my take on devils v. colorado

a much better effort.

Actually if broduer played a little better in calgary and colorado we may have won 2 out of 3 vs two good teams...maybe just maybe something to build on.

I thought the defense played much better tonight.

I think mogilny played solid;

Robinson has only been playing 3 lines the fourth line gets the shelf in every game; If Parise is not going to play I would rather see him in albany and see tallacksn on the team


I still think a few tweaks can get this team in the right direction; I just don't understand the delay with bringing up david hale; I assume it is cap reasons but i find it ridiculous for a team in 9th place to have a player being paid 2 million dollars to sit in the stands (mcgillis)

overall a better game tonight even though they didn't win, they got the 1 point better than nothing

I hope Dan McGillis is actually hurt and not a healthy scratch for the last 3 or 4. Sure he had a rough 2 periods not too long ago, but the same thing can be said for Martin, Rafalski, and Matvichuk pretty recently. One thing thats starting to concern me a bit is I feel Larry Robinson is getting overly carried away with the one mistake and a guy is benched for the rest of the game mentality. I said this over on njdevs.com earlier. Players like Parise and Pihlman are rookies who are going to make rookie mistakes. Its not rocket science now - its a given folks. You have to let them play through their mistakes to get better. 4-5 minutes a game isn't going to benefit either one of them same as less then 3 minutes for Erik Rasmussen a game won't help him any. Look at Brad Boyes in Boston and whats happened with his game with the departure of Dave Scatchard and Joe Thornton and lackluster play with Alexei Zhamnov, where Boyes is now getting way more icetime then before and its really showing in his game. Amazing what happens when a coach is forced to play his promising youth following some key trades by his GM!

If we're going to just roll 3 lines, lets start demoting and/or waiving players and icing a smaller lineup at forward as its fruitless to expect offense and impact plays from guys getting so few shifts. Erik Rasmussen's role has been reduced to virtually nothing for some reason this year despite the fact that he has a lot to offer this team. This genuinely concerns me as he's much more then a cut above your standard Oliwa/Langdon type player and had a terrific redemption season with NJ before the lockout. Sabres fans felt he was one of the biggest busts ever for them not long ago. He was huge for the Devils though. I feel team chemistry is being impacted pretty significantly when a different player is sat out every night and you combine this with new defensive pairings and forward lines continually being changed up to find some offense. I hope Robinson cools it a bit in this regard for the betterment of the team and the development of our top rookies. I'm pretty pro-Robinson in general, but this has been bothering me for awhile now.

you are right on, you cannot expect these guys to contribute w/ so little ice time; parise gets no pp time no pk time and maybe 2 or 3 shifts per period; let the kid play, at least he brings energy and forechecking as does philman, it is getting frustrating to watch the same 8 or 9 forwards all game.

I know the kozlov line has been good; but i think it is time to at least establish something that resembles a decent second line.

they can accomplish this by moving marshall up w/ gomez

gomer/mogilny/ marshall
gionta/kozlov/langenbrunner.... something like this to balance the attack a little

when kozlovs line gets shut down we can't score

I hope Dan McGillis is actually hurt and not a healthy scratch for the last 3 or 4. Sure he had a rough 2 periods not too long ago, but the same thing can be said for Martin, Rafalski, and Matvichuk pretty recently. One thing thats starting to concern me a bit is I feel Larry Robinson is getting overly carried away with the one mistake and a guy is benched for the rest of the game mentality. I said this over on njdevs.com earlier. Players like Parise and Pihlman are rookies who are going to make rookie mistakes. Its not rocket science now - its a given folks. You have to let them play through their mistakes to get better. 4-5 minutes a game isn't going to benefit either one of them same as less then 3 minutes for Erik Rasmussen a game won't help him any. Look at Brad Boyes in Boston and whats happened with his game with the departure of Dave Scatchard and Joe Thornton and lackluster play with Alexei Zhamnov, where Boyes is now getting way more icetime then before and its really showing in his game. Amazing what happens when a coach is forced to play his promising youth following some key trades by his GM!

THANK YOU! i have been thinking this for quite some time. apparently larry just hates the idea of letting rookies play. and apparently lou hates Suglobov. of course i am exagerating abit but i feel right now this organization is grossly misusing its prospects. i liked what i saw from Pihlman when he was getting ice time and then it evaporates once he commits a couple hooking penalties. and it was disgraceful allowing Langenbrunner and Madden take there shots in the shootout last night before Pihlman and Parise. Larry shows no confidence in these guys and i think he is directly hindering there developement at this point. in a shootout i would take the latter any day of the week. someone had mentioned how Tallackson gets a goal and an assist in a game and then a short time later finds himself back in albany, Parise gets a nice goal the other night and gets DECREASED ice time, Pihlman looked really good with Kozlov when he came up and now hes getting 4 minutes. This makes absolutely no sense, i am begining to think Lou is really dead and this is some kind of bizarre weekend at Bernies movie in which Lou's corpse keeps showing up and making wacky nonsenseical GM moves orcastrated by the zamboni driver.