Devils’ pregame show looked better than last night’s game

It must be said the bloom is a bit off the rose now for the Devils.  After an impressive three straight wins on the road, the Devils are now back in the pack with two consecutive losses following a blowout in Washington and last night’s 3-2 home opener defeat at the hands of the Sharks.  While it’s not panic time yet, clearly it’s get worried about the special teams time.  Both in the fact we’re taking so many penalties and the fact we’re not killing enough of them off.  And some big names need to start playing better, beginning with the goaltender Cory Schnieder – who had two bad games on the trip and gave up a killer soft goal last night to Patrick Marleau in the third period.  Not that Cory’s the only guy who’s struggling, really the only big-name guy that hasn’t struggled the last few games is Mike Cammalleri, who may wind up being our most successful FA signing in quite some time.

Still, our struggles start with the PK woes.  New Jersey’s been shorthanded an astonishing 26 times in its first five games, and allowed six PP goals among them, for a woeful 76.4 percent.  After having a league-leading PK the last two full seasons, it’s struggled out of the gate.  While ‘conventional wisdom’ (re: coach Pete DeBoer) says part of that is integrating new guys into the penalty kill, the fact is it isn’t so much the new guys that are killing us as it is the holdovers getting more PK time than they should.  Like Bryce Salvador, who the organization has a collective mancrush on but let’s face it, he’s 38 years old and a statue on the ice.  He was supposed to be a PK specialist but has been on the ice for more than half our total goals against (9 of 17) so far and the Sharks’ quick, effective passing on their PP left him standing still on both the first two goals.

To be fair, Salvador getting over six minutes of shorthanded time a game is in part a function of the changing defense.  Without Mark Fayne and Anton Volchenkov around, second-year defenseman Jon Merrill and rookie Damon Severson are the #3 and #4 options defensively on the PK behind Sal and Andy Greene.  While neither’s fallen in over their head yet at some point they’re either going to have to get more minutes (which isn’t ideal in Severson’s case yet) or we’re going to have to finally free Adam Larsson from jail.  Maybe that chance’ll come Tuesday since Eric Gelinas has his second straight poor game, not hitting the net with shots, turning the puck over and making a dumb decision late in the third to give a penalty shot where he really had zero chance of getting the puck and not tripping Tommy Wingels.  Fortunately Schnieder saved Wingels’ penalty shot.  Whatever changes we’re negotiating on D, the forwards are mostly the same on the PK other than Cammalleri taking over the departed Ryan Carter’s slot on the three forward lines.

Elsewhere, our own PP hasn’t been great yet going just 3-18 so far with two of them coming in the Florida scrimmage.  Offensively after scoring eleven goals its first two games, the Devils have gotten two in each of the last three games.  Not particularly terrible but two’s not going to be enough to win a majority of your games either.  Especially when you wait till down 3-0 in the third period before coming to life last night.  Plus some other people besides Cammalleri are going to have to pick it up eventually.  We are only five games in but other than Cammalleri, Adam Henrique’s the only other forward with multiple goals so far and he has two.  For all the hulabaloo about our increased mobility and offensive potential on the blueline, only Severson has scored among our defensemen through the first five games (granted, he alone has three goals – though two were in the blowout at Washington).  While last night was the first time we weren’t outshot, we still gave up 30+ shots and are maintaining an Oiler-like average of 32 shots a game against in the first five.  And in goal, if Schnieder’s play isn’t concerning yet it surely is eyebrow-raising.  In his first season after signing a long-term deal to be Martin Brodeur’s replacement the spotlight’s obviously going to be on Cory more now.  Defensive issues aside, he just has to be better than a 2.97 GAA and a .908 save percentage before the vultures start to have a feast.

If the on-ice product has been uneven to this point, so was the off-ice product last night.  Let me start with the positive, asthetically I liked most of the changes.  All the new food choices made me pine for the fact we’re not going to have a fresh roll of Chico Eats this year.  I didn’t actually sample the food choices though, as I haven’t received my $200 food and beverage card yet (neither has anyone else) due to an unspecified delay.  Plus by the time I got inside the lines were just so crowded anyway, so I might as well wait for another day.  Even Championship Plaza had some good food choices in the various trucks outside though. The renovated and expanded team stores seemed to have more of a choice and variety between locations though I didn’t really have time to go through the main store last night.  Upstairs actually saw a fair amount of renovation including a mini-bar area outside of 225 and just off the main escalator upstairs.  Our much-balleyhooed pregame show debut looked good enough, especially the opening effects of the ice and fire: http://video.devils.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=647349&lang=en

Now for the negative/pet peeves, and part of that is related to the opening show.  The Devils made such a big deal on social media about being in your seat by 6:45 (normally the end of the pregame skate) for the debut of the new 3D presentation.  To the point where they even mailed postcards to all sth’s encouraging us to be in our seats by 6:45.  So while I was downstairs with friends just before 6:30 I decided to go upstairs so I’d be able to walk around the upper concourse at least once before getting to my seat.  When 6:45 came all we saw were Zambonis circling the ice, and there was nothing on the jumbotron either.  In other words your normal 6:45-7 break between the pregame skate and the game.  Apparently 6:45 in Devil-land really means 7 PM, which is a Tom Coughlin approach to time.  Although I liked the pregame show I was annoyed that I wasted fifteen minutes sitting at my seat for nothing.  It seemed like half the crowd was still stuck in concession lines or outside at 6:45 anyway, maybe they didn’t get the memo or knew better than to listen to anything the Devils said.

Another pet peeve took place before the game as well, where the Devils have apparently dispensed with player intros for the opposing teams.  Why?  Because it doesn’t add to the owners’ corporate vision for the atmosphere having us chant ‘sucks’ after every player on the other team gets called out.  I’m shocked they haven’t stopped introducing the refs yet to keep them from getting booed.  For whatever issue I’ve had with their handling of the goal song to me taking away the well-timed and completely harmless ‘sucks’ towards the other team’s starting lineup is a hundred times worse than trying (unsuccessfully) to sanitize the goal song.  Which of course leads to the main issue last night – and something I’m already tired of talking about – the goal song itself.  At the arena, the goal song sounded nothing like the YouTube preview I posted the other day.  And all of the fans chanting Let’s Go Devils for the video?  I kind of thought each fan clip would be shown on a rotation basis throughout the season, instead what we saw on the jumbotron was a Brady-Bunch like picture of like twenty-five little squares with all of the fan chants at once and the combined noise sounded awful.

Especially when the music got jacked up to concert levels on the second goal because again Devil fans cannot resist being defiant and trying to pump ‘you suck’ into every single goal song the team will ever put on the board.  I just don’t know what to say any more.  I’m tired of how petty and selfish Devil fans have become, and I’m tired of doing nothing after a goal besides clapping since I don’t want to join in the YS chant and nobody else wants to join in the goal song.  If you want to keep ruining the in-game atmosphere of a positive act (scoring a goal) for years and years and years eventually you’re going to do more to sanitize the atmosphere than the owners you’re trying to stick it to.  Clearly this impasse is no longer about RRP2 – especially since most of the people crying tradition are the ones who changed tradition by adding YS over the last several years – but more about Devil fans taking a perverse pride in being stubborn, selfish fools.  I was fine with ‘you suck’ in RRP2, especially when we were winning, but that’s over with now.  Ownership has been clear on this issue and instead of respecting their wishes on this one little thing we’re going to continue to drag every goal scored through the mud, as if we’re all Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a bus.  GIVE…IT…UP with this crap already!  RR2 is not coming back, YS is going to be frowned on and if you want the team to keep doing things to counteract your stupidity you’re only going to continue to annoy real fans.