Snowman On Fire

Winner, eleven — that is, on the eleventh goal of last night’s Devils-Thrashers game (11 goals? In a Devils game?? Hello, Coach Sutter!). I was hoarse from yelling at the television and radio broadcasts but all’s well that ends well. In this case, there was ample material for holler-backs.

The Good: Elias gets his first goal, and nets two goals and a very pretty assist on Zajac’s tying goal. The Devils didn’t give up when they were down two goals, and after squandering single-goal leads. Strong, solid forecheck, including the last power play of the game which may have been the best I’ve seen in three seasons. The days of long-range bombing from the point, typically resulting in a blocked shot, a riccochet to start a short-handed attempt, or the puck clearing the attack zone, are over and done. Precise passing and shooting through open lanes. Tying all of the good together: Elias fires from the top of the slot, rebound comes to the right where he scoops it, fires back to Martin, who re-feeds Patrik for the game-winning goal. Puck control, skating hard to make time and space, and shooting through lanes rather than into shinpads.

The Interesting and Good: John Madden has re-emerged as a goal scorer. Not that he had ever lost the touch, but I think in previous seasons he was forced into a role of sheep-dogging the opponent’s top-line, over-watched center-pieces to the point where he was playing defense instead of pivot, with or with-out overt over-hyphenation for emphasis. I think my son puts it best: “Maddog is a hard worker.” When teenagers recognize work, you know it’s valuable and valued. When you go from two scoring lines to three, it’s a big deal for your opponents. Half of the Devils goals last night came from the Madden-Pandolfo combination.

The Bad: I always follow games through live caps at 2 Man Advantage because their photo editing captures the mood so perfectly. It’s like enjoying one of the old Monkees TV shows with the cutaway jokes to make a visual pun. Last night they challenged Brodeur to stop a beachball (but stopped short of suggesting he couldn’t make do with a pitchfork, both a Devilishly good utensil and the best for spearing wayward plastic). I’m not so sure it was Brodeur, more of the weak defense on the weak side (again) and a complete lack of attention to the wings on the weak side. A possible breaking point in the game came when Kovalchuk was left unmolested on the left side, with Dave Clarkson just behind the play. When the “D” is back, cutting down the shooting lanes, the wings have to fill in and take away the passing lanes. Nobody got between Kovalchuk and the puck from the cross-zone pass to the one-time that eluded Marty. Partly a rookie mistake, partly bad defense. If the Devils are going to play a more aggressive offensive game, then the natural by-product is that they’re going to have more goals scored against them — this goes both ways. But I’d much rather see the Devils win 6-5 than lose 2-1. Any day.

The Ugly: Bobby Holik. How his crease-crashing that resulted in Brodeur looking up at the Thrasher’s third goal was not a penalty escapes me. Why give the captain-C to a player with the loyalty of a cat and the leadership qualities of a high school locker room bully? To top it off, our brilliant TV commentators relayed a story that Elias and Holik had spoken when Holik was given the “C”, just as Patrik had his revoked, randomness rooted in their Czech heritage. Maybe if Elias races across the Hudson to pimp his contract, there will be some kind of similarity here, but then we’d have to talk about Gomez.

So we will: Elias has 4 points (2 G, 2A) and Gomez has half of that, only thanks to a miserable assist late in last night’s Senatorial smackdown. If Gomer was on his way to 63 helpers, he should have quadrupled his output. Personally, I think the relative economics lesson here is that there’s half a Gome$$ separating the two. Double oof.

I’m now officially worried that the Devils organization is proceeding with complete and total oblivion to the fan base, or at least to how the fan base communicates, collaborates and exchanges ideas in the world of user-generated content and media. We’re not all sitting here waiting for the official line on ticket sales, the new arena, or Colin White’s eye; we’re reading blogs, comparing notes, and generally commenting on the (sad) state of affairs in what I had hoped would be Rock City. I don’t get a daily newspaper, but I do read 2 Man Advantage, In Lou We Trust, and Tom Gulitti’s Fire and Ice (Tom writes for the Bergen Record, covering the Devils) at least daily. I get ESPN Magazine and The Hockey News, but if I want to find out about the Devils, I read grass-roots media. And the grass roots are being stepped on.

