Saturday was a terrible outing but the great thing about hockey is that there is always another game to be played either the next night or a few days later which means its a chance to erase the bad taste in your mouth from the last game, and boy is there a bad taste in our mouths!!
The Matchup: The New Jersey Devils (0-1-0) vs. the New York Rangers (1-1-0) and the first meeting of the season.
The Last Game: The Devils had a horrible start to the season getting routed by the Philadelphia Flyers 5-2. The Rangers are coming off a very good showing agasint the Ottawa Senators where they won by the score of 5-2.
Game Thoughts: The power play HAS to show up tonight. After reading the guys who cover the Devils practices in person, it sounds like the Devils worked on the power play a lot in practice yesterday. I’m not sure the reason why Parise was point man on the power play on Saturday night but he belongs on the side of the net. Parise is money when it comes to being at the side of the net on power plays. Lemaire had talked about a loss of confidence with his team after failing to get shots on net during a two minute 5 on 3. A few big hits can easily change any teams confidence in a hurry at any point in a game, so throwing some big hits at the Rangers is a must tonight. The Rangers have started the season much better than I thought they would so you can expect their confidence to be pretty high.
As for Marty, I said it in my Game one rant recap,he usually bounces back from poor games with a nice strong game and a game against the rival New York Rangers is certainly a game to do it. Sean Avery won’t be in the game tonight due to injury so Marty won’t have that distraction to face. It’s early in the season but this is a game the Devils need to win. It’s a game against our hated rival, a game after a terrible loss and the last home game beofre a 3-game road trip.
If you are looking for the Rangers point of view for this game, head over to Bloguin’s Ranger site, The Manic Ranger I will hopefully be twittering during the game tonight, something I hope to do for the majority of the games this season.
For those who haven’t seen it yet this season, here is the new “Hells Bells” intro being played at The Rock at the beginning of all the home games.
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