Battle Of Hudson

For some reason while watching last night’s game, I somehow missed this replay when they were showing Travis Zajac‘s tie-breaking goal in the second period last night.  It did seem like the puck bounced a little weird at the time, and the replay doesn’t so much explain it as much as it illustrates how weird it actually was.  Zajac clearly deflected it, but then the puck went off the post and looked to be heading out of the net before magically going back towards the net and in.

I’ve only seen a unprompted puck turn like that once before, in a highlight of some random Kings game a couple years ago (can’t remember whether the Kings were the ones shooting or not) but in that case the puck looked to be going in and stayed out.  This one went the other way and proved to be the decisive goal in what may be a life-saving stretch run.  If the Devils do indeed make the playoffs, one can point back to this moment and say destiny was on our side.

Despite the Devils’ gritty victory in Newark over one playoff hopeful last night, going to Carolina to beat another team desperately trying to stay in the race seemed like a tall order tonight.  New Jersey made the trip without injured forwards Patrik Elias, Adam Henrique, Jacob Josefson and Ryane Clowe.  Playing a fourth game in six nights with a lineup that was offensively challenged even before losing a third of their top nine forwards against a team that’s always been a pain in the neck…what kind of odds would you have put on it?  Yet, somehow, someway this suddenly fired up group managed to pull another one out of the fire, grinding out a 3-1 road win that all but eliminated the Canes and put the Devils one point outside of a playoff position.  Granted, Columbus still has a game in hand on the field but with the pack getting closer, it’ll be interesting to see how they respond against a pesky Islanders team tomorrow.

Columbus 85 points (34 ROW) – 5 GL, Devils 84 points (34 ROW) – 4 GL, Leafs 84 points (29 ROW) – 3 GL, Caps 83 points (25 ROW) – 4 GL

Barely twenty-four hours ago things looked bleak with the Devils five points out and having just lost Elias due to a suspected concussion.  Granted, even after this win the Devils still face an uphill road in the season’s final week, starting with a home game against Calgary on Monday that will be our fifth in seven nights with a depleted lineup.  And the Jackets still need to lose a couple of games before we can control our destiny fully.  At least the season’s third-to-last home game will have real meaning though.  Even play-by-play announcer Steve Cangelosi got caught up in the emotion with an excited ‘who would have thought this, but the Devils are just one point out!’ call at the end of the 3-1 win.  Perhaps just as meaningful as the situation itself is how the Devils have stayed alive the last two games.

Clearly despite the resiliency of the eighteen skaters on the ice, you have to start by giving credit to Cory Schnieder.  Finally given a chance to play in big games, he’s responding like a guy who should be the Devils’ goalie going forward not only for this year but for years to come.  Schnieder made 26 high-pressure saves today, only allowing Jeff Skinner‘s snipe in the second period that needed video review to confirm when the officials initially let play continue.  Another player who deserves special notice tonight was Danius Zubrus, who’s certainly struggled for the majority of the season, but thrust into a second-line center role with the Devils’ MASH unit, he responded with not one, but two goals.  Granted, the first goal was a backhander through the legs of Anton Khudobin that the Canes netminder probably should have stopped late in the first period, but Zubie still busted it to stay ahead of the defender on his partial breakaway.  And his second goal was the game-clinching empty-netter in the final minute, which is noteworthy itself given our utter lack of empty-net goals this season.  Our last one came when Elias was trying to pass to Henrique for a hat trick a few weeks back.