Looking for some kind of uplift on a crummy Friday morning, I called the Devils office to see how my Power Player application was received. It was received (or so they say), but according to the woman who organizes game entertainment, the Power Player team was selected already. I can appreciate the Devils not wanting to burn an audition slot on a fat middle-aged guy who was there for humor and publicity purposes, but at least let me know that. No email, no phone call, not even a nicely printed note with a picture of someone scoring a non-existent goal. What I read into this: The Devils will do things their way, and if you have an idea, shut up and sit down in your $200 seat.

Which leads to the subject of seats. I am a member of two groups that share season tickets. My total spend for one group, which had been happily in Section 232 of the swamp for years, went up by about 25% this year. The seats are in the new lower bowl, with probably a better view, so we’re willing to try it for a season. I’m hoping that we’re actually closer to the ice surface in the Rock, and that I’m not flushing money into this bowl, but we’ll see on October 31st when I’m at my first game. The other group hasn’t gelled yet; it involved seats four rows off of the ice. I know that the group decided to cut our ticket plan in half, going for 2 seats instead of 4, mostly due to the fact that the cost per ticket has nearly doubled. Our $72 seats in East Rutherford are now $150, and while they include food — and I am never shy about eating at a game — I can’t see spending about $50 per person on chicken and soda. I know of three other season ticket holders scrambling to unload parts of their plans as well. This does not bode well for the new arena — without a strong season ticket holder base, you have a lot of premium seats without butts in them.

Which leads to the subject of ticket resale. Many teams have developed ticket resales systems where you can put your season tickets up for sale, effectively emailing them to someone else, collecting a fee for the transfer of the seats. The San Francisco Giants DoublePlay system is probably the best I’ve used, allowing me to pick up tickets the day of a game, through the Giants’ web site, through eBay or StubHub (now the same company) or directly from the ticket holder, with a simple email moving the seats to their new covers. More people will make larger commitments, earlier in the year, if they know that travel, vacation, illness, work emergencies, school plays, and unexpected dinners with the in-laws won’t lead to money scraped up by the Zamboni. Furthermore, the data collected by the teams with such a system gives you insights into how tickets move, who buys single games, what kinds of premiums are placed on various days, dates and times, and what the optimum packaging and re-packaging might be. Listening to the fans one email removed, in a way. There’s a reason the San Francisco Giants can sit in the bottom of the NL West, and still sell out nearly every game, and it’s not Barry Bonds. It’s because they truly invest in making sure their fans are loyal and having fun.

So far this season I’ve found out there’s no parking deck (yet) at the Prudential Center, I’m paying a lot more for seats without any assurances that I can easily resell tickets I might not be able to use, I’m implicitly told that my opinions as a long-term fan and strong, vocal, public free-lance writer are not worth a simple acknowledgement, and the team plays defense worse than my son’s bantam team due to lack of a reasonable signing over the summer. Perhaps this customer-last attitude works on Wall Street (I’ve certainly witnessed it, which is why I do my business with on-line brokerages only) but it’s not healthy for a franchise that depends on fans. Unlike Wall Street, there’s no money to be made in losing transactions. I would love a piece of the Rock — but don’t throw it at my head.

The game’s not over yet, but it looks like the Devils will end up tied for the worst record in the NHL after tonight’s fiasco in Florida. There are probably a dozen little things wrong, but in the overall scheme of “new Devils hockey,” there are three obvious abominations:

Defensive positioning. Guys standing around, or leaving the weak side of the net wide open. Four white shirts down low, and nobody on the point. Even our squirts know how to start a breakout, and there’s nothing to start if your wings are down low. Hel-low?

Offense. Not just lack of goals, but lack of attempts to score goals. Shoot the puck. We adore Patrik Elias with religious fervor, but he needs to fire the puck at the net. Earn that “C” back, Patty. Which leads to the clincher….

