And so, Gentle Reader, the trade deadline has come and gone, and there’s… not much different about the Devils. Sure, we’ve railed in this space about wanting a shakeup, or wanting Lecavalier (seriously, how did the Lightning not jump at the chance to have a few of our extra D-men?), or wanting moon particles to be named later in exchange for Gio, but now that it’s all over, we’re pretty cool with it. Because the looming specter of Janssen ruining the season is now a looming specter in St. Louis, and we’re back to the regular things that ruin Devils seasons (like “lack of scoring”, “tired goaltending”, and “roster-wide apathy”). It feels so nice to be back to normal.
Okay, perhaps “normal” isn’t the right word, unless you consider having nine (9) defensemen normal. We will spend all evening being delighted with Sutter’s quote on Tom Gulitti’s blog, about how he’s going to deal with having 9 D-men by skating “three pairs of three”. Just to drive the point home about how ridonk the Devils blue line is, here’s FSN’s graphic showing us our D-pairings… and extra pairing… and spare D-man to go after that.
