Battle Of Hudson

Yesterday afternoon, the Devils got off the schneid – both in scoring goals and winning, beating the Hurricanes 4-2 to even up their record and provide their first goals of the season. New captain Zach Parise scored twice – his first goals in eleven and a half months, while Ilya Kovalchuk had a goal and two assists as both star left wingers were named first and second star, respectively. Mark Fayne also scored a second-period goal, a good sign as the Devils look to increase their production from the blueline this year.

While I didn’t see any of this game live, I was able to listen on the radio and at least get a good feel for what went on. Clearly the Devils played much better than in the season opener on Saturday, though it must be said they were also clearly playing a team that at best is a borderline playoff contender while the Flyers might well win the division in a walk with what I’ve seen of them the first two games. It was kinda depressing hearing Matt Loughlin and Sherry Ross opine how the game was an important one because the Devils and Carolina were both going to be in the mix for the last playoff spot. It’s been a while since just making the playoffs was our celing of expectations.

Aside from the goal-scoring, a bright spot continues to be teen sensation Adam Larsson, who led all Devils in icetime with over twenty-four minutes and led all defensemen in icetime on Opening Night as well. He certainly hasn’t looked out of place, making only one or two glaring mistakes perhaps but also several nice plays, including a ridiculously athletic keep of a puck that looked like it was headed out of the zone on one of our power plays yesterday – going full-speed and stretching out to tap the puck before it got out of the zone, before he came to a halt outside the zone and resumed the play with the puck waiting for him inside the blueline. Larsson even turned his head for good measure while he was doing all that, to make sure no Canes were around him on the five-on-three.

Another bright spot is the penalty kill, which has gone 13-13 this year (although with a slight asterisk since the Flyers’ Wayne Simmonds scored just after a penalty expired). So far the Devils have rotated star forwards Parise and Patrik Elias with young centers Jacob Josefson and Adam Henrique, as well as role players Danius Zubrus and Brad Mills. It’s truly been penalty-killing by committee so far. Unfortunately, the power play has been just as unsuccessful as the PK has been successful, their only goal so far came on a Parise empty-netter late Monday.

For the second straight year, attendance was ridiculously low for the quasi-holiday, as the Devils barely cracked 12000 fans in the seats. That said, I’ve turned around in my opinion about having what now looks like an annual Columbus afternoon game. While not every school’s off, at least some do take off and having another afternoon tilt for the kids isn’t a bad thing. Most of the weekend afternoon games wind up being more expensive, both because demand’s much higher across the board and because of the new tiered pricing system. Might as well throw families a bone and have them get one cheap game a year, and early enough in the season where the weather’s good. Even if the season ticket holder is going to be largely inconvenienced because they don’t want to use a day off to go to one of forty-one home games. Besides, it’s not as if the second game of the year wasn’t usually an attendance pit even before we started having it in the middle of Columbus Day.

I will be back at the arena Thursday as the Devils close out their three-game homestand with a tough match against the Kings. While beating still-winless Carolina was nice and a neccesity, I won’t truly come off the ledge until we beat some playoff teams and at least pile up a few wins early. Ironically, it was in LA where Parise’s season came to an end for all intents and purposes, and Kovalchuk heard some of his loudest boos from fans who felt he spurned them (and former Lou Lamoriello protege Dean Lombardi) during the great FA summer of 2010. Fortunately this game should be just about hockey, and provide a good barometer early in the season to see where we are.

Perhaps coach Pete DeBoer was right about the team having first-game nerves at home, citing a string of teams around the league (Carolina included) that lost big in their home opener, and the fact the Flyers had played already was a disadvantage as well. He’s certainly not resting on his laurels, since it looks like we may see forwards Rod Pelley and Cam Janssen in for Henrique and Eric Boulton. So far DeBoer’s been keeping everyone involved, giving all the defensemen fifteen plus minutes and playing Johan Hedberg in the second game of the season after Hedberg didn’t get a start till his eighth game last year.

Aside from the disaster that was the Devils’ 3-0 loss to the Flyers last night, there were things off-ice I wanted to comment on too. First off, my new seats in 120 are outstanding…literally spot-on right behind the net with a great view of both ends, near and far. In fact they view’s centered behind the net to the point where as Martin Brodeur was making a breakaway stop on Andreas Nodl toward the end of the first period, I literally couldn’t see the play after a couple of people stood up a few rows directly in front of me. I guess that can be chalked up to a learning experience. Either I have to stand up myself on such plays or train myself to look at the jumbotron when that happens. Then again with more games like last night, moving around seats might not be a problem.

