Apologies up top for the cheap pun, but might as well start with some levity. This is a tough piece to write for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is it’s just plain wrong for me to even think of celebrating a man losing his job when I’m also personally looking for work as of last Tuesday. Granted, in my case being laid off was being paroled from what had become a horrible job with a hideous boss and in the long run I should be better off assuming I find a job I at least somewhat like doing and can be good at. If people think Lindy ran a slipshod operation with the Devils, they should have tried working at my old company. Without naming names or really getting into it, let’s just say there’s a reason almost everyone who was there three months ago is gone now.

Not to mention my job problems the last few months since my old store was sold only added to the angst I already had with the Devils team this year, and why I announced I was going on an emotional break in my last blog. I’m not sure I’ve really come out of it yet – I may or may not go to tomorrow’s game, hardly seems to matter at this point with the Devils sitting seven points out of a playoff spot staring down a gauntlet of games in the next ten days that include the Panthers, Blues and Hurricanes at home followed by the Rangers and Stars on the road. Although I’m not going to celebrate Lindy’s dismissal, at least resolving that issue removed some of the potential toxicity of going to games the next month of the season with fans loudly calling for the coach’s head at the end of the last homestand, and a 1-2 West Coast swing doing nothing to improve anyone’s mood since. If they aren’t already out of the playoff picture in a top-heavy Eastern Conference, the next week or so should probably put the final nail in.

Honestly even if I was predisposed to pop champagne corks for Lindy’s dismissal (and believe me, my only real issue with this change – besides the fact it’s Travis Green taking over – is that it came almost certainly too late to matter for this season), he’s always been a class act off the ice and for the most part in the way he handled the criticism on the ice aside from a couple of slipups like picking on a reporter or blaming the media for the team being uptight on the power play, at least he was there and accountable unlike our GM.

It’s too bad it couldn’t have ended better here, especially after the redemption arc that was last season, but results can be stubborn facts sometimes. Having two bad seasons and a massively underachieving campaign this year eventually was going to outweigh what happened last season. I do think it’s patently unfair that many Devils fans attribute our downfall this season mainly due to the fact we no longer have Andrew Brunette on the staff, never mind that we lost three top five defensemen off of last year’s team. Not to mention at least three of our main offensive stars have either been hurt or playing hurt (Dougie Hamilton, Jack Hughes, Timo Meier). When has any assistant coach ever had ‘that’ much influence in the NHL? All that, and the utter breakdown of Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid in goal had a lot more to do with our demise this year than losing a freaking assistant. Arguably a lot of that had more to do with our downturn than who the head coach was too, but I have no interest in relitigating the Lindy tenure at this point, it’s over and done with now and I’ve gone over my issues with him as a coach in previous blogs.

In terms of Travis Green, consider me underwhelmed – especially given the poor job he’s done with the power play this year or at least since early in the season. Not to mention his Vancouver tenure was pretty underwhelming sans one fluke winning season and playoff run in the bubble out of his five years there. My nightmare scenario is they made the change with enough time in the season for Green to get a new coach bounce, go on an illusory stretch drive run and just miss the playoffs but still doing enough to earn an extension. Unless you’re gonna give Sergei Brylin a chance, the Devils really need a ‘full’ change of coaches and not just take out the general and hope the inadequate private can do a job.

Again, I don’t feel right calling for people’s jobs now but this season has irritated me to such a degree I can’t help myself. It’s not as if Lindy or even the rest of the staff are the only people I have issues with (although it’s kind of an unfortunate epitaph that in Lindy’s last game, it was Jack who noticed the Devils needed a sixth skater on the ice for the empty-net situation and not even anyone else on the staff pointing it out). At least the coaching change has forced Tom Fitzgerald out of his bunker for a morning presser tomorrow a few days before the trade deadline, not that I’m expecting many hard-hitting questions from a neutered media regardless.

There isn’t really much to talk about from the last few games for me since I watched very little of the West Coast swing – or the last two games of the previous homestand for that matter. Aside from an ugly win over the Habs and a rare laugher over the Sharks (where was this goal outburst when we played them at home a few months back?!), not as if there’s been much redeeming during that period anyway. Losing to wild-card leading Tampa at the end of the homestand was a massive blow to the playoff fantasy, losing to the Ducks despite outshooting them like 56-23 or whatever it was is peak Devils right there, especially with Jack missing an end-game penalty shot in craptacular fashion, failing to even put a puck on net.

Funny thing is when I saw the text from a friend saying ‘didn’t think they could find a new way to lose, but a last second penalty shot is a new one’ I immediately thought it was us getting scored on late in a tie game. I kind of wish it was that as opposed to the alternative lol. I’ve compared Hughes over the last three months to Ilya Kovalchuk during the John MacLean reign of error, but my god comparing that penalty shot to the Kovalsuck miss against Buffalo early that season is too eerie for me…I immediately had that PTSD flashback when I saw it.

I shouldn’t even joke about PTSD either cause if I ever had it (undiagnosed), it would have been during my last few weeks on the job given how much I had to do, felt I was doing well but it was still never enough to either keep up or avoid getting yelled at. Enough about me though, and quite honestly I’ve done more than enough talking about the team at this point as well. I don’t have it in me to rant about the offense being unable to shoot straight, or the now-previous coach running poor Nico Daws into the ground. Dude was literally the only reason we had a playoff pulse for three weeks and now he has worse numbers than Vitek because they just keep playing him…every…single…game! More than anything, the overplaying of Daws is why a coaching change needed to happen now, as belated as it was.

Not that any other option in goal would be better, but you have to manage people and not just play every game out like it’s Game 7 of the Finals when there’s still six weeks to two months left in the season, no matter how perilous your job security is or the team’s position in the standings. Like I said though, enough about the team at this point. Maybe I’ll have another post after the trade deadline if they do something insane, or if there’s anything actually positive to discuss. Until that point however, I’m just gonna wash my hands of this team for a little while longer.