Speechless

That's what the first quarter of Devils hockey has done to me, made me speechless. However, after three games in four nights and now four days off I think I might be able to finally put some thoughts together.

The season started off on a sour note with word that Langenbrunner would require surgery and miss a couple of months and then White takes a puck to the eye in practice and has yet to return. No problem though because the new head coach, Brent Sutter, said he was going to turn this team into a forechecking puck possession team. Not only that, but our new backup goaltender, Kevin Weekes, was going to be playing quite a few more games than Scott Clemmenson did last year.

The preseason sounded great. I didn't get to see any games but from what I was reading this was a different team. Martin Brodeur didn't even play until the fourth game. The Devils finished the preseason 4-2-0 with 19 goals for and 10 goals against. Needless to say, I was itching to watch this "new" Devils hockey.

The 2007-08 season started off on a sour note, losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning by a score of 3-1, but I (along with most Devil fans) were impressed by what we saw. We saw a lot of things that we liked and were exclaiming,"Who are these guys and what have they done with our Devils!?!"

The first six games the Devils went .500 but us fans were not concerned. We didn't just win games against the Thrashers and Penguins, we won by scores of 6-5 and 5-4 respectively. This was an exciting team to watch, sure we were being scored on more than we were used to, but we were also scoring more than we were used to. Kevin Weekes had already started a game, which the Devils won 4-1 against the Panthers. It looked like things were going in the right direction. We were starting off the the season on a nine game road trip and were playing .500 hockey, but we liked what we saw. But then something bad started to happen. We lost three in a row, two of which were shutouts. The Devils ended the season opening nine game road trip with a 3-5-1 record with 21 goals scored and 30 goals against.

Devils fans were still optimistic, we were getting ready for a new season in the new arena in Newark, New Jersey. The Prudential Center a.k.a "The Rock" would certainly bring inspiriation to this new looking team, right? Wrong. Opening night was a 4-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators. Chris Neil would go down in the trivia books as the first person to score in the new building. Four nights later though, the Devils would defeat the Tampaa Bay Lightning by a score of 6-1. Jay Pandolfo goes down as the first player to score a hat-trick in the new building. A couple of days later the Devils would defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs by a score of 3-2. From there it has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride.

The next home game we watched as the Devils lost 5-0 to the Pittsburgh Penguins. A few nights later responded by defeating the Flyers by a score of 4-1. The rollercoaster ride would continue with l-w-l-l-w. With Broduer chasing 500 career wins, he started all 3 games in a 3-games-in-4-nights span finally getting the win against the Flyers. The win would mean much more though because the Devils would score six goals. Having only scored six goals in the previous four games, that was quite an accomplishment.

So here we are now, 20 games played with an 8-10-2 record and a total of 48 goals scored, 56 goals against, and being shutout five times. Kevin Weekes has started only three games going 2-0-1 with a 2.09 GAA and .930 Sv%. The most surprising stats: Jay Pandolfo, last year's Selke finalist, is the Devils goal scoring leader with 7 goals. Karel Rachunek leads the +/- with a +10. Not so surprising: Zach Parise leads the team with 18 points (6 goals, 12 assists).

Some Devils fans have started to panic. Others have not. The biggest complaints I have heard from fans is inconsistent effort by the players and the constant line juggling by Brent Sutter. Not only are lines changed from game to game, but also period to period and even shift to shift. I'm not giving up though, Langenbrunner has returned and even scored on his first shift of the season, hopefully a good sign of things to come. Elias has gotten off to a really slow start but that's not unusual. Zubrus has also started putting pucks in the net. Madden and Pandolfo also scoring goals are a good thing. So basically, file me under: have not.