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April 2009
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How to ruin a season in eighty seconds thumbnail

How to ruin a season in eighty seconds

April 29, 2009   ·     ·   Jump to comments

Well first off, if you’re waiting for a blow-by-blow recap of Game 7, look somewhere else.  I never want to relive that game again.  Especially since 58:40 of it no longer matters.  This (long) post will be more like a general recap of how a season that looked destined for greatness in February turned into a big tard in the middle of a shiny punch bowl by the end of April.

So, just where did it all go wrong for a sweet season gone sour in the most ridiculous fashion possible?  Some (including me) think this team was never the same after #552 – and I will elaborate on that later.  Others might pin the demise of the Devils later on in the season, after the revival of the offense-less checking line which had been wisely shelved as the Devils looked like world beaters for much of the season.

Clearly the Devils had deeper problems than just the way the final eighty seconds of their epic gag series of the Hurricanes turned out.  It was emblematic of a deeper sickness on this team caused by stubborness and philosophy changes that shouldn’t have been made.  And for that I lay the blame mainly at two individuals - Brent Sutter and Martin Brodeur.

First, ‘coach’ Sutter – I admit, I was touting this guy for the Jack Adams award a while back and with good reason.  He did what he said he was going to do last year and scrapped the checking line with a more up-tempo system.  I could forgive him doing a double-take on that philosophy in 2007-08 because those Devils simply didn’t have the horses to make that philosophy work.  This season’s Devils were doing it though, and Sutter’s style was being vindicated. 

And then for some reason unknown to most of the free world, he decided he was going to coach the team to play 2003-style hockey in a post-lockout world and scrap his own system.  Did the late-season losing scare him (after he promised he’d learned lessons from it)?  Influence from Brodeur’s return or pressure from GM Lou Lamoriello, who clearly still believes in the old way?  Whatever the reason, this team lost its oomph down the stretch.  Instead of attacking to build leads, they fell back to protect them – and often unsuccessfully as tends to happen when you sit in the prevent defense in any sport. 

Nowhere did this philosophy blow up more than in the playoffs when the Devils failed to so much as get two seperate games into overtime in the final seconds, not to mention blowing a Game 7 they had a lead in with 80 seconds left.  Not only did the system fail defensively, it failed offensively as well.  Then again, should that have really been a surprise when you’re playing an offensively retarded line almost twenty minutes at the expense of icetime for Zach Parise, Patrik Elias and even someone like David Clarkson – who scored two goals in the series but hardly got any icetime at all because of being pigeonholed on the fourth line?  And all Sutter proved in the end is that he’s just another puppet of Lou.

Speaking of Lou, if he was going to fire Claude Julien (who’s already done better than the Devils in the playoffs the last two years), in part for being too defensive – then why bring in a coach that’s going to play that way in the end anyway?  Perhaps he simply misjudged Sutter’s character, but that would be a serious blow for Lou, who touted Sutter and in my opinion fired Julien simply because he knew he would finally be able to get Sutter away from Red Deer and not because then-Devil Scott Gomez or John Madden or whomever allegedly shot a puck at Julien.  From the hype I was led to believe Sutter was going to be another Pat Burns - tough and sticks to his convictions. 

Well Mr. Sutter, you are no Pat Burns.  Especially when it comes to being tough on the players.  The post-game bike rides of last season were a thing of the past down the stretch, even as the team continued to blow game after game and eventually any chance at the top two seeds.  To me that might even be a bigger mystery than the style change.  Clearly the team didn’t respond to the more relaxed version of Sutter as they continued to non-compete against teams that wanted the game more and played more and more passive.

While there may have been pressure on Sutter from above, there was also pressure on Sutter from below.  Specifically from Brodeur.  Let’s face it, there’ve been ‘Brodeur Rules’ long before this season, the ridiculous MB30 helmet and website, or Sutter for that matter.  He must play 75 games a year (when healthy), and get a night off only when he deigns it’s okay.  Clearly Lou recognizes Brodeur’s historical importance to the franchise and is willing to give his star leeway and input he simply wouldn’t dream of giving other players and any Devil coach since Jacques Lemaire has understood that.  However, that delicate balance I hope will come to an end after this season.

Sad but true, Brodeur himself is also partly responsible for Sutter’s style change.  While the Devils’ defensemen threw themselves all over the place to block shots for Scott Clemmensen and Kevin Weekes with great success (especially in the shots allowed totals, which was surprisingly approaching pre-lockout numbers for this no-name defense), Brodeur doesn’t like defensemen leaving their feet to go for blocks.  He wants to see the puck.  Which was fine when the defense wasn’t allowing 35 shots a game.  Or if the defense isn’t any good at blocking shots anyway.

