Gelinas defensively he’s somehow escaped the Pete doghouse for much of the last few months, despite adding zero offensively and having his own rookie snafus on the back end.  It would be nice to add another scorer up front too but realisticially we have little to trade to get one without a first-round pick this year and with few tradeable assets in the farm.