Fortunately coach Pete DeBoer was able to get away with spreading out the minutes a little more tonight during a fourth game in six nights, with only Andy Greene playing above 21 minutes (25:46), while only ‘fourth-liners’ Mike Sislo and Eric Gelinas came in at under ten minutes.  Gelinas played very little tonight mostly because the Devils only had one power play and again dressed seven defensemen.  With the return of Jon Merrill to the lineup, it was of course Adam Larsson who fell by the wayside again despite three strong games since his return – I’m not a big fan of shot-based stats but apparently last night the Devils outshot the Caps 10-0 with him on the ice during his 10+ minutes.  Tell me if you think this lineup should be winning games in the NHL:

Forwards: Ruutu-Zajac-Jagr, Brunner-Zubrus-Ryder, Carter-Gionta-Bernier (as the third line), Sislo-Sestito-Gelinas

Defense: Greene-Fayne, Zidlicky-Volch, Merrill-Harrold and Goaltender: Schnieder

At one point this season Zubrus had scored just two goals in thirty-nine games, tonight he got his 12th and 13th of the season.  Even top center Travis Zajac has picked it up offensively lately with an outside chance at 20 goals and 50 points after getting his 17th tonight on a tip-in moments after Skinner had tied the game in the second period.  For the rest of the night a tired Devils team was seemingly on its heels more often than not, but the adage bend but don’t break certainly applied to our defense for the most part.  Despite some inspired play by ex-Devil Andrei Loiktionov in 21:49 of icetime (three whole games’ worth with us!), the Devils managed to keep the top line of Staal-Loiktionov-Semin off the board.  Actually tonight reminded me a little of Game 5 of the Finals two years ago, with how we managed to win a tight game despite being tired and on our heels for most of the latter part of it.

That game might have been the last time I’ve been as proud of the team as I’ve been the last two nights.

In a bizarre game at the Prudential Center, this Devil team that just refuses to go away quietly into the night somehow pulled another rabbit out of the hat against an equally desperate Caps team, gutting out a come-from-behind 2-1 win despite being down to eight healthy forwards by the end of the night.  Even during our cap fiascoes in 2010, I’ve never heard of a team being down to eight forwards by the end of a game aside from maybe a flu-related instance.  While I wouldn’t exactly recommend losing top players like Patrik Elias and Adam Henrique (along with Jacob Josefson) to injury during a game where you only dress eleven fowards to begin with, perhaps in a weird way the injuries united the team.

Certainly during a drab first period, it looked like it was going to be yet another long night.  Already sitting five points out of a playoff spot, tonight looked like it was going to be IT once and for all when the Devils allowed Alex Ovechkin to score his first even-strength goal in sixteen games in the first period, while the Blue Jackets got out to an early lead against an injury-riddled Blackhawks team starting its backup goaltender on top of missing big stars Johnathan Toews and Patrick Kane.  Overlooked at the time (certainly by me) was the fact the first period could have been even worse, after early penalties by Anton Volchenkov and Adam Larsson gave the Caps three plus straight power play minutes, including a nearly minute-long five-on-three.  Facing the league’s best PP with two defensemen in the box…what odds would you have put on our killing it off?  However, sterling PK work from the three-man unit of Henrique, Andy Greene and Mark Fayne prevented the Caps from even getting a shot on net.  Ovechkin’s goal came later in the period, but instead of making the game 2-0, it was still in reach at 1-0.

Scoring aside, the Devils had already suffered a devastating loss in the first period when the Caps’ Tom Wilson crushed Elias along the boards, and his head hit the stantion (a la Max Pacioretty with the contreversial Zdeno Chara hit a couple of years back).  Elias left the game with a suspected concussion, not to return.  Washington not only had the better of play in terms of scoring chances in the first period, but they came out physical – with Ovechkin hitting Larsson a wee bit late on his first shift and Henrique came to his defenseman’s defense…but only after d-partner Eric Gelinas took a pass and skated away.  It would be telling of our early play.  During the second period, Mikail Grabovski landed on goaltender Cory Schnieder, but again nothing was done to protect one of our key players.  While by all accounts Wilson’s hit wasn’t dirty, nothing happened to him either until Marek Zidlicky took a matching roughing penalty late in the second period.