The end result was a more passive approach by the Devils’ defense post-Brodeur return to the lineup in late February.  People will say, ‘but the team went on a roll when he first came back’.  Yes, that’s true – to a point.  As everyone knows, Brodeur was less than ten wins away from setting the all-time wins record when he came back.  The Devils competed for Clemmensen (and Weekes) trying to stay afloat and wound up doing so much more, and they competed for Marty to get the record out of the way asap.  Once that happened on March 17 however, the late-season death spiral started almost immediately and the team ran out of reasons to play.

Not to mention Brodeur – of course – wrote his own schedule once again, starting or playing in a ridiculous 21 of the final 22 games down the stretch and his play predictably suffered down the stretch until the pre-playoff break.  After those few days off, for the first time since the lockout (aside from one series against a dead in the water Ranger team) it looked as if Brodeur would resemble the clutch playoff goaltender of ’94-’03 through the first five games, particuarly after the transcendant fifth game.  However the increasing shot totals that the team allowed in those games eventually started to get to Marty and he had a nightmare of a Game 7 I couldn’t imagine him having after what he did in Game 5.  He put the team behind the eight-ball right away with a bad goal allowed to Tuomo Ruutu (before the captain reenergized the crowd with a goal after his line finally saw the ice four minutes in), then allowed another clunker to Eric Staal in the final moments.

So either one of two things have to be true – Marty’s too old to cut it for a deep run in the playoffs anymore, or he can still make a deep run if he changes his mindset and allows his team to play more agressively in front of him instead of piling up the shot totals and making every night the Marty show.  I prefer to think the second hypothesis is closer to the truth, but the fact that he needed to get angry after Game 4 to have his best playoff performance in years in Game 5 (if not ever) might speak to something deeper. 

It’s a terrible thing to say considering all he’s done for the franchise but I’ll say it: Perhaps he really has lost some of his hunger to win and is only playing for himself now - especially now that he’s set the wins record and done everything else there is to do in hockey from a team standpoint.  Certainly his accountability after losses has been rarer and rarer in recent years.  Truth be told, I never paid much mind to Marty’s increasing ego so long as it didn’t hurt the team.  This year it hurt the team.

Not that I’m going to stop with giving Sutter and Brodeur a piece of my mind.  Certainly there are others I’m ticked off at as well.  To wit:

King Lou – As I’ve intimated above, Lou’s still stuck in a pre-lockout world mentality.  I am not ready to show him the door like some spoiled fans who can’t accept a whole six years since our last Cup but the undisputed King of the Devils better realize after the fiasco that was the end of the 2009 season once and for all that you cannot win in the NHL anymore with two scoring lines (really one and a half), no offense at all from the blueline and a defense-only mentality.  Not when it counts anyway.  The post-lockout version of the Devils has still proven adept as ever at getting 100-point seasons but they haven’t so much as approached the Conference Finals and while most of their playoff losses have been no contest, losing the way they did this year was a new level of embarassment.  I didn’t think it was possible for it to be worse than last year but this Devils team somehow managed. 

Lou’s had a great career, he’s going to the Hall of Fame, but if he wants the Devils to make at least one more serious run before he retires he has to wake up and smell the 21st century of NHL hockey in a post-lockout world.  Or he’ll become hockey’s version of George Young – a respected exec who in his final years refused to adapt to changing times.  

Colin White – I’ve always defended Whitey when other fans have wanted his head on a silver platter, but no more.  What he did in this playoffs is basically play selfish, caveman hockey.  Time and time again in big spots he went for the big hit at the wrong time instead of actually staying in the defensive zone, and it cost the Devils big-time more than once, especially on the losing goals in Games 4 and 7.

Paul Martin – For a guy many of us – including me – thought had taken the next step towards being an elite defenseman for much of the season, he had a nightmare of a playoffs.  Particularly after Game 2 where I thought he was all over the place enough to earn a second star in the recap.  For a supposed upper echelon defenseman, can you clear the darn puck out of the defensive zone once?  ONE FREAKING TIME?!  Not that he was alone in what proved to be the decisive factor in the series – other than on the PK amazingly enough, the Devils could never clear the zone to save our lives.

Nicklas Havelid – Fits a familiar Lou pattern, the veteran defenseman acquisition who can’t quite adapt to the system and is too old and slow, which winds up killing us in the playoffs.  I understand why Sutter didn’t want to take Andy Greene out of the lineup in Game 7 (as badly as HE also screwed up by not taking away the cross-ice pass on the tying goal) but there was no reason for Havelid to stay.  He’s just another symbol of how our leadership puts too much trust in the ‘vet’ factor even when it’s obvious that they can’t cut it anymore.

