I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about this week before the Devils’ potentially season-ending game against the Caps tomorrow night at home, though it seems as if we’ve said that a few times this season – the noose is tightening with Detroit’s win against the Bruins last night and the Blue Jackets on their way to three of a possible four points against the Avs and Flyers.  If last weekend’s embarassment against the AHL Islanders wasn’t the coup de grace for our season, perhaps the Tuesday fiasco in Buffalo against the AHL Sabres and their fourth-string goalie was.  I just wasn’t in the mood to write about our eleventh shootout loss of the season, especially since I couldn’t bring myself to watch the first few minutes of the shootout.  When I thought it was over, I checked Twitter and much to my surprise it was still going on and 2-2, so at that point I had to get sucked back in and saw another predictable defeat when Ville Leino and his zero goals on the season beat Cory Schnieder for the winner.  At least this time Jacob Josefson (!) and Jaromir Jagr kept us from being shut out in the skills competition but it shouldn’t have gotten to that point in 65 minutes against a Sabres team that was 1-10-1 in their previous twelve games and starting a faceless rookie in net that I don’t even care to look up his name (hint: it wasn’t Ryan Miller, Jhonas Enroth or even Matt Hackett).  All I care about is our twenty losses to backup goalies this season…each one more painful than the last.

Despite not seeing much of the Monday game against Florida I did want to comment a bit on our 6-3 win there, and not because of the oddity of Travis Zajac getting a hat trick (too bad he used up his quota of goals for the month in one game).  If you read my blog Saturday, you know I was not in the mood to watch Monday’s game and was in fact watching the HIMYM finale among other things…but periodically checked Twitter and saw the fact we got up to a 3-0 lead early in the first period and then – as usual against that team – we were about to blow it, giving up three goals as the Panthers pulled to within 4-3.  That’s when coach Pete DeBoer made his boldest move of the season pulling Martin Brodeur with the lead in favor of Schnieder.  Perhaps this is finally where the shift has been made to let the team’s fortunes ride with Schnieder once and for all, most likely too late to salvage anything this season but to his credit Schnieder responded in relief making a dozen saves and then played well enough against Buffalo, only falling victim to a couple of backdoor Tyler Ennis goals in the third period.  Although Leino’s shootout winner was a weak five-hole attempt, Schnieder did make several saves for once in the skills competition.  It’s not his fault Patrik Elias had the most pitiful attempt I’ve seen in a shootout since Ilya Kovalchuk lost the puck off his stick a couple years ago, or that Zajac left his goal-scoring touch back in New Jersey firing wide of an open net during his attempt.

Despite how bad things look right now it’s still too early to get into an offseason post, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to do that, particularly if things break wrong tomorrow and we’re in for several days of nothing before the season finale on April 13.  I wanted to buy into the fact that this Devils team could somehow make a miracle run at the playoffs, especially with today being the 26th anniversary of John MacLean‘s famous OT winner on the final day of the 1987-88 regular season that got the Devils into the playoffs for the first time and how the team had to go 7-0-1 down the stretch just to squeeze into the playoffs by a single point.  It would take a similar run in our last six games just to give the current day Devils a chance now.  Incidentally, ’87-88 was Lou Lamoriello‘s first season as GM of the team, and the last time the Devils missed the playoffs two consecutive years were in the two seasons before Lou took over.  Which shows just how alarming it is that we’re about to miss the playoffs for the second consecutive year for the first time in Lou’s tenure (and how high the GM’s standards have been).

Perhaps it’s because of the team’s perilous state that focus has started to shift off-ice, with a piece at NJ.com by Steve Politi detailing how CEO Scott O’Neil and Devils Arena Entertainment president Hugh Weber want to repackage the Devil brand, to use one popular business term.

http://www.nj.com/devils/index.ssf/2014/04/politi_scott_oneil_and_hugh_weber_want_to_reinvent_the_devils_as_a_business.html

What exactly does repackaging the brand mean?  For one thing on the base level, it’s about expanding a season ticket base that’s currently at 8,700 full season ticket holders.  As Politi himself points out in the article, if consistently excellent hockey was enough to fill the arena, it would have happened a long time ago.  Granted, any fan will tell you lowering ticket prices is the best way to get fans in the building (and to be fair, walkup prices are outrageous for the demand level, though the season ticket prices are more than fair in many sections)…but it isn’t always that simple for ownership.  Every good businessman wants to maximize profit after all, though part of maximizing profit IS building the base.

Part of building the base they feel will be accomplished by upgrading the experience, both in terms of the surrounding area in Newark and in perks that place extrinsic value on being a season ticket holder.  While the area immediately adjacent to the Rock has improved since the team’s arrival with a Courtyard Marriott hotel in spitting distance and various food/bar options all around the arena, still more work needs to be done.  All facts that Weber acknowledges:

“We are defined by who we are on the ice, and that’s awesome,” Weber said. “It’s tradition. It’s loyalty. It’s team first. I think they missed an opportunity over the years to make that the brand, instead of just a hockey style….We’ve talked to a lot of people,” Weber said, “and they’ve mostly told us the same thing: That the experience felt more like visiting a castle on a hill than the town square.”

The latter part of that quote could have been attributed more to the CAA days in my mind, since the Meadowlands was literally in an area with nothing around it.  Not that there’s currently all that much to do around Newark besides eat and drink but at least it’s something for the moment.  With all the seperate parking lots around the arena, it does make it easier to get out of Newark than it ever was getting out of East Rutherford where all the parking was in one or two locations, and you could only exit the arena out of one specific road, sometimes looping around the entire arena complex to get to it.

