We feel like we’ve been very divorced from the Devils lately, what with missing the Islanders game on MLK Day, then being out late this Friday and Saturday for the Montreal and Islanders (redux) games. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, though? Probably not. Anyway, here’s our take on the state of the Devils, as seen from far, far away.
1. EJGRgunner made the great point after last night’s game that Zach has apparently taken the Fuck This Shit torch from Langer. And Langer has given it up without a fight. The “C” might still be on Langer’s sweater, but the true Captain Fuck This Shit of the Devils is now Zach. This doesn’t really come as a surprise, considering that Zach is ten times the player Langer is, but still. It merits mention that, from a million miles away where we’re standing, it seems to have happened this week.
2. We may or may not have mentioned in this space that we are participating in a group project on Flickr called sixty-four colors, where the assignment is to take pictures of a specific color every week, as chosen by random draw from a box of 64 Crayola crayons. This week (our first in the project), the color was sea green. Now, we assumed we’d fail, because who the hell ever sees anything that’s sea green? As it turns out, though, as soon as you start looking, there’s sea green everywhere. Likewise, ever since Zubrus got hurt we’ve moved Mike Mottau to the top of our list of guys we are most likely to forget are Devils. We never, ever, ever noticed him. Then, a couple weeks ago, Pam mentioned in the comments here that he was the player she was most eagerly anticipating getting to the end of his contract. Since then, the only thing we can ever see about the Devils is how much he sucks. Mike Mottau being a terrible hockey player is like the sea green of the NHL.
3. As has been well-documented here, we’re pretty down on the whole NHL-involvment-in-the-Olympics thing. One of the reasons why is we’re always very sure a key Devil is going to get hurt playing in what is essentially an all-star exhibition tournament.* This year we were getting big time vibes that Elias was going to be the one to pull a groin or get a high ankle sprain or break a forearm (which in our experience is the most horrible, unhealable hockey injury ever). So what do the hockey gods do? They go and give Patty a concussion well before the all-star exhibition tournament even starts so we can’t even blame it on the stupid old Olympics. (*We’re all about all-star exhibition tournaments, just not when they interrupt the regular NHL season; if the NHL brought back the World Cup we’d be first in line to buy tickets. OK, maybe not buy tickets, but we’d be all over watching it. Think about it, NHL. You know you want us being all over watching hockey in the summertime.)
4. Speaking of the most horrible, unhealable hockey injuries ever, we miss Paulie Martin. The Devils are pretty good at initially recovering from going down a key player, but it’s like everyone’s decided Paulie is never, ever walking through that door ever again, so it’s not worth trying to play well until he comes back.
5. Is anyone even sure Yann Danis is still alive? Because it seems to us like maybe he died by accident a month or so ago, and the Devils just don’t want anyone to know. They’re being all like, “Oh, he’s still with the team. He’s still an important part of the team! He’s totally alive and a key player on our roster. He’s gonna play tonight, in fact. That’s how alive and part of this team he is. Playing tonight. For reals. Totally.” Then, an hour later, they’re like, “Uh, he, uh… got stuck in traffic. He’s not gonna be able to play tonight. Um… *shifty eyes*… he’ll be back tomorrow. Or the day after. Something like that.”