Leadership. Gionta taking multiple minors, including a dumb one for delay of game (on a backhand pass over the glass), six straight minors, random efforts all indicate that someone other than Sutter needs to step up and straighten out the helmets. Establishing leadership means taking some risks, being creative, and what Mark Cuban calls “doing the work.” Even if the refs aren’t.

It’s a rare combination of dumb and dangerous to predict the entire season based on four games, but 1/20th of the way through the season the Devils have a pair of points. That puts them on pace to match Philadelphia. Last season.

Almost precisely 3 months ago I posited that Scott Gomez and Alex Rodriguez were increasingly alike.

Let me add to the list: neither one has shown up for big games in October. At least Gomez recorded three shots tonight (plus one miss, and one blocked, is it me or are the new NHL statistics not bad once you learn to decode them)? A-Rod is A-WOL for the Division Championship Series (let’s hear John Sterling make a big deal out of that one). That giant sucking sound you hear is the extra $7 million or so that Rodriguez thought he’d coax out of a team next year when he exercises his contract option. I think I’ve invented a new unit of measure: The Gomez, more specifically, $7M paid for non-performance when people are watching.

Some other random thoughts, two games into the season:

I like Kevin Weekes. He brings his A-game, a solid effort, and he has no fear. Goalies are always a few sigma off of normal anyway, but he has impressed.

The Islanders are 2-0, and the Sabres are 0-2 as a result. So much for the predictive power of the hockey press. Yes, it’s early, but c’mon. Shuffle off to Buffalo for some ugly practices this week.

The Capitals are better than anyone thinks, and the Rangers will miss Nylander as they realize why.

Mike Cammalleri is now in my top five favorite players. Three goals, same pace as Dany Heatly through week one. The Kings aren’t as bad as everyone thinks, and the Ducks might not be as good as everyone predicted.

Vinny Lecavalier was quite lonely in the low slot, waiting for a pass from Prospal that turned into tonight’s game-winning goal. Listening to the game on XM radio (sometimes rental cars aren’t thoroughly horrible) I could only get the Lightning version of events, but it didn’t sound so great for the Devils. Sutter commented after the game that there was a lot of “standing around,” and if it’s possible to hear nothingness on the radio, I did. Devils sounded good in the first, adequate in the second, and then deflated in the third. I think Oduya is showing some of the form that got him scratched in the playoffs.

It’s only one game. But it’s an opening night loss, and in a game that the Devils should have won. Coupled with the Yankees smelling like old cheese, and the fact that the Rangers managed to score one goal for each of the fingers I gave them in the third, it wasn’t a good night for this fan. The only solace: Gomez stayed off the Rangers’ scoresheet.

On the eve of the Devils’ season opener, I’m in the same position — day three of a three-week long road trip that includes 3 days at home, and various optimizations to catch the tail and horns on TV, nhl.com, and sports bars big screens. However, this one just started with a side trip to Wrongville: I managed to forget a talk that I was working on, leaving it on my home Mac. Two piles of notes that would have been helpful are similarly lonely on my desk. And third, completing the hat trick of ugly things surrounded by too much information, I forgot to pack underwear.

I haven’t done this for about a decade, although I’ve had a few trips where I forgot to bring enough shirts (so I bought one), and one trip to Germany where I packed a french cuffed shirt without cufflinks, salvaging a paperclip as a fastener for my sleeves. Partly, I attribute my unintentional brush with going commando style to having two bags-in-progress; I was packing for next week’s trip in parallel with this one and probably just dumped the pile into one bag. Partly, it was trying to pack while juggling six other things, and partly it was a major brain fart. Fortunately, this week’s conference is near a small shopping center, where I was able to buy a package of very low-budget supplies.

I’m not quite sure who is responsible for the aesthetic and functional design of the tighty whities gracing the lower circle of this snowman. The leg holes are too small, the rest is a bit baggy, and the “tighty” part is truly an exercise in imagination. Peter from Family Guy would look at home in these, but he’s a cartoon and easily covered with paint, not Bangladeshi cotton blends.

Net net result: I’m doing laundry in the hotel tonight so that I don’t have to watch the Devils start their road trip with my undies in a literal knot.