Devils Hoisted By Their Own Petard, Lose 2-1 In Shootout

Tonight's game could best be described in one word- unfortunate. The game itself wasn't unfortunate- rather incredibly boring (So much so that TG even had to say that it was terrible on twitter). What happened to the Devils was. The Devils outshot the Sabres. They had the better chances. They had a PPG. Yet all they managed was one goal and one point. The Sabres only goal came on an unfortunate bounce off a stanchion right to Jordan Leopold. Everything that could've went wrong went wrong for the Devils. And they lost to the worst team in the east. Going into the All-Star break, the Devils are in a 3 game losing streak, without their best defenseman. Who knows what's going to happen now?

More thoughts on tonight's game can be found after the jump, or over at Die By the Blade if you want a Sabres perspective.

Ryan Miller, American Hero Mode

Ryan Miller came into this game looking like he was Dan Cloutier. He was giving up soft goals left and right. Yet tonight, he looked like the guy that had America in the hunt for goal. The Devils did a good job of pressuring Miller, they put up a good number of shots on net, but 1 goal is unacceptable- one goal that came because of an equally lucky break, where Kurtis Foster's shot hit Tyler Myers right in the nards and right to Patrik Elias. Myers was down and couldn't block Elias' shot, which was huge. Outside of that goal, Miller was sharp, especially in overtime where he stopped a great chance by Bryce Salvador and Ilya Kovalchuk.

Peter DeBoer, John MacLean Mode

No, he wasn't as grossly incompetent as MacLame was. However, he did do a bit of line juggling tonight, and it didn't work out very well. The lines were all over the place. The line changes were abit unnecessary. I understand the team isn't scoring, but does throwing random lines together mean that they will? Is Adam Henrique going to generate more offense with Ryan Carter and Alexei Ponikarovsky? Who knows. At best these line changes are magic beans- they could either work or fail miserably.

Peter Harrold, Non Factor Mode

Peter Harrold played tonight. I never once noticed him on the ice. Moving on...

This Team Makes Absolutely No Sense

Okay, I've been meaning to have a bit of a mini-rant about this team. I really have no clue who the Devils are right now. One minute they're winning games and showing us that they can be a good team. At other times they're horrendous. They're consistent at being inconsistent. They've been both amazing and terrible at special teams. For all we know, in a month the Devils could be closing back on a higher playoff spot or just falling out of it and trading Zach Parise (side note: hello Brendan Gaunce). For all I know this mini-slump could just be another one of those slumps where the team loses a few and then rebounds with better play. Who knows? I really have no clue where the team will be at the end of the season and what they will do after the all-star break against the Rangers. I've watched as many games as I can this year, and I cannot make any sense of this team.

Your Thoughts

Tonight's game was brutal to watch and the Devils only came out with one point. I'm not happy with tonight's game, are you? Leave your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading.