fiftyone

Great play by Montour at the end of that Hughes rush to not let the rebound get knocked in. He's played well today.

I thought this was going to be about shots being blocked before getting to the goalies. Anyone have any idea if more shots are blocked nowadays than it the past? Seems like it's harder than ever getting a shot through because anyone and everyone is willing to take one, but that could be completely untrue.

You could see he was thinking about whether or not he should flip around and skate forward with Pageau and by the time he decided not to, Pageau was untouched at the face-off dot

Yeah. No stick check, no body check. Nothing funny about it really

You can't let a guy walk to the circle and pick their spot. Like others have said, Dahlin played that terribly. I'd like my goalie to make the save on that (very nice) shot, but certainly not "entirely on Ullmark" IMO

You'll have to excuse the hyperbole. Sometimes it feels as if a thought can't possibly be valid around here if it isn't laced with an extremely hot take.

I'm reading that the Sabres are pissed with the Devils but can't find much more than that. What protocols were broken?

Haha i'm all for more points. But people are saying that the Sabres are livid with the Devils, and I'm thinking (wondering if) it's actually the league who says yes or no to playing, not the team.

Is it the Devils that didn't allow the games to be pushed? Or the league?

We lost because our 7th D and backup goalie weren't good. The team that beat us played their 4th goalie, two defenseman that couldn't crack our lineup in recent seasons (Tennyson and Kulikov) and were missing two of their top three centers (Hischier and Zajac) and maybe their best defenseman (Vatanen). You can say people are overracting, but you can't see that we lost because we were shorthanded or our backups were in.

Dont have much to say -- that's an embarassing result for this weekend. Playing a team with much less talent who is missing their top players. I'm usually a glass-half-full kind of guy, but this was terrible and I hope Ralph has some strong words when he speaks about it after.

I think the 4th line of Mitts-Lazar-Sheahan has looked good. Seem to be 0 for 2 on Irwin, I haven't liked him again today. Hall still off as well.

I mean, you're moving the goal posts. Going from saying "Ralph will never move Skinner up" to "well, he should have done it ages ago" when he moves him up. I get it, you don't like him. But you were wrong on this one. He did exactly what you said he wouldn't. Good to get the W. Go Sabres.

It tells me that your comment earlier about our "trash coach" never moving Skinner up was completely wrong..

Skinner played most, if not all, of the third period in the top 6.

Great saves matter less if you can't stay tight to the post on that one

I know it's fun to yell and scream, but these three were a line at the end of the 2nd period.

I haven't been all over the MUST MOVE SKINNER movement, but I do wonder how long RK will let Thompson go on that line if the 2nd looks like the 1st.

I thought Dahlin and Thompson were terrible that period. There was such promise for Tage after camp, I don't know what happened.

To the middle portion - I don't disagree that some of our players have been ineffective, I just don't necessarily think it has been as a result of a lack of effort as mentioned in your earlier post. When I think of lacking effort, I think of watching specific plays and thinking to myself, "he could have won that puck battle if he had been trying harder" or something to that effect. General lack of effort comments feel like they're more focusing on results than actual effort, IMO.

I disagree with the bolded. I haven't seen lack of effort, and i'd be interested to hear who you're pointing to. The closest thing i've seen, to be honest, is Dahlin -- but I think that is just some quirk is his style of play that can be perceived as playing slowly or lack of effort (or that's my hope, anyway). To the 5 on 5 scoring, I agree we need more. But as mentioned in the analytics thread, the numbers show that we should expect better results moving forward, and maybe "should" have had better results based on our play thus far. Now, that doesn't mean anything in terms of results, but may point toward staying the course rather than "blowing it up." Additionally, I think the potential 5 on 5 gain in goals scored with a line like that would be more than counteracted by what they'd give up on the other end.

Last night was terrible, no doubt. I just don't think a line of Mitts-Lazar-Cozens is the answer. I absolutely do think it could be worse, and a line like that might be what brings us there.

Agreed. That third line looks like a disaster to me too. I think avoiding something that looks like that is the reason that RK has the talent a bit spread out.

We're 3-1-2 in our last six games, capturing 8 of a possible 12 points. 6 of our 8 games this year have been against teams that are a combined 10-2-4. Last night's game was bad, but the sentiment in this thread doesn't seem to reflect reality for the season as a whole.

Agree on that much. Optics -- not so good.