Usually I tape the game when I’m attending or otherwise can’t watch it and last night on the program guide it listed the Devils game on MSG and the Isles game on MSG+. So imagine my surprise when I taped MSG and wound up WITH the Isles game on it. Nice job, Cablevision. Not that there was much from the game to actually watch, but I did want to see the pregame and intermission stuff at least, as well as just how the Devils could give up a two-on-zero chance on THEIR OWN POWER PLAY early in the second!

I usually try to buy a program on Opening Night, but of course they only have two little Devils Den stands upstairs on the mezz/upper level and both stands ran out of programs quickly. It always amazes me that they can’t just call down to the big Devils Den and get more programs from them (since they usually have them). I guess I should have learned from a couple years back where I also couldn’t get a program for the same reason. Then again, I only got to the arena around 6:45-6:50 so I didn’t have time to get one beforehand, and didn’t really feel like braving the crowd at the big Devils Den afterwards since me and my companion wanted to meet a couple of our other friends by the light rail. So my only choice was to try to get one during the intermission and with the crowd the way it was, I had little chance of going downstairs to the big Den during the game. Oh well…I have enough programs I don’t read anymore, but it’s always nice to get one on Opening Night, especially with the changes the team made in the offseason.

Our ‘white-out’ promotion predictably turned out goofy, as half the arena was wearing red and the other half white. Granted, the shirts weren’t half bad and actually fit unlike some other prior giveaways but I don’t understand why the Devils promote wearing red – the color the team wears on the ice – 40 games a year, but on Opening Night everyone was encouraged to wear white, just cause the team’s too cheap to give out red shirts instead of white. Even the mascot was wearing a white jersey, which looked ‘different’. Clearly that was the best-kept secret around given all the red jerseys in the stands but at least all the red and white were Devils fans. There were surprisingly few Flyer fans on the premises during a weekend night (although the worst Flyer fan invasion I ever saw was Game 5 a couple years ago, and even then they made up only about 25% of the arena). Maybe they were still in mourning over the Phillies.

By most accounts the supporters section in 122 was a dissapointment, although it does seem like there are different people there this year than the ones that started the section of all-game standing and chanting last year. Even the name (Diablos) that wound up being picked was stupid, Balcony Battalion would have been much better. Granted I did hear the horn and most of the chants and applaud the concept of what the section wants to be, but it seemed like unless you weren’t right next to them you couldn’t hear them at all…and having it be only the top half of a section looks weird anyway. Plus it seems like most of the game the Supporters have massed for have been hideous games from the team, which doesn’t help. On the one hand I envy the ability to cheer down 3-0 and stinking up the joint late in the game, on the other it just sounds stupid and self-serving.

Now that the season’s started, you would think the Devils would have a promotion schedule all set up and ready to go, right? Wrong…absolutely no promos are listed on the team website, which wouldn’t annoy me except for the small fact that I really want to know when the calendar and magnetic schedule are being given away, since they’re usually the highlights of the promo schedule for me. Pucks and baseball caps are also staples of the normal promo list but I have enough of them anyway. There’s not even a mystery puck night listed, nothing. All that’s by the Devils’ promo schedule is a request for fans to submit what they want to see given away. That’s fine for the offseason but it makes no sense the Devils wouldn’t have some form of a promo list up by now, if for nothing else than to give people another incentive to either buy games or not sell their own tickets to certain games.

On the other hand, the team had the right touch with the intro last night, which started with the montage of all the players and coaches who were once a part of the NHL that passed away in the offseason. I saw the montage during the first preseason game, in fact but with the crowd reaction of a sellout I almost teared up at the heartfelt applause for one-time Devils Karel Rachunek and Alexander Vasyunov. Everyone got respectful applause in the video, which was shown with Sarah MacLachlan’s ‘I Will Remember You’ playing in the background. After that came a moment of silence for the two Devils and a scout who passed away in the offseason, which of course didn’t stop some drunken louts from yelling during the moment of silence. There’s also been talk about a memorial for Rachunek and Vasyunov somewhere in the Rock but it wasn’t ready for Opening Night apparently.

