The Matchup: The New Jersey Devils (0-1-0) vs. the Carolina Hurricanes(0-1-1)
Know Your Enemy: Shutdown Line
What Shutdown Line is saying about the Hurricanes:
Unfortunately, some of the mistakes that occurred last night (Friday night) happened again and Carolina ended up losing this game in overtime 4-3. Overall, it wasn’t that bad of a performance by Carolina but there’s still a lot of work to be done over the next few days.
Our EA Sports NHL 12 Simulation Results: The Devils won 5-2 with goals from Sykora, Elias, Kovalchuk and two goals by Zach Parise, including an empty net goal. The Hurricanes got goals by Brandon Sutter and Eric Staal.
Today’s Game: The Devils have to win this one right? Of course they don’t but getting off to an 0-2 start isn’t going to be pleasant for anyone. While winning isn’t mandatory, scoring is. There is simply no excuse for this team to walk away with a big fat zero on the scoreboard. It was painfully obvious the other night that the Devils lack confidence in themselves and their offensive abilities. I’m hoping that the Devils can move the puck efficiently today against the Hurricanes because they struggled in that area the other night, which caused the Devils to have problems generating shots.
Team discipline has to be better this afternoon. At one point in the game against Philly, the Devils were just playing horrible, undisciplined hockey capped off by David Clarkson getting beaten down on the ice. Fix that now!!
Hedberg gets the start today and that’s not to say that Marty had a bad game the other night. Without Marty, the score would have easily been a lot worse. There will be some shuffling to the lines in order to create some confidence with the puck. I certainly hope that Mark Fayne has a better game today but Tallinder has to help him out a little bit as well. If it were my choice, I hope the same for David Clarkson because his game was nothing but ugly the other night. Kovalchuk needs to show us why we paid him so much money and play smarter hockey and stop turning the puck over so much. I’d almost prefer for Kovalchuk to be more selfish out there and opt to shoot first, pass second. I’d personally like to see Cam Janssen in because the Devils could probably benefit from throwing the body around.
There is a lot of work to be done by the Devils and Carolina is going to come in here a little hungry this afternoon. Thankfully, Peter DeBoer came from the Southeast Division and knows Carolina pretty well, so hopefully that will give the Devils a bit of an edge.
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