And so the Devils take their self-proclaimed “best dressing room EVER” to New York this evening (what’s with the 5:00 starts?) to face the Rangers and their “most Gomezy room EVER” for Part 4 of their season series. We suffer through the MSG pregame show so we get to enjoy Stan’s proclamation that he has a “great feeling” about the Rangers’ chances tonight. That’s okay, Stan – we have a great feeling that you’re an increasingly irrelevant boob.
The big news for the Devils is that Sutter’s going with a lineup change: Rupp’s in, Oduya and Vish-Dog are out. Wait, what? Vish-Dog, coming off one of his best games of the season, is sitting tonight? Huh? Well, maybe Sutter just wants to distract criticism away from Renney, who bizarrely chose to ship Nigel Dawes – proven Marty Killer – to Hartford, ne’er to return. It’s fair to say that we’re not convinced both teams are dressing their best possible lineups, but we’re the bloggers and they’re the coaches, so what do we know?
FIRST PERIOD
19:48 We don’t pay a huge amount of attention to the Rangers when they’re not playing us (what with our natural inclination toward preserving our own sanity), but we were under the impression Hank’s been kind of shitty lately. We are not pleased to see him make a big stop on Zach on a tic-tac-toe set-up off some spunky Gio/Patty forechecking. We are pleased, however, that the ensuing close-up of Zach shows him saying, “My bad. Fuck!” Hee!
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