IPB Witnesses The Preseason

Tonight we went on a totally uncharacteristic (for us) impromptu hockey adventure. We are sedentary creatures of habit, so for us to decide on a whim, as Pookie realized the Devils were playing a preseason game in nearby Trenton, to head out on a work night for some hot minor-leaguer action against the Flyers was wildly daring. And now, for us to provide our first-ever IPB Eyewitness (IPBWitness?) game report is almost more daring. You see, Gentle Reader, we are about to lay bare our total inability to seriously analyze hockey when we are watching it in person.

Let us begin with an exciting sidenote from tonight’s game — we got to add another notch on our “HLOGers we’ve met” belt because we crossed paths with Kristen, who was sitting a few sections over from us, and ultimately joined us for the third period. Not at all surprisingly, Kristen is awesome, and even manages to transcend being a Flyers fan, a character flaw we previously believed was humanly insurmountable. No offense to Kristen, though, but meeting her was not the main event. Gentle Reader, we were watching hockey. Hockey that didn’t include a single Washington Capital! Perhaps most importantly, it was hockey that showed off how good the Devils’ new sweaters look, in that they basically look like the old sweaters in action. Really, not a stuffed sausage in sight. (The same could not be said of the Flyers, but more on that later.)

Sutter’s lineup tonight was your typical preseason squad of a handful of big names (Zach, Travis, Pando, Madden, Sarge and, uh, Rupp, if you consider him a big name) and a bunch of 35-year-old AHLers taking their 15th crack at making the Devils. Oh, we kid because we love! But seriously, how is it that we’ve seen all of these guys before, and we’re the least inclined fans to ever pay any attention to our team’s prospects? We got an eyeful of Rod Pelley, Barry Tallackson, David Clarkson, some guy named something like Vrablahblahblaha up front, while the blueliners were the guys in a much more high-stakes game of “win those roster spots” musical chairs: Vishnevsky, Rachunek, Greene and Oduya were playing behind a top pairing of Matvichuk and Whitey. We’d report breathlessly on the line combos and whatnot, but we really weren’t paying that close attention. Oh, but we can mention that Kevin Weekes started, and Jordan Parise finished (sort of) the game.

We could definitely see Sutter’s influence on skate-around, which was the most up-tempo, high-paced skate-around we’ve ever seen from these boys. During the game, however? The same old problems from last year don’t seem to have been addressed. Puck pursuit is still an issue (when Madden and Pando are doing the best job of all the forwards at dynamically forechecking it’s just not good), Zajac is atrocious on faceoffs, holding the puck at the point on the PP is nightmarishly bad, and there is a sneaking inclination to overpass in the offensive zone. All that said, the Devils carried most of the play for the first period, but managed to emerge with a 2-0 deficit, in part because the Flyers were skating their entire NHL starting roster. There were five stupid fights in the first period, too. We don’t care for or about fighting when it has no bearing on the game, and this was an embarrassment of “having no bearing on the game” riches. A bunch of Devils guys with secure NHL jobs let themselves get beat up by a bunch of Flyers guys with secure NHL jobs, and the lunkhead Flyers fans making up about 80% of the crowd were much more excited for the fights than they were for the goals. We think Briere’s going to be a perfect fit there.

The second period was a dreadful suckfest of the Devils picking up where they left off in the playoffs last year. Despite showing a vague inclination to dump the puck rather than sitting around waiting for Scott Gomez to carry it through five defenders at the blue line, they still managed something like -56 shots. The highlight of the period for us was when a Flyer decided he wanted to fight some pure-of-heart Devil (down at the end of the ice we couldn’t really see that well, so we don’t know who it was, and really, it’s a pre-season game so who cares?), and ended up taking seven minutes of unmatched penalties. After nearly five of those minutes passed with the wrong Parise brother having to be the best Devil on the ice, the Devils demonstrated exactly how in mid-season form they are: yup, that’s right — Sutter had to call an exasperated timeout during which we can only hope he painstakingly explained that having one more guy than the Flyers means maintaining puck possession shouldn’t be impossible. The period ended without a goal. Nice.

In the third the Flyers seemed to finally realize there was no escaping how stupid they look in their new sweaters, and started taking even more dumb-assed penalties. (And how stupid do they look? Amazingly stupid. The look like they’re wearing shrugs and those sock sleeves Britney Spears wore in that Superbowl that time. And the letters for the Captains and Alternates don’t fit in just the white spot on the front of the sweater and actually spill over into the orange shrug. Just. So. Stupid.) With a reasonably lengthy two-man advantage, Zach managed to score in hopes of tearing our focus away from his smoking-hot brother, who was now playing in the net directly in front of us. Not much later, two Flyers took minor penalties at the same time, and Greener managed to make them pay. But no worries, Gentle Reader. The combination of a lousy penalty by Asham with goaltending by Jordy Parise (against about $700 million of Flyers contracts skating on the power play) resulted in a 3-2 lead for the Flyers, which Nittymaki miraculously held while facing mild-to-nonexistent offensive pressure.

So there you go. It was hockey, and was it ever Devils hockey. It looks like Sutter has his work cut out for him, but we’re not too worried. What really matters to us is these three things: the Parise brothers are ridonkulously attractive, and are probably totally in love with us; Andy Greene and Johnny Oduya can’t get much worse than they were tonight; and we spent a cool Fall evening at a hockey game. Life is really, really good.