Since I had other plans I watched almost none of Tuesday’s 1-0 home shutout against the Blues, and little of last night’s 4-3 loss in St. Louis.  Clearly I missed very little until the Devils’ sudden and unexpected three-goal outburst in the final 3:30 of last night’s game (by which time I was home anyway) that made a previously 3-0 walkover close in the end but of course our penalty kill of doom struck yet again giving up two more goals last night after giving up the only goal in the shutout loss on Tuesday.  People can talk about all our injuries, the old guys’ ineffectiveness, Cory playing every game and I’ll get to all that but this horrendous joke of a penalty kill is the biggest reason why this Devils team is grinding its gears, now at 6-5-2 after being swept by the Blues, with a vitally important game in Detroit tonight.  Not only is the Devils’ PK dead last at 66.7% (18/54) but the 54 power plays in itself is among the highest number in the league.  When you face an average of 3.6 power plays a game and give up and average of 1.2 PP goals a game, that’s not a good sign.

If I had an answer to the Devils’ PK I’d be coaching them but clearly something’s not getting the job done whether it’s personnel (overplaying Bryce Salvador on the PK among other things), tactics or whatever…something’s got to change for this team to even be competent at killing a penalty.  Taking less penalties would help too.  Even our bad PK is far from the only problem with this team now though.  As usual, scoring’s an issue – until our three-goal outburst last night with two of the goals coming from Michael Ryder and the other one from Marek Zidlicky, the only player the Devils had in last night’s lineup with more than two goals on the season was rookie defenseman Damon Severson, who had an off night last night – with him and Ryder being absolutely undressed on Tarasenko’s goal in the final seconds of the first period last night – see above.

Offensively as a whole, the big-name guys in our lineup are largely not producing.  After a brief offensive revival last season, Travis Zharkov is back with a vengeance (if anyone remembers one-time Devil Vladimir Zharkov doing everything to find a way not to score, that’s not a typo) with a pitiful one goal and four points in thirteen games.  Not that Czech nation’s been much better.  Jaromir Jagr’s only had two goals in his first thirteen games, Patrik Elias one goal – on Opening Night – and seven points.  Despite getting a ton of icetime with the top six this season, Danius Zubrus only has two points (both goals).  Tuomo Ruutu, by contrast has three points (two goals) in twelve games despite playing on the fourth line for 7-8 minutes a night and being a healthy scratch once this season already.  Having a fourth liner making north of $4 million would be a good luxury to have if you had better options but we don’t right now.  If anything Ruutu is probably a better option than at least one of the options playing a top six role right now…as much as I love Zubie, it’s been over for him since early last season.  Even recent recall Steve Bernier got a top nine slot over Ruutu last night, but amazingly enough that worked out with Bernier providing screens on two of the late goals.  It does seem as if our coach has the same blind spot for Ruutu as one-time Devil coach Brent Sutter had for Zubrus way back when Zubrus was treated as a fourth-liner and not deserving of it.  Now he is.

Even with our offensive woes, you do have to factor in the recent spate of injuries to our recent goal drought.  Adam Henrique missed last night’s game with an undisclosed injury and became the fourth forward from the opening night lineup (after Mike Cammalleri, Martin Havlat and Jordin Tootoo) to be MIA.  Henrique and Cammalleri have been arguably our top two offensive players this year.  That doesn’t even include defenseman Jon Merrill, also shelved the last two games with an apparent hand injury.  His loss isn’t helping the PK much by the way, but it wasn’t exactly that great with him either.  As far as the scoring goes, when you lose that many forwards and considering Reid Boucher showed he’s still not ready earlier in the season, options are limited.  Those options became even more limited with Ryane Clowe leaving last night’s game in the first period with an undisclosed injury.  I don’t want to say the C word, but man if this is another one that’s got to be it for him for good <shudder>.  With all our supposed depth I didn’t think we’d be seeing the likes of Mike Sislo again but fifteen games into the season here we are with both Bernier and Sislo recalled from the AHL to attempt to plug the gaps in our forward core.

A bone of contention with some fans and pundits is the fact Cory Schnieder’s started every game this season and will start his fifteenth straight in Detroit, after never being a #1 in his career it seems as if the Devils are determined to pay back the difference from last year where he played too little.  I can’t even fault the Devils yet though since the schedule’s been light in terms of games played and back-to-backs up to this point.  Our lone back-to-back before tonight, there was two days off before and after it, and Cory’s play has actually picked up in recent games after a slow start.  Clearly by any metric though he’s getting the ‘#1 treatment’ where you can’t sit him during a losing streak, and the Devils’ modest two-game losing streak could balloon if they don’t carry over their late surge into Detroit tonight.  It would be nice to start Keith Kinkaid at some point now that we’ve taken him away from getting regular work in Albany, maybe against a Zach Parise-less Minnesota would be more ideal for the kid to make his starting debut – assuming we aren’t on a four-game losing streak by then with having a game in Boston on Monday night.