Snowman On Fire

Face it: The Devils look nervous out there. Tuesday night’s fiasco against the Penguins was the first game I’ve watched in about two weeks, and I was sorry that I did. When you’re listening to the radio, you hear about the puck being “spirited out” or “scaled back up” and you can at least form a mental picture of an attempt at a breakout. What I saw were backhand passes with no receiver in sight, a weak forecheck, and guys that seemed to be frozen in terms of what to do next. If you’re going to commit to play behind the net (especially when your defensive partner is behind the goal line on the other side), then you had better commit to getting to the puck, or shouldering the guy off the puck, first. Not letting a one-handed pass turn into an easy goal, and the beginning of the end.

When don’t you commit? When you’re afraid that a strong action is going to result in getting reamed, getting mixed up in a different line, or a mistake that costs the team. Nervousness. Anxiety. But without commitment, the Devils offense has looked like a Pee Wee level drill in feeding the puck to the points for a budding slapshot to develop. The lack of shots in the Montreal game was indicative of a general lack of direction, and I can only attribute that to nervousness. But being nervous with the puck is making the whole team useless with the puck. And possibly the root cause of the game to game inconsistency. One night Oduya has four points, the next he’s playing the four corners offense on the ice and going slow when Penguins glide by. Help.

Maybe being in third place in the Atlantic is a good thing. Rather than worrying about who is accelerating from behind (worry = nerves) the black-n-redmen can think about playing catchup in the standings. If Philly wins tonight, the Devils are back to where they were mid-November, looking way up at what should always, geographically and mentally, be down from here. While there’s no truth to the rumor that I want Pennsylvania to annex southern New Jersey, taking Flyers, Phillies and Eagles fans with them, someone over on Mulberry Street should be a big man and get pissed off that the 856 and 609 area codes are laughing at us. C’mon guys, our mascot is from an historical South Jersey family gone horribly wrong (and not just for rooting for the Flyers, but evil mid-18th century stuff), we should be walking away with the divsion and recapturing the hearts, minds and wallets of our state.

Last weekend our youth hockey team had a 4-0 lead and then stopped playing midway through the game. Our opponents out-played us, 2-0, down the stretch, leaving us with a 4-2 win but one that we honestly didn’t earn with a solid effort. Watching the Devils game last night, I could only think of what our head coach said: “These guys started reading their own headlines.” Nobody in the NHL gives up after 2 periods, not in a 2-goal game, not in a 3-goal game (anybody remember The Streak’s conclusion in Montreal, with a trio of goals in the third?). Blowing a pair of deuces on the scoreboard is embarassing.

Bottom line: the offense seems to work, and then it goes silent for long periods of time. Leadership is one part of it, but leaving the lines alone would also help develop some chemistry. Where’s the leadership on defense? Before that, where’s the motion on defense? If you’ve ever been in a car accident, you know that feeling when time dilates, and you’re pretty sure you’re watching yourself come close to getting mangled. I can only imagine what the Devils were feeling once the Habs scored in the first minute of the third. Spinning, spinning, just skidding around on the ice…..

Here’s a headline for the Devils to read: It’s time to start winning Eastern Conference games, and more than that, Atlantic Division games. So far this year the Devils are 8-8-3 against the Atlantic, 17-8-0 against the rest of the East, and 3-2 against the West. They have a losing record in their own division, and that’s one way to watch a high playoff seed turn into tossing grass seed on the tee box in mid-April.

For the remainder of the season, the Devils play 13 Atlantic teams, 15 other Eastern teams, and 5 Western teams. They’re one of only three teams in the East who have winning records against the West so far this year (Penguins are 7-1, Boston is 5-3, and somewhat laughably the Rangers are 0-7). Clearly, opening up a gap in the Atlantic division is a big deal, but it’s an even bigger deal to capture points in the East, as the #5-#8 seeds are likely determined by all of those games that were woulda-shoudla wins. Like the 3rd period meltdown against the Panthers, and last night’s Hab It Your Way mess.

The headlines I want to read are about wins, tight defense, and playoff runs. You know, Devils hockey.

Mike Mottau gives me hope at the blue line. He’s emblematic of the path taken by a number of Devils players: a Massachusetts native, played for Boston College (at the same time Gionta was there), and I (for one) had never heard of him. On the surface, he appears to be a dark horse for a true rookie season: 30 years old, drafted in the seventh round by the Rangers back in 1997, and survivor of very short stints with the Rangers and Flames, interspersed with long runs in the AHL in Hartford, Worcester, Peoria, Saint John and Cincinatti. He was tradeed (Rangers to Flames), picked up as a free agent (Ducks) and then signed again as a free agent (Devils, in 2006).

But the guy has a great pedigree, including winning the Hobey Baker Award in 2000, a year in which his competitors were Steve Reinprecht, Shawn Horcoff, Brian Gionta, Mike Comrie and Andy McDonald. Perhaps he’s last to make it to the NHL full-time, or maybe he needed some of Kleinendorst’s “get simple” methodology at Lowell, but he’s turned into another Paul Martin style defenseman in the bud.

Now if only Sutter would stop putting Oduya out on the power play (am I the only one who thinks Johnny O looks very lost at the PP point?)

Writing takes practice, just like hockey, baseball, or public speaking. And like hockey, baseball, and public speaking, I’m way out of shape. First blog post since the beginning of December, nearly six weeks without putting keyboard and brain together, and it gets progressively harder to crank out coherent (let alone amusing) thoughts on anything.

One of my favorite books about writing is Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” named for direction given by her late father to Lamott’s brother, who had proscrastinated in writing a report on “birds” until the last minute, and then panicked. His advice: Just take it bird by bird, and you’ll get through it. Great advice from a great writer.

So the Snowman is back, slightly more rotund in shape for lack of exercise, round in sound for lack of writing, and stacked three high with ideas that haven’t quite made the cut. I’m going through them, bird by bird.