Right now, Dan Byslma is you in college when you were really hungry but it was snowing really hard out so you couldn’t leave your place to get food, so you look in the cupboard to see what you have and there’s a bag of penne pasta, a half-eaten cantaloupe, some sour cream, and a four-year-old pack of baking soda, and you actually think to yourself, “hmm, what’s the best way I can combine these ingredients to make a meal…maybe use the sour cream as a sauce for the cantaloupe and penne pasta? Then pretend the baking soda is Parmesan cheese?” No matter what you do, you’re going to end up vomiting.
That’s basically where the Penguins are right now — there’s just no way to mix and match their personnel or to change their tempo or style of play or flip-flop power play positions or anything to disguise the fact that their healthy, active roster is not the healthy, active roster of a good NHL team. We may be impressed by the occasional Chris Bourque or Chris Conner burst of speed up the wing or hustle play, but these guys are barely 4th line NHL players, let alone guys capable of handling the secondary scoring burden for a team whose remaining primary scorers also aren’t scoring. Even though the Pens played an intermittently dominant first thirty minutes, and the Devils were on back-to-back games, the outcome of this affair shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Speaking of surprises, every hockey writer, broadcaster, and fan who gushes about how “surprisingly” well the Devils are playing right now should be fired from being able to follow the NHL (including the fans somehow). Every single analyst just handed the Atlantic Division to the Pens or Flyers in preseason (besides uhhhhhthisguy), and some people predicted the Devils’ outright downfall, including most prominently Scott Burnside, who had the Devils at #24 in the ESPN Preseason Power Poll.
I’m not sure of any way to phrase this that doesn’t sound patronizing, so here it is: THE DEVILS ARE ALWAYS GOOD, YOU EFFING DUMBASSES.
If you are surprised by the current success of the Devils, you are an idiot who should not be paid to tell people things about hockey things, hockey related things, or things in general, unless that thing is how wrong you are about things.
Yesterday, ESPN ran an article praising the the Devils’ surprising success in spite of their “roster turnover” — what roster turnover? They decided not to pay Brian Gionta $25 million to pop in like 10 rebounds a year, and hired one of the greatest defensive minds ever to coach in the NHL to coach their team. This was supposed to amount to their sudden downfall? I know there’s a long way to go in the season and anything can still happen, but this is a deep, talented, well-coached team that will definitely make the playoffs and challenge for the #1 seed in the East.
As for the game itself: Blah blah injuries, power play, no one can score, bad luck, bad team right now, Kunitz is a total nonfactor, lotta time left in the season, who cares. Bruins Saturday.
Tags: Dan Bylsma, Devils, Injuries, Scott Burnside
Elvis Has Left 
November 13, 2009 at 2:51 pm |
Solution: Put Pascal Dupuis in goal during practice. With no padding. Not only will our players get their confidence back, but we’ll likely injure him in the process. Two birds with one puck.
November 15, 2009 at 12:50 am |
Given what JUST happened tonight against the Bruins, I’m glad AD is not coaching the team 😉
Also:
“We may be impressed by the occasional Chris Bourque…”
To my knowledge, there is no “We” that is actually impressed.
I agree with this post though. I knew Lemaire would give the Devils a good regular season while killing the sport of hockey a little bit more each day.
Don’t worry, choke job in the playoffs.