Devils Advance, Rehabs Win!

The New Jersey Devils closed out their series today against the Tampa Bay Lightning, winning the game 3-2 and finishing the series 4-2. They now move on to face the Ottawa Senators, a team that they beat 3 games to 1 in the regular season. It should be a great series, I know I'm looking forward to it!

Also, I won my game today, 8-1 against the Denim Demons. I had 16 saves on 17 shots, and felt great to be out there again, giving my team the confidence to play well offensively. That's all for tonight, I'm so tired and literally falling asleep as I type. Goodnight!

Game 6 Today

So a lot has happened since my last post. Myth Adventures opened and closed (huge success, pictures coming), the Devils won Game 4 and 5 to take a lead over the Lightning, and are now up 3-2 with the chance of closing out the series in Tampa today.

We believe....Go Devils!

Devils Tie Series 2-2

What a great win tonight for the Devils, winning the game 4-3 on a Scott Gomez goal in overtime! Now if you're a Devils fan, you take a couple of things away from the game tonight.

1.) Consistency. The Devils stole this win. After building a 3-1 lead early, the Devils let it collapse and allowed the Lightning to climb back into this game at 3-3. This can't happen.

2.) Balanced scoring. Zach Parise now leads the league in scoring, with 6 goals coming in just 4 games. This is great, but the Devils need other players to step forward and balance out the scoring. You can't rely on one line, and especially not on one player, if you hope to go very far in the playoffs. We need our top line to play like the top line.

3.) Power play. The power play needs to produce more. We should have won this game 5-3 or 6-3. More production comes from less passing and more shooting. We consistenly outshoot the opposition, but a lot of those shots are coming from the perimeter, and a goalie like Holmqvist is going to read those shots and make the saves. Letting a goalie make a bunch of saves allows him to get his confidence built up early, as well as pushing our own confidence down a bit.

4.) Marty needs to play like Marty. This is now 3 goals allowed in each game, making it 12 goals over 12 games. He's making big saves, but also allowing some very uncharacteristic goals. Gotta settle down a bit.

5.) Faceoffs. We're doing well on faceoffs and this needs to continue, giving the winning team a huge advantage in controlling the play and dictating the pace of the game.

6.) Physicality. Playing Matvichuk with Lukowich tonight was a great move that really shows you what a brilliant strategist Lou Lamoriello is. Two big, playoff-tested, gutsy defenseman are a formidable opponent for a young line of LeCavalier and St. Louis, making the forecheck more of a challenge for Tampa Bay.

Coming off of a 4-3 overtime win against a hungry young Tampa Bay team and returning home to New Jersey for Game 5, the Devils should put up a good game on Friday night. They've got some confidence under their belts now, stealing a game in Tampa and coming back to what should be a raucous New Jersey crowd. Parise scored 2 goals in Game 4, and we got 2 goals from the EGG line as well. Hopefully these two lines can build on the confidence they've developed and transition into Game 5, taking the lead in the series and putting a stranglehold on the Lightning.

Solid win tonight, and as always....


Go Devils!

Myth Adventures

Just wanted to post a picture of the veil that I created for the show that opens this week. Enjoy!

Devils Update

After winning the first game of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Devils dropped the next two games, with a less than stellar performance by Marty Brodeur in net. Tonight is Game 4, with the Devils down 2-1.

We need a big game tonight from the EGG line of Elias, Gomez, and Gionta. If they don't show up offensively and we again need to rely on rookies like Parise and Zajac, then here's hoping that Marty has a stellar game. Game is on at 7:00. Tying the game then makes the series a best of 5, which I believe we can win.

Side note, ten years ago Marty scored a playoff goal against the Montreal Canadiens. Congratulations are surely in order for an amazing goaltender that will surely use his performance in the last two games to build a solid mental game for himself tonight. For the top 25 highlights from the Devils 25-year history, head over to www.newjerseydevils.com and check out the videos on their site. Good stuff.

As always, Go Devils!

Here we go again....

The Devils have made the playoffs for the 10th season in a row! They start their first round against the Tampa Bay Lightning, a prior Stanley Cup winner. Their first game is Thursday at 7:30. I will post scores and reactions throughout the playoffs.

Meanwhile, this weekend marks the beginning of my sophomore hockey season in BTSH. After tasting defeat in the semifinals last year, I'm anxious to strap on the pads and take it all the way this year. First game is this Sunday at 5:00 at Corlears. Rehabs v. Cobra Kai. We've got to get off to a good start. I'll post scores and details after the weekend. Go Habs!

Anna, Anna, Glamorous Anna!

With the announcement that Larry Birkhead is the father of Dannielynn Smith (Yay!), I thought I would take a second to post a picture of an Easter egg that I....I mean, my friend....decorated this past weekend to honor Anna Nicole as part of my....his....Easter egg theme. He hopes you enjoy. And at the risk of sounding like Bobby Trendy, please notice the luxurious gemstones and sumptuous red feather boa. All a fitting tribute for one classy broad.

Costume Update

As you all know, I've been working on makeup and costumes for my buddy Dominic's show "Myth Adventures". The show consists of the re-telling of 4 classic Greek myths. Dom is responsible for two scenes, while the other director will tackle the remaining two stories. Dom is directing "King Midas", the story of the greedy King upon whom the gift of a golden touch is bestowed, and "Orpheus", the story of the musician who must travel to the Underworld to rescue Euridice, the love of his life.