After the melancholy came the fun and games of the current player intros, and there were few surprises…the guys you would have expected to get the loudest cheers did from Brodeur to new captain Zach Parise to Patrik Elias , Ilya Kovalchuk and of course, returning fan favorite Petr Sykora. At least nobody got booed like coach Ron Wilson in Toronto, who predicted it to one of his coaches beforehand and could be seen mouthing on the bench ‘called it’ while he was getting booed during the Leafs’ home opener.

Thankfully this year I am getting the Center Ice preview, although I have to remember to periodically reboot my TV since the free preview tends to dissapear at times and turn into a black screen (again, thanks Cablevision). This year, the preview lasts all the way till the 23rd and it’s always nice to see and hear other telecasts. Too bad the free preview doesn’t include the NHL Network though, since I was looking forward to seeing Winnipeg’s home opener tonight but found out this morning that the game was on the NHL Network so I wouldn’t be seeing it.

If the Devils were looking to put a poor 2010 start behind them, tonight’s 3-0 loss to the Flyers did nothing to help. If anything, it reinforced all the outside pessimism about the Devils’ chances this year and already killed off a lot of the fans’ Opening Night optomism. I feel like Derek with the Rangers or Sanborn with the Sabres or Bills, falling completely off the wagon after one loss. Because after what I saw tonight I think we’d be doing well to have an 80-point season.

From a finesse forward corps that had more giveaways than Santa Claus to a D that still has no transition game – to the point where an 18-year old is your best puck-moving defenseman – to a complete third-period meltdown, this game was just about the worst-case scenario on the ice. Heck, if it wasn’t for Martin Brodeur making some incredible saves in the first two periods (including a two-on-zero chance…that happened on OUR power play!) we would have been down more than by a 1-0 score that flattered us until we got knocked down for the count with two early third-period goals.

Of course when it got to 3-0 the Devils started playing like they were in the movie SlapShot, with David Clarkson taking back-to-back selfish penalties and getting himself ejected with a game misconduct, and Eric Boulton managing to get a penalty within three seconds of leaving the box after serving Clarkson’s minor. All told, four minor penalties in the third not only killed off any hope at a comeback, but really any hope of even scoring a goal against the Flyers’ iron defense and pricey new goalie Ilya Bryzgalov.

Right now I’m just sick of everything, sick of the finesse forwards that have no physical presence in the top nine at all (perhaps why we’re overcompensating with our bottom three forwards), other than Clarkson who doesn’t exactly come equipped with a brain. Nick Palmeri‘s a big body that’s a total stiff. The next big hit he throws will be his first. If you’re going to be a finesse team than your snipers at least better snipe and your passers better not give the puck away nine hundred times. Of course the GREAT SCORERS DIDN’T SCORE YET AGAIN. And I saw more giveaways from our new captain tonight than I usually see from him in ten games.

Of course there’s a good reason for Zach Parise to look like he hasn’t played hockey in a long time – because he hasn’t. One competitive game and a handful of exhibitions really weren’t enough to get his timing back. This is why I wanted him playing at the end of last season, meaningless games or not. Because with the way things are now, he’s going to be taking at least the first several-ten games to get back into a groove. Games we can’t afford to play around with, given Travis Zajac being on the shelf and Zach’s own FA status at the end of the year.

Instead of SlapShot, the sports movie tonight really reminded me of was Major League, when the Indians played their first game and kept running into each other in the outfield. That’s how uncoordinated the Devils looked tonight. Nothing could go right, other than the penalty kill strangely enough. The area of the team I was most concerned about, looked for a night like it was rather good, with forwards Jacob Josefson and Brad Mills leading the way for a penalty kill by committee.

Oh well, 81 more to go. But if the next few are anything like this I may have to be committed.

As a Devils fan over the last decade and a half, I’ve seldom gone into a season with outright pessimism. Perhaps I have to go all the way back to 1999, when Jacques Lemaire left (the first time) and there was a youth infusion to think of the last time I was this uncertain over where the franchise was headed. Although the Robbie Ftorek era was short and didn’t end well, he did oversee the transition to the next generation of Devil stars – Patrik Elias, Petr Sykora, Scott Gomez , Brian Rafalski and John Madden infused the team with new blood over those years and ensured the Devils’ run as a premier team in the league would not be short-lived.