Clearly there’s still a Newark stigma that not everyone’s gotten past yet at the new barn either, especially where families are concerned.  Going to a recent game I went with my friend and a couple we know and we showed them the lot we park on just a few blocks away from the arena for $7, whereas the lot directly across the arena is $25.  Our friends admitted they probably wouldn’t go to that lot with their newborn daughter which I suppose I could understand since it is kind of a deserted side street (still better than being in the ghetto outright though) but by the same token I’ve never really felt unsafe myself and I’ve walked alone on that street a lot.

Weber constatly seeks fan feedback on his Twitter account @hughweber1 with frequent online chats and certainly deserves credit for reaching out despite various contreversies, such as the goal song snafu and how the change was handled (Weber himself confirmed we’re getting another new goal song next year, clearly this one hasn’t worked for various reasons) along with the team’s surreptitious handling of brokers and so-called fan broker accounts.  Any account that gets flagged for selling half their season tickets or more is now being stripped of their season tickets, and all the registered brokers are quietly being purged.  Which at face value I don’t have a problem with, though the Devils’ implementation of this policy has been questionable at times since fans were punished last year without warning when many had to sell a bunch of tickets cause they couldn’t make the new dates of the shortened season.  Not to mention their counting of who sells what tickets through various secondary market outlets is…flawed, to put it succinctly.  That’s a rant I hope I don’t have to make in more detail though, since I haven’t been erroneously flagged as a broker yet – despite having to sell a lot of tickets myself.

On a more positive note, improving the experience also means maintaining and enhancing season ticket perks, which are currently among the best in the league.  In fact we were rated #1 in that area by a recent blog on SB Nation, which took into account a lot of different things such as team events, sth gifts, discounted parking and such.

1. New Jersey Devils: The Devils host three separate meet and greet events, a Team BBQ, a Team Skate, and a Private Practice.

They go into more detail in an appendix in the blog itself as well.  I can’t speak for how accurate everyone else’s list is but this is definitely correct.  There are several different forms of a meet-and-greet with the players, a couple of them involve autographs (including the Team Awards) while a couple are just pictures and casual chatting.  Unfortunately from my point of view, the team VIP practice and the awards – arguably the two most popular events – both usually take place on weekdays so I’m not able to get to them but at least the option’s there.  The longer your tenure as a sth, the more events you get to RSVP to.  Other non-player events include a Hockey 101 session with alumni where they chat about the team and the game, and show demonstrations of basic hockey strategies, and a State of the Franchise where you can hear from ownership and ask questions.  Among other things there’s also a 10% discount at the team store for every sth and a season-long food and beverage credit option that’s higher depending on what seat level you’re at – mine was $200.

I’m sure Derek will chime in on the Rangers’ low placement on this list…which isn’t really a surprise from this corner.  When you have sellouts and are in a big market you can afford to be lazy as far as offering fans sweeteners.  Although it’s a big surprise the Islanders are the lowest on this list considering their limited success over the last two decades – maybe the Isles’ perpetual lack of money is a factor though.

Getting back to the Politi article, improving fan relations and sth perks are only a part of the battle.  As with any ownership group, you need to wine and dine corporations to sell the high-end seats and get sponsorships.  That’s the one area where previous owner Jeff Vanderbeek – despite making commendable attempts at relationships on the fan level – was clearly lacking in, partly due to his own financial concerns toward the end.  The new group’s much balleyhooed partnership with Party Poker was clearly a step in the right direction on that end, given the lawsuits and fractured relations with the business community the new group inherited.  Plus new ownership’s hired 85 new employees and the entire staff totaled 72 people when they first came aboard.  Evidence of that is the fact last year there were just three season ticket reps, now there are eight.  When you have nearly 9000 sth’s there’s a big difference between having a staff of three and a staff of eight to deal with everyone’s concerns.

Clearly the new group has come in with a plan.  I alluded earlier to the fact that ownership wants to court sth’s as well as they do businesses and part of that was illustrated in a series of events for tenured sth’s where members in each group (30+ year sth’s, 25+, 20+, 15+, 10+ and 5+) were invited to the arena for light refreshments, and after hearing Weber and Ken Daneyko (pictured above) speak at my event – the 5+ year one – everyone had a group picture taken on the ice, and will eventually receive a jersey you can customize any way you like with a patch detailing the number of years you’ve been a season ticket holder on it.  Truth be told, I’m puzzled how I got classifed in the 5+ year column since I’ve only owned my sth account since 2011-12 – though for all intents and purposes I have been a sth every year at the Rock (got my tickets in 208 through a friend, but the Devils staff then never let him transfer the tickets to me so I was merely a sth in everything but name).

To bring everything back home, at that event it was Daneyko who brought up the team’s fast finish in ’87-88 as a means of providing hope for all in attendance, and since the event was on Tuesday the Devils let everyone hang out in the arena to watch the first period of the game at Buffalo that night (it was over at 6:15 so I went home and watched it on my own TV), before heading over to nearby Dino BBQ for the official viewing party.  While I’m sure some things will get better and some things won’t under new ownership, the one thing they will not be able to control is the team’s performance.  At least not as long as Lou’s running the show.  After that, who knows whether ownership becomes more hands-on or not?

Either way let’s face it, unless you’re in a Canadian market or Minnesota/Manhattan, it’s hard to sell tickets if you’re going to be a non-playoff team.  Especially since most prices don’t seem to be going down this year, though thankfully my seats didn’t increase either.  And this offseason’s going to be a pivotal one for this organization given the transistion that needs to happen on defense and somehow getting an infusion of young talent that’s absolutely neccesary up front.  Not to mention the goaltending question and whether they’ll be able to agree to an extension with Schnieder.