The Midas costumes were pretty simple to take care of, as were the Orpheus costumes. I wanted Euridice to be able to have a really fun costume. Euridice is the most beautiful girl in the land, and she is captured by Hades and taken to the Underworld, where she is a living prisoner until Orpheus tries to rescue her. Hades agrees to let Orpheus take her out of the Underworld, but under one condition. Euridice may follow Orpheus out of the Underworld, but she must not speak, and Orpheus cannot turn back to look at her until they have left the cave, lest Euridice be lost to Hades forever.

I wanted to design a costume that communicated the prison in which Euridice finds herself, a tomb where she cannot speak but can still be seen. Her beauty isn't lost completely, but just wrapped up in the darkness of the Underworld. She is alive, but trapped, and that confinement is never entirely shaken. Here is a picture of the costume I designed. I think it nails the idea that I was going for, but I'm looking for a little feedback. When Euridice is captured, she is wearing all white. When we enter the Underworld, she is still wearing her white costume, with this veil now surrounding and imprisoning her. I plan on getting some pictures of her in the costume on stage, but for now this one is all I have.

Philly Tourney

I'm finally posting about the tournament I played in over the weekend in Philadelphia. We lost our first game, won our second game, lost our final game. The middle game (our only victory) was a game that we won 2-0. That means a shutout! I can honestly say that it was the best game I've ever played in my life, and the picture attached here is a picture of the ball from that game. You may not know, but I save all of my shutout balls and keep them. It's a nice thing, though Brian says that the hockey ball drawer is filling up a little too fast. I think that's a compliment.

The final morning of the tournament, I was eating breakfast with a couple of my teammates in the hotel restaurant. There was an Asian family eating next to our table, and the cutest little boy who kept making silly faces at my teammate Mike. He was maybe three or four, if that old, and kept resting his arms on Mike and smiling up at him. His family knew that we all thought he was pretty cute, so they let him hang out at our table. I was happy that the camera phone picture I was able to take of him came out so well.

Liz!

I got to see my best friend Liz when she was in the city the other day, for a few hours at least. Loyal blog readers know how much I love her, so being able to see her again was really great. This is a picture of us in Cold Stone Creamery.

Devils Fire Head Coach

The current hot rumor is that Julien wanted to sit Marty in one of the next three games, but the only way that Marty gets a shot at beating Bernie Parent's record for a single-season amount of goalie wins is to give him a shot to win at least 2 of them. Marty said he wouldn't be sat for any of the rest of the season, Julien went to Lamoriello, Lamoriello sided with Marty, Julien was fired.

The other rumor is that it's a very similar situation to when Julien was fired from Montreal. His system didn't mesh well with the system that Canadiens had built their team on. However, Julien's Montreal firing happened after the season had ended, before the start of the next season. That's why I think it's not the same game here in Jersey.

We're all sort of left shaking our heads on this one in the Jers. 2nd place in the East, Atlantic Division leaders, a record-breaking year for Marty, the sort of stuff that you absolutely want a coach to bring you to. I was miffed at Julien earlier in the season when he didn't change the line-ups to give us better matchups offensively. The Devs have never been a hugely productive offensive team, any hockey fan will tell you that much. So for Julien to squander the chances we may have had by refusing to move a wing to center or vice versa has always rubbed other Devils fans the wrong way.

We're a serious playoff contender this year, and people would be fools not to realize it. Marty in the playoffs is a different Marty than in the regular season, where he is already seen by most of the NHL as the goaltender to beat. I'll keep you posted if I hear anything about the Julien situation, but it looks like we're either going to be finishing the season and opening the playoffs against the Rangers, Sens, or Canadiens.

I definitely think it's poor timing, and it's easy for an outsider looking in to criticize this move as "eccentric" or even "egotistical". Lamoriello is the man who dealt Jason Arnott away from New Jersey and broke up the "A Line" of Elias, Arnott, and Sykora (undoubtedly the most potent offensive line the Devils had ever seen) because he "didn't want one player to be the focus of the team", and felt that if one piece of that line was being unproductive, the entire line suffered, being unable to produce without the other two, and that Lou "didn't ever think you could ever have success like that". Breaking up the most productive line in Devils history, firing a coach with three games left in the season, etc. It's easy to criticize the man.

But when you've followed the organization for years, you come to trust Lou Lamoriello. The man that took over the team as Head Coach two years in a row has also publicly said "I have no plans to stay on as Head Coach, but only think it unfair to ask a new coach to come in under this kind of pressure." Lou isn't a coach, he's the General Manager, and when it comes to GM's, you'd be hard pressed to find me another team that doesn't view Lou as the best one out there. He's the longest-reigning GM in hockey, is largely responsible for hammering out a Collective Bargaining Agreement that was suitable for both the league and the NHLPA and got the league back running. He's the man that drafted Martin Brodeur, acquired Scott Stevens, gave Brendan Shanahan some of his best years. He's the GM that has put his hockey club in a position to make the playoffs for the last 10 consecutive years, with three Stanley Cups in 9 years. Lou puts the development of his hockey team at the forefront of his priorities. From the Lowell Devils all the way up to my Devils, his focus is on the team. I have never seen another man in sports command and earn as much respect as Lou Lamoriello does from the entire league.

The Devils are often criticized for a stagnant defense. A boring game. A stifling game. A boring arena. Bad fans. Low attendance. None of those things win a team the Stanley Cup. As great as it is for the Rangers or Canadiens or Islanders to have sell-out after sell-out, it hasn't brought them the Cup. You don't win awards for attendance. You win Cups from icing the best and most competitive team that you possibly can. And Lou Lamoriello has done that, for years now.

So when it comes to the firing of Claude Julien, as a Devils fan, you tend not to question it as much as everyone else. Because we believe in this team, and we believe in our management.

In Lou we trust.