In a similar way, I’m really uncertain over what lies ahead in 2011 and beyond for this current group of Devils. Elias is still here and Sykora’s back, amazingly enough but they represent two of only three past Cup winners – with Martin Brodeur being the other – on the Opening Night roster. With the departure of vets such as Jamie Langenbrunner, Brian Rolston and Colin White (also part of the ’99-00 kiddie crop) come the opportunity for a new generation of Devils to make their mark. Naming Zach Parise captain is the strongest symbol of the changing of the guard yet. It’ll be the first time the Devils haven’t had a prior Cup winner as a captain since before Scott Stevens won the Cup for the first time in 1995.

Much like in ’99-00, the Devils have an intriguing crop of kids just about ready to make an impact on the NHL level. Can the likes of Mattais Tedenby, Jacob Josefson, Adam Henrique, Mark Fayne and teen sensation Adam Larsson live up to the expectations of Devil fans and eventually be compared to guys like Elias, Madden, Rafalski and White? Is Pete DeBoer the right man to mold this group of prospects into the next generation of Devil stars? Will Parise be able to live up to the standard set by Stevens and become a great leader as well as a great player?

Our questions don’t end with the youngest Devils by any stretch, but in a lot of ways the team’s success this year will depend on just how fast the kids progress. Particularly Larsson, who’s just eighteen years old but already has created a buzz. Brodeur compared him to Scott Niedermayer, who not-so-coincidentally was the Devils’ last top five pick. Like Larsson this season, Nieds was thrown into the lineup as a teenager right away because of his great talent and in his case, it paid off as he became a Norris Trophy winner and a HOF defenseman. While it’s early to project what kind of player Larsson will be this year or down the road, I like our chances to get the most out of him considering all the great defensive tutors we have in the organization.

Though Larsson’s taking the spot (and number) of the departed White, the Devils will also need contributions from the other kids as well. Tedenby, Josefson and Nick Palmeri will be counted on to provide a scoring bump for a team that finished last in the NHL in goals for 2009-10. Henrique will be needed to help fill the void of the injured Travis Zajac and provide depth down the middle. Fayne will be looking to build on a solid rookie season, when he came out of seemingly nowhere to become a regular on the Devils’ blueline.

Part of the reason the ’99-00 kiddie corps grew up in a hurry is having a solid group of vets around to lean on. While the current group of vets isn’t as accomplished as their predecessors when it comes to playoff success, there are still a lot of respected voices to listen to, starting with Parise. Even though his impending free agency is the most dire question surrounding this year’s Devils team, there’s still no better choice to lead this current group. Parise leads by example and is the hardest worker on the team, and that’s a pretty good reason to name anyone captain but he also happens to be the best all-around player on the ice too. Perhaps a lot of people might have forgotten just how good of a player he is, considering he only played in one game after October last year thanks to a serious knee injury. Although the Devils were able to make a huge run in the second half without him, he was sorely missed when last season went down the drain in the early months.

Having Elias (a prior captain) in the room should also help Zach acclimate to his new role and provide more stability for the kids. While just about everyone else around him was having a career-worst season or mending on the injured list, Elias was a steady influence throught all of last season and is by far the most accomplished everyday skater on the team given he holds the team record for scoring and has won two Cups. Elias will be one of the assistant captains this year, and flashy Ilya Kovalchuk will be the other. It’s really hard for me not to work $100 million man into a sentence with Kovalchuk in it, but after a rocky first half, the pricey left winger showed in the second half why the Devils committed so much money and so many years to him. He’s the best pure scorer on the team – Parise included – and along with Brodeur and fellow goalie Johan Hedberg almost single-handedly kept the team alive with big goal after big goal through early March in their improbable playoff run.

Other vets up front include the well-traveled Danius Zubrus, who may be overpaid but still gets the most out of what he has and is versatile enough to play wing and center, Zajac (out till around the new year at least with a fluky offseason injury) and Sykora – whose return to the Devils was the most uplifting story of camp. After bouncing around the league in the few years following the lockout, he went overseas to play in the Czech league. At 34, getting a tryout with the Devils was his last chance at playing in the NHL and he made the most of it, showing the enthusiasm of a kid and scoring like the feared A-line member of old. Although he’ll be wearing an unfamiliar number 15, he’ll receive some of the loudest cheers on Opening Night.

