Welp.
That wasn’t good. Just trying to tell myself it’s still only game 5, but this team is sloppy, soft, and disorganized.
1st Period
The first escalated quickly and turned into mostly a penalty fest – in fact, they spent more time up or down a man than at 5v5 with the Devils racking up 9 minutes and the Senators taking two minors. Dillon really ratcheted up he intensity, stepping in after Chisolm was cross-checked following a weird sequence where he whiffed but wound up accidentally-ish burying Pinto at the top
of the offensive zone. A few minutes later, Dillon popped Zetterlund, which watching back, was a it questionable as an interference call – Zetterlund had just touched the puck. At 10:01 Mantha boarded Matinpalo on a really dumb and dangerous play – that is how guys break their necks and is extremely dangerous, especially when you are 6’5” 240 and 2 feet from the boards. the Devils’ kill did a great job killing off all 7 minutes, and would get rewarded with their own power play at 16:58. Unfortunately that would be short lived as Shane Pinto, who learned to skate on Long Island and it shows, tripped over Luke’s skate yielding an interference call on the younger Hughes – just a nonsense call.
With all the penalties, there wasn’t much in the way offense being created, Daws was solid stopping all 7 shots while the Devils best chance was between Boquist and Lombardi who was robbed by Ullmark point blank. 0-0 heading to the 2nd.
2nd Period
I was just settling back into my couch, and my dog hadn’t even jumped up to join me when Ottawa scored 9 seconds into the period. Just a sloppy disengaged play off the opening faceoff as Pesce bobbled the puck, the Senators got a clean entry and 3 Devils decided to pull up lawn chairs and allow a cross slot pass from Amadio to Pinto:
We would take 2 more penalties, as got a weak slashing call on Halladay at 5:36. The Devils kill stepped up once again, but we would go right back tot he box as Evangelista prevented a back door goal by hooking Grieg at 8:16. There are only so many penalties you can take, and they had spent mroe than half the game int he box already – and Ottawa finally made them apy. It was an unfortunate play by PEsce, who caugfht an edge right inf ront of Daws, allowing Halladay to walk in uncontested and beat Daws cleanly.
The fact that “Stephen Halladay” has more goals than Timo Meier, Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt combined (2) is toubling.
That’s how the second would end – the Devils made a decent push with about 5 minutes left, but once again would come up empty handed.
3rd Period
The Devils did make a push in the 3rd, but it was more of the same – zone time, perimeter possession, but nothing particularly dangerous. No traffic in front of Ullmark.
The dagger came at 11:10 as Tim Stutzle tipped a Chabot point shot past Daws, and they would go up 3-0. Not a single Devil anywhere in the zip code of Stutzle. We would temproarily get one back on a nice scramble by the 4th line, but unforuantely Glass did poke it through Ullmarkl so it was called back for goalie itnerference.
Gritsyuk would add his first goal at 14:59, on a nice rush with Jack and Timo:
It was too little too late as Klevan would add the empty netter with a little over 2 minutes left int he game.
4-1 Ottawa, right back at it tomorrow in Detroit.
Some Scattered Thoughts
There were some things I did like in this game 1) the Timo and Grits PK unit 2) the 4th line and 3) Luke Hughes with another really strong game.
Even though he gave up 3, Daws was very good tonight. He made several strong saves, including 2 point blank glove saves. In 120 minutes, the Devils have scored 1 goal for him.
The only guys who should be allowed on the plane are Lombardi, Grits, Glass, Boquist and Luke H. Everyone else needs to hit the Port Authority and take a greyhound there as punishment.
Ottawa is a sneaky really good team – they play with structure and are extremely sound in the defensive zone and are my dark horse to take the Atlantic and I may or may not have sprinkled a few bucks on a Travis Green Jack Adams future. With Ullmark being Ullmark again, look out for them, especially when Sanderson and Zub are back in the lineup. At the end of the 2nd they had more blocked shots (17) than we had actual shots (16).
Where you at Jesper Bratt? Where you at Timo Meier? Anthony Mantha, what is it you say you do around here?
I’m not going to doom too much here, it was a bad game and it’s only 5 games in. But 5 games can turn into 10 games and 20 games – and if this continues we are going to be chasing the season by mid-November. I think we have seen enough tape to make some line changes – namely swap Grits and Mantha. It’s no coincidence our best shifts were when other players were with Jack and Bratt. It’s the first step to try and spark something.
It’s getting late early, and Keefe’s leash has to be extremely short at this point. But will another coach help? How many can we go through until this core group looks in the mirror?
Want some Keefe Era fun facts (c/o twitter user @stav8818)? Here you go:
- They have given up the first goal 93 times, second only to Nashville
- They have gone down 2-0 45 times and have a league worst 7.8% winning percentage when that happens
- They have let those 2-0 leads turn into 3-0 leads 62% of the time, compared to less than 50% for the league
I hate this team, can’t wait to watch them again tomorrow.
Have at it below, gang.
LGD
