Weekes’ brilliance not enough

November 3, 2008   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

Maybe saying the glass was half full is too optomistic of a way to look at the Devils’ 2-0 loss to the Sabres tonight since a loss is a loss, especially one inside of 60 minutes.  However, the Devils will take two positives out of the game.  

The first was the performance of Kevin Weekes who was brilliant – particularly in the first period while the rest of the Devils were evidently hung over or thought they were playing a scrimmage.  In a period as bad as I’ve ever seen from New Jersey, they were outshot 20-3 in part due to taking no fewer than five minor penalties and throroughly embarassed themselves in front of a (small) national audience and a crowd of barely 10k at the Rock.  Yet Weekes stopped almost everything including a handful of shots that came his way on a 1:36 5-on-3 late in the first.  Unfortunately for Weekes, just after the 5-on-3 ended the Sabres’ Jason Pominville finally beat him on the power play with 24 seconds to play in the first period.

The other positive was that after a nightmare of a first period that may well have forced coach Brent Sutter to send the players to the exercise bikes during the game, the Devils settled down and were actually the better team over the final two periods against the Sabres.  As has been the case so many times with New Jersey though, the only thing lacking was goals.  After being outshot 24-4 to start the game, the Devils outshot the Sabres 20-6 the rest of the way.  This even created a borderline comical moment when Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff called timeout late in the second period literally seconds before the TV timeout to ream out his team over allowing two consecutive power plays and losing dominance of the game.

While Ryan Miller was – as usual – up to the task in net for the Sabres, most of the shots that the Devils did get on Miller weren’t of the high-quality variety.  Oh they had some great chances, but either missed the net with a shot, made one too many passes or lost the puck. 

With a struggling offense you would think maybe Petr Vrana and Niklas Bergfors would get a chance to spark the team, especially with a handful of forwards on the shelf already.  You would be wrong.  Vrana played 7:11 and Bergfors 4:36, while the Madden-Pando-Clarkson line got a shift with under five minutes to go in the game down two goals and an ineffective Jamie Langenbrunner (he of the five points in ten games) led all forwards with just under 24 minutes of icetime.  Need more be said?

In any event, the Devils’ loss dropped them to 6-3-2 going into their next game at the Rock against Tampa Wednesday night. 

BoNY Three Stars:

1. Ryan Miller (24 saves, SHO)
2. Jason Pominville (PPG)
3. Kevin Weekes (28/30 saves)