If I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on the forwards so far, it’s because the defense (surprisingly) seems to be more of a known quantity at this point. Anton Volchenkov and Henrik Tallinder didn’t get as much ink – or money – as fellow UFA signing Kovalchuk last offseason but they’re almost as important to the success of the team. Volchenkov brings a physical, shot-blocking element the team hasn’t had since the days of Stevens and Tallinder is a proven mentor and steady presence in the locker room. Ironically, he was paired with Tyler Myers in Buffalo when the latter was an eighteen-year old rookie wunderkid. Might a Tallinder-Larsson pairing be in the cards this year?

Though both Tallinder and Volchenkov struggled acclimating at times last year and Volchenkov got hurt early on as well, they’ll be counted on to lead a defense that’s been dramatically overhauled from just two seasons ago. Among the team’s starting six defensemen in the 2009 playoffs, only Andy Greene remains, and he took less money to re-up as a free agent this offseason. Greene needs to improve tremendously on his -23 of last season, but when he’s on his game he can be an upper-echelon defenseman. Although the team bought out White this offseason, they felt they had a reasonable facsimile already on the roster – Bryce Salvador. Yes, the same Salvador that missed an entire season with an inner ear infection and the resulting concussion-like symptoms is now healthy and cleared to play. At 35, he’ll provide vet leadership and should be a servicable back-pairing defensemen but it’s questionable as to just how effective he’ll be, since it’s been almost a year and a half from the time he last played a competitive NHL game (I’m not counting last preseason).

With the four vets sprinkled throughout the defense and Fayne at least being a semi-proven commodity the team feels it has a solid foundation for Larsson to grow and thrive. Yet, the team still has one big concern on defense – their lack of a right-handed shot on the point. While Larsson does give the team at least one this year, GM Lou Lamoriello was still trying to bring aboard former Blue Jackets defenseman Anton Stralman to provide another right-handed shot that can help offensively on the power play. As of now however, stay-at-home Mark Fraser will again be the seventh defenseman and Stralman remains lurking around in the shadows without a contract, like Adam Mair last year and Tommy Albelin several years ago.

In goal there are no questions about either Brodeur or Johan Hedberg despite their advanced age (39 and 38, respectively), particuarly after the second half last year when both were spectacular down the stretch. While the Devils’ immediate future in net should be well-taken care of, their not-so-distant future is cloudy with both goalies only signed through this current season and only untested prospects on the horizon. In particular, the question of whether this season will be the legendary Brodeur’s last in the NHL will hang over the team all year and create a greater ‘win-now’ urgency, since the future HOF’er won’t commit to playing beyond this year.

Yet another big question surrounding the team is what kind of style will they play under yet another new coach? Nobody including me knew what kind of a system they tried to play under the ill-fated John MacLean last year and everyone knew what kind of system that Lemaire (who replaced MacLean just before Christmas) coached. New coach DeBoer has a close relationship with former Devil coach Brent Sutter, and from what I’ve seen in the preseason DeBoer believes in a lot of the same principles – maintaining a strong forecheck while still being defensively responsible. Previous attempts to go away from the Lemaire-style trap have been largely unsuccessful since the lockout but with a dramatically changed team, DeBoer may have the best chance of anyone including Sutter of overseeing a total culture change.

Part of that culture change seems to be how the fourth line has been constructed. Faceoff man Dave Steckel and penalty-killer extraordinare Vladimir Zharkov were both sent packing in camp, in favor of energy guy Brad Mills and returning fan favorite Cam Janssen – the ‘backup enforcer’ to FA signing Eric Boulton. While the fourth line’s taken on a decidedly physical element, DeBoer’s also moved Tedenby down to the fourth line in recent days to attempt to balance out scoring. I’m not sure how important actually winning faceoffs is, but to me having at least a couple forwards in your bottom two lines that can penalty kill is essential. Both because it saves the wear and tear on your top two lines and because, well you actually want guys that can penalty kill period. Especially with your key penalty-killer (Zajac) already on the shelf. It remains to be seen how well this team can win faceoffs or how the penalty kill will shake out.

Given the uncertainty surrounding the team – not to mention the ownership issues, which have only recently been resolved (for now) – it’s really hard for me to get a picture of what kind of team this will be. Will they finish a surprising first the way they did in ’99 under a new group? Or will they struggle to make the playoffs in a competitive Eastern Conference? Staying healthy will be a key, losing their most durable player and number one center in Zajac for such a long period surely doesn’t help. And if there is one question about having the oldest goalie tandem in the league, it’s their ability to stay healthy throughout. Though having either Brodeur or Hedberg go down wouldn’t be so bad as long as the other was still around, having both go down could be crippling.