Still, if the team didn’t come out as edgy as I would have liked they certainly showed intestinal fortitude over the game’s final forty minutes.  Although Jaromir Jagr missed a golden opportunity to tie the game by passing up an open chance in the slot, the Devils kept buzzing after an early (though futile) four-minute power play in the second period turned the tide.  Finally, at 12:21 of the second, the breakthrough came when Gelinas took a point shot that Tuomo Ruutu deflected past Caps goaltender Jaroslav Halak for the tying goal – his third as a Devil in fourteen games.  Therein lies the rub with Gelinas, he helps create offense but aside from that he was awful in his nearly thirteen minutes of icetime while fellow younster Larsson got shafted (again) after his early penalty, and only played a hair above ten minutes.  Thus, despite having seven defensemen – though Gelinas moved back to forward for a couple of shifts later on after all our injuries started – Greene got an insane 28:35 of icetime in a regulation finish, including over four minutes of PK and PP time each.

Greene wouldn’t be the only Devil taxed as first Henrique, then Josefson went down to injury by the start of the third period.  Even Damien Brunner had to miss a couple of shifts due to an equipment (skate) problem.  I’m sure there was more than one gallows humor joke made on the bench about how they suddenly had so much legroom.  Heroically, the 42-year old Jagr played 25:28 to lead all forwards and to use a DeBoerism, ‘they were hard minutes’.  Another guy that deserves praise is Schnieder himself – while I was down on him last month for falling off down the stretch, he responded big-time tonight to a desperate situation making at least three saves that were standing ovation quality including one of Devil-killer Jason Chimera on a breakaway towards the end of the first period, and sprawling saves on Marcus Johansson late in the second and on Grabovski midway through the third.

With Schnieder holding the fort, the Devils still needed to find a way to score before facing the dreaded shootout…preferably scoring before the end of regulation so that they wouldn’t give a team in front of them a point.  Enter Ryan Carter, who found himself in the right place at the right time as Zidlicky lifted a puck to the Devils centerman in the middle of FOUR Caps players, and Carter somehow beat Halak through the legs with just 4:54 remaining in the game.  Admittedly after the game, Carter forgot whether he was supposed to be playing center or wing on the play since not only lines but positions were all screwed up because of the injuries.  Not that it matters when you score a key goal like that.  While the Devils’ defense clamped down for the most part, Schnieder did have to make a highlight reel save on Johansson again late in the third to help preserve the hard-fought win.  Clearly the 15,000 plus at the arena still believed…the roar at the end of the game was probably the loudest I’ve heard the Rock all year.  Perhaps many of them even knew what I was about to find out postgame via a text from a friend before I could even check Twitter – that the Blackhawks had rallied for a dramatic late win over the Blue Jackets, pulling us to within three points of a playoff spot with five games remaining.

Not only was the win meaningful, but it was a bit inspiring to be honest.  After the Devils’ loss in Buffalo, Jagr made reference to the ‘one inch at a time’ speech from Al Pacino in the movie Any Given Sunday.  During the game with our injury total mounting, I was thinking about another scene in that same movie when all the quarterbacks started going down one by one.  As Derek well knows you can count on Jagr alternately for colorful quotes, and for telling it like it is in good times and bad.  A exhausted Jagr in the postgame gave great credit to his teammates:

Tom Gulitti ‏@TGfireandice  1h

Jagr: “That was a team win. Everybody gave everything we could…We had a short bench. That’s probably the toughest and best win we’ve had so far, the way I look at it…When we have to win, guys went down, we have a lot of new guys and we did it. I’m proud of our team tonight.”

While we may still be alive as a team, our roster is on life support at the moment with healthy bodies needed for a game in Carolina less than twenty-four hours later.  As coach Pete DeBoer said after the game half-kiddingly, ‘we’ll field a team’, he also admitted that the Devils gave themselves a chance to stay relevant.  Indeed they did – and with a chance to gain another two points tomorrow and put even more pressure on the Jackets, the games are just going to get bigger and bigger…if the Devils can somehow keep winning.  Which wasn’t going to be an easy task even before losing basically an entire top six line within a week between Elias, Henrique and Ryane Clowe.  DeBoer would not commit to a goaltender for tomorrow but at this point (despite the taxing schedule) you’d figure it’s Schnieder until the ship either sinks, or doesn’t sink.  Especially with how he played tonight and in his last four games as a whole.

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.