Brian Rolston – He flat-out stole a $5 million paycheck this year.  He must secretly hate the Devils, since he never does for us what he does for other teams though at this point I demand to see video evidence of his 30 goals last year.  Yes he finally put up a big one in Game 7 that should have been the winner, by doing what he failed to do too often this season.  Taking a slapshot and ripping the heck out of it instead of playing figure eights with the puck and not hustling with that stupid, sarcastic I could care less smirk.

Travis Zajac – Yes he had the GWOT goal in Game 3…but where the hell was he the rest of this series or for the latter half of this season for that matter?  So far he’s had one great half-season and two and a half subpar seasons.  Although it looked like Zajac was a breakout player earlier in the year it now feels like that first half was a total fluke and a product of playing with Parise.

Zach Parise – Yes he had an awesome regular season and got off to a good start in the playoffs, but the minute Carolina coach Paul Maurice said after Game 3 we need to keep a closer eye on Parise, boom he was obliterated from the face of the earth the last four games just the way he was in last year’s playoff series with the Rangers with his longest scoring drought of the season.  Proving that while hustle and determination can get you many goals in the regular season it’s just not enough in the playoffs when other teams match that intensity.  Not only that but he choked in Game 7 as well, passing away an easy clear in the middle of the ice and turning the puck over along the boards on the fatal minute-long shift by his line that led to the tying goal where they were hemmed in their own end.

Bobby Holik – Yeah I know he didn’t play for much of this series (thank god) but he’s a joke anyway, feigning ignorance over why he was benched and acting like he never did anything wrong even when he’d commit the most idiotic, stupid penalties.  Truth be told, he hasn’t cared about winning since he left the Devils the first time, only about doing his own thing and not catching crap for it.

Danius Zubrus – This isn’t about the playoffs per se, but he just took way too many nights off during the 82-game season.  To think I once compared him to Viktor Kozlov; Zubrus isn’t a pimple on Kozlov’s forehead as far as offensive talent.  And Kozlov was a healthy scratch for his final days as a Devil.  Even when he tries (and he did in the playoffs), he’s the little engine that couldn’t.

John Madden – If you’re going to hog the puck on three two-on-ones in Game 7, can you convert one of them?

Of course there are others I’m not sore at.  As annoyed as I was at Jamie Langenbrunner last year for just skating away when Parise got plowed into the net during the playoffs that’s how proud I am of him this year for not only coming back from a torn meniscus after just three games, but also having a tremendous bounceback season overall and changing the momentum of Game 7 after it nearly got ugly early.  How can I be sore at Patrik Elias, who also played hurt and was supposedly in tears at the end of the game?  He had the biggest hit maybe in years by a Devil when he plowed over Ruutu in the third period.  Salvador was also gritty but unfortunately wasn’t allowed a shot in Game 7 where he could have made a difference on the tying shift instead of having Havelid and Greene out there.  Clarkson had a nice playoffs but was underutilized.

But right now, I really have no wish to rehash whatever positives there were from this epic failure of a Devil season.  This team really should have been a contender this year and the first banner to be raised at the Rock – this year’s division - was nothing more than a total waste of time now.  Maybe there’s still time for this version of the Devils to get it right, if we finally get a legit second (or first?) line center to go along with Zajac, a defenseman that can actually score from the blueline and another physical complement back there as well.  As much as I love Mike Mottau, the stay-at-home defenseman who can’t add anything offensively or physically should not be getting major minutes on a contending team.  Really that kind of player should have far less of a role in today’s NHL than in the pre-lockout world.  I like Johnny Oduya too but if we have to sacrifice him to bring in Jay Bouwmeester, or another true top-pairing defenseman with offensive ability then it needs to be done. 

What worries me though, is last night’s loss is the kind that can cripple a franchise.  Look at what happened to the Mets after their ’88 playoff loss against the Dodgers.  It took ten years to recover from that devastation.   Hopefully this organization is more resilient than that but they’ll have to live with the choker label all offseason.  And in this age of 24-7 news, internet, talk radio and a increasingly negative media it only gets harder and harder for the players to get away from it all and overcome it.  Just look at the neverending death spiral that is the New York Mets the last few seasons.

Oh well…at least I’ve said my piece and now I’m done with this year.  Onto the baseball season – oh wait, the Mets just lost another one - what a shock.  Maybe I should just hibernate from sports entirely for a while.

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  1. How to ruin a season in eighty seconds < It’s all about the trends on May 5th, 2009 10:10 pm

    [...] go wrong for a sweet season gone sour in the most ridiculous fashion possible?  Some (including click for more var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : [...]

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