Tuesday night we saw an awful trend continue as the Devils once again gave no goal support to Cory Schneider in a 3-0 loss.
Alex Steen scored just over three minutes into the game and the Blues never looked back en route to their 36th win of the season.
Brendan Morrow and Maxim Lapierre (empty netter) were the other scorers while Jaroslav Halak was perfect stopping all 23 shots he faced.
10 notes:
1. The St. Louis Blues deserve a ton of credit for what they were able to do last night. Entering the 3rd period with just a one goal lead, the Blues decisively carried play and left us wondering who the trailing team was. New Jersey was stifled offensively all night and were only able to generate five shots in the final frame. The Blues generated 11 shots and scored twice, though one was an empty netter, in the 3rd period.
2. I've tried to defend Bryce Salvador and gave him as many opportunities to improve his game since returning from injury as I could have, but he's been awful and it's very obvious. More often than not he's spending his shifts chasing around opposing players in his own zone and the Devils are hurting in possession as a result.
He's been OK on the penalty kill at times, but his 5 vs 5 play has been a mess. He's looked too slow to keep up with the current speed of the game and seems to be taking more than he's dishing out in the hit department.
I looked at the numbers to see if that's the case, and it turns out it is. Bryce Salvador has a -19 hit differential in 24 games played. That's not because he's taking a lot of hits, either. It's because he isn't as physical as some make him out to be. He has just 29 hits in those games and the likes of Eric Gelinas, Marek Zidlicky and Anton Volchenkov all average more hits per game than Salvador.
It's usually good to not get a lot of hits as it often indicates your team is driving play and winning the possession battle, but Salvador's near the bottom of the team in that regard so he's chasing play more often than the other defenseman mentioned.
3. Here are Salvador possession (5 vs 5 shot attempt for percentage) numbers over the last seven games. The Devils are a 54% possession team on the season, and Salvador's had a 50% possession rating or better just once in the last seven. Looks like he's struggling to hold his own against these teams who can skate.
No. 24 is making a pretty good case to sit in the press box. Captain or not, he needs to be better.
4. I liked the emotion I saw from the Devils late in the game last night. They're not an overly physical team but they were starting to get pushed around by the Blues and decided not to accept any of it. Obviously the better way to get revenge would be on the scoreboard, but that wasn't going to happen so it was nice to see them stick up for themselves.
5. At this point Cory Schneider is probably sick of participation ribbons and hearing about how well he played in the loss. The reality is he's won nine games in 26 starts despite posting some of the best numbers in the league. I don't know why the Devils can't score with him in the net, but they really need to figure something out. Schneider wants to win and he's probably tired of allowing two goals or less and losing almost every time out.
6. Sticking with Schneider, he's allowed two goals or less in nine straight starts and has allowed one goal or less in six of those nine games. How many wins does he have in that span? Five. He should have seven or eight.
7. One player I've been impressed with over the last few weeks is Mark Fayne. He's been pretty steady defensively, and has actually helped jump start the rush and chipped in offensively. He isn't flashy, but he's a real solid defenseman and is starting to pan out nicely.
His possession numbers (see below) over the last nine games are real encouraging, especially when you consider the quality of opponents the Devils have faced.
As you can see, Fayne has been above a 50% possession player in seven of the last nine and has been above 60%, which is elite, in six of those games. Fayne is playing some good hockey and I think he deserves more credit than he's getting.
8. I know Steve Bernier is playing on the 4th line now, but he needs to produce more than he has. No. 18 has just one point in his last 21 games and hasn't made an impact physically or otherwise, either.
That's not good...
9. It might be time to put some kids back in the lineup. Jon Merrill handled himself nicely when he played and Andrei Loktionov is one of the more skilled players on the team so a change or two couldn't hurt, right?
10. The Devils have hit a rough patch the last few games, but things appear to be looking up as five of their last six games before the Olympic break are against teams currently outside of the playoffs. They need to string together some wins.
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Why the Devils may soon be in the market for a top-6 left winger
- I recently posted my midseason rankings for the top-30 first-year NHL draft eligible players from the OHL. You can
view that here.
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