While we didn’t make quite as many changes as another division rival did this offseason, the fact is only seven players – Elias, Kovy, Parise, Zubrus, Clarkson, Greene and Brodeur – from the last Devil playoff team just a year and a half ago will still be in the starting lineup this Opening Night. Throw in a new coach (again) and a lot of inexperienced players and you have a recipe for inconsistency. However, the x-factor is that this team will be about as motivated as anyone in the league this year. After what happened in the first half, they can no longer take the playoffs for granted and with Parise still unsigned long-term and Brodeur potentially in his last season anywhere, there’s a further win-now urgency for this group. Given that and the talent on this team between the vets and the kids, I do see them making the playoffs. There isn’t much room for error though, especiallly in hockey’s toughest division. Another bad start could derail the good vibes of last season’s inspiring finish rather quickly.

Prediction: 7th in the East, 95 points

Whoosh, it’s been a busy last forty-eight hours in the swamp as the Devils sought to reconfigure their roster before the 3 PM deadline this afternoon. On Monday, the Devils sent down several players including former first-rounder Matt Corrente and highly touted defenseman Alexander Urbom, who made coach Pete DeBoer admit Urbom made him ‘look stupid’ (by his play in the last two preseason games) for not giving Urbom a chance to dress earlier.

GM Lou Lamoriello also waived eight players, including forwards Vladimir Zharkov, Rod Pelley and defenseman Mark Fraser. None of the eight players were claimed, including Pelley and Fraser, who are both on one-way deals, so they remained on the NHL roster while Zharkov and the other five waived players were sent down. According to NHL rules, Pelley and Fraser don’t have to be sent down for thirty days and won’t be exposed to waivers if and when they do get sent down. If either player does get sent down however, the Devils will not only have to pay their NHL salary in the AHL but also expose them to re-entry waivers if they want either to play for them this season.

Further complicating the roster situation, the Devils were touching the celing of the reserve list, meaning they had 48 players under contract with 50 being the max. And it just so happened the Devils also had three players trying out for the team without a contract, including former star winger Petr Sykora and defenseman Anton Stralman, as well as forward Steve Bernier. Before signing anyone, the Devils wanted to clear a spot (i.e. trade someone) first.

Hours after the Devils found out that nobody was claimed on waivers, they did wind up making a trade, dealing off the disappointing Dave Steckel to Toronto for a fourth-round pick, giving the Devils multiple picks in the 2nd, 4th and 5th rounds of a deep 2012 draft. After shedding themselves of Steckel’s $1.1 million salary (and roster spot) for the next two years, the Devils finally inked Sykora to a one year, $650k deal. At the start of practice today, Sykora’s teammates celebrated the contract by tapping their sticks on the ice in support of the popular 34-year old winger.

While Bernier left the team after reportedly refusing a two-way contract (and assignment to Albany), Stralman remains in limbo without a contract – or a visa! – as the Devils still have seven defensemen on the roster including Fraser and a full twenty-three man roster. Among the players who made the club were former ECHL forward Brad Mills, enforcer fan favorite Cam Janssen, and of course first-rounder Adam Larsson – now sporting Colin White‘s old number five.

Last but not least, the Devils finally named their next captain, giving Zach Parise the C, and fellow forwards Ilya Kovalchuk and Patrik Elias the A’s. None of that is a surprise and the honor’s well-deserved for Zach, contract situation or no contract situation. Admittedly I’m a little surprised at how the actual roster turned out, but it’s clearly obvious DeBoer wanted a physical fourth line, and also wanted Nick Palmeri to stay since the Devils have few big forwards in their top nine. Winning faceoffs and finding forwards to play the penalty kill are big concerns, however. More on that in my season preview soon to come.

Barring no further changes this is what the Devils’ Opening Night roster will look like:

Forwards (14) – Zach Parise, Patrik Elias, Petr Sykora, Ilya Kovalchuk, Jacob Josefson, Danius Zubrus, Nick Palmeri, David Clarkson, Adam Henrique, Mattais Tedenby, Eric Boulton, Brad Mills, Cam Janssen, Rod Pelley

Defensemen (7) – Anton Volchenkov, Henrik Tallinder, Andy Greene, Adam Larsson, Bryce Salvador, Mark Fayne, Mark Fraser

Goaltenders (2) – Martin Brodeur, Johan Hedberg

Limbo – Anton Stralman