Devils reduce roster to 29, Lemaire not happy after 1-0 win

September 27, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

Unlike Thursday, last night I really didn’t bother keeping track of what went on in the Devils’ 1-0 preseason win against the Flyers.  Sounds like I didn’t miss much, since Danius Zubrus‘s goal 100 seconds into the game was the only score of the contest.  It wasn’t a great night for the Flyers, who lost goaltender Brian Boucher due to injury and had to play Ray Emery again from midway through the first period on.  Emery made 25 saves in another strong outing.

Is it too soon to worry about Martin Brodeur‘s workload?  I know it’s only preseason but it looks like he’ll play three complete games before the start of the season, which is one more than usual.  Of course he does look in regular season form, pitching a 21-save shutout last night – too bad that one doesn’t count toward the shutout record, it’d be nice to get that out of the way asap.  Personally it got to a bit of a saturation point for me with the talk about Brodeur’s records last year, oh I do appreciate what the wins record means but it seemed as if the team put too much into that last year and sagged for a long time after it.

While the prevailing thought would be that Jacques Lemaire is all too happy with 1-0 wins, he expressed some displeasure last night, particularly at the second period where the Devils were outshot by the Flyers and according to the coach played too passively.  Although the team did play much better in the third outshooting the Flyers 10-3, apparently Lemaire still wanted to send a message by having the players practice even after three games in four nights to make a point.  After what happened last year, this is music to the ears – even if the team hasn’t exactly looked like a juggernaut offensively early on.  Lemaire also felt the top lines needed to show more chemistry, but that should come – especially with Zach Parise‘s line, which hasn’t been together all of camp.

With just one preseason game left, more decisions still need to be made.  Four players – including third-string goalie Jeff Frazee, center Ben Walter and right wings Vladimir Zharkov and Olivier Magnan-Grenier were cut today, leaving the roster at 28 (not including the injured Elias) once Rob Niedermayer joins the team in time for Tuesday’s agme.  The fact that ten defensemen are still here probably speaks to the fact that Mike Mottau‘s been held out of much of the last two preseason games and might be held out of that one as well as a precaution before the season starts.  Mark Fraser also missed last night’s game but hopefully the team gets another look at him Tuesday before he has to go down and the team risks losing him on waivers.

So it’s more or less still at five defensemen fighting for two spots, though it seems as if Cory Murphy has the inside track on one, even with not playing last night.  Assuming the team doesn’t keep eight defensemen that gets the roster down to 25 without Elias, leaving several candidates still in the running for the final three or four forward spots including centers Rod Pelley and Tim Sesito, left wing Pierre Luc-Letourneau Leblond (who’s probably expendable now with Andrew Peters aboard, despite his own three year deal that he inked in the offseason) and right wings Matt Halischuk, Illka Pikkaranen and Nicklas Bergfors – who should have all but made the team by now, but you never know until it’s official.