Devils win preseason finale, make more moves

September 30, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

Before tonight’s game with the Islanders – the Devils’ last of the preseason – came more moves, placing center Tim Sesito and defensemen Rob Davison and Jay Leach on waivers, with Mark Fraser joining Patrik Elias on IR to start the season, leaving the Devils with 24 players on the roster.  One more cut will be made before the season starts, but it won’t be among the defense as it appears Andy Greene and Cory Murphy have both made the team, which doesn’t really come as much of a surprise since they were the front-runners for the last two defensive spots to begin with.

So clearly one forward has to go, and at this point it looks more like it’ll be Pierre Luc-Letourneau Leblond or Illka Pikkaranen, who hasn’t had much of a chance to impress the coaches in camp due to illness.  Somewhat surprisngly Matt Halischuk might be sticking around after all, as his number was changed to 16 from 63 before the game,  usually a sign you’ve made the team.  Tonight’s lineup looked (mostly) like what we’ll see Opening Night:

1. Parise-Zajac-Langenbrunner
2. Rolston-Niedermayer-Clarkson
3. Shanahan-Zubrus-Bergfors 
4. Peters-Pelley-Leblond

• Martin-Oduya
• White-Mottau
• Salvador-Murphy

The scratches were Andy Greene, Jay Pandolfo, Pikkaranen and Halischuk.  Martin Brodeur played a complete game, making 19 saves in the Devils’ win.

As far as the game itself goes, I was immersed in a fantasy hockey draft at the time, but from the sound if it seems like there was a bit of feistiness in the Devils’ 4-2 win with no fewer than five fights with Islanders goon Joel Rechlicz involved in three of them by himself.  Rechlicz drew the ire of Devils enforcer Andrew Peters during the game (with Peters involved in two of the fights) and after it, when Peters said of the Isles forward:

“He’s trying to make a name for himself,” Peter said after he fought Rechlicz twice in the Devils’ 4-2 preseason victory over the Isles tonight (Rechlicz also fought Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond). “There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. I understand that you want to go out and you want to fight. To do what he did at the end of the game there, someone will get hurt. It doesn’t help your team.”

Peters was talking about a sequence of events that began early in the third period when Colin White leveled Isles phenom John Tavares with a legal hit.  Naturally the Isles took exception and Andy Sutton gave White a shot in the back, but things settled down until later in the period when Rechlicz knocked White down behind the net then took another couple of shots at him as he was going to the bench, all the while yapping up a storm.  With White not being able to fight since his eye injury a couple years back, Peters fought Rechlicz on their next shift, and as the fight was breaking up, Rechlicz went after White again with a gratuitous push that knocked him over.  All in all Rechlicz and Peters combined for 51 PIM’s on the evening.

In between the fights, there was a pretty entertaining game as the Isles went in front twice in the second period (both on power play goals), but lost the lead each time and eventually the game as Travis Zajac’s late second period goal broke a 2-2 tie and Brendan Shanahan’s third period marker gave the Devils their final margin of victory.  Zach Parise and Brian Rolston also scored goals for the Devils, with Rolston’s coming on the power play.  Jack Hillen and Mark Streit scored for the Isles, who saw Dwayne Roloson return to the lineup and make 16 saves in defeat.

With the Devils completing a 4-0-1 preseason, they can now get on to the business of preparing for Saturday night’s opener with the division rival Flyers.  Jacques Lemaire is ratcheting up the intensity, again harping on the team’s uneven effort.  To this I say good, we need to maintain a high level of performance and intensity as much as possible, which was a fatal flaw last year.  If you’re ever going to get the message through, it needs to start asap.

A couple things that surprised me about tonight were the 10,000+ in attendance for the third straight preseason game (I don’t believe preseason attednance broke five digits once in four games last year), and the fact that Rob Niedermayer was centering a de facto second line in between Rolston and David Clarkson.  Robbie Nieds played 16+ minutes in his Devils debut with one minor penalty that led to the Isles’ second power play goal, but was at least 8-6 on draws.

Once the Devils’ roster is finalized I’ll do a season preview…for now off to get some sleep.