[Gambatese] New Jersey Devils Who Impressed and Disappointed in the First Round
April 30, 2025
[Gambatese] New Jersey Devils Who Impressed and Disappointed in the First Round
7 comments
Markey deserves more praise. The whole team shit the bed in G1P1 and G5P2. He’s the only reason 3 and 5 made went so long.
The only somewhat surprising thing to me in this write up is Haula. I didn’t think he had a particularly good series, but if the numbers say otherwise I guess he did.
I’m glad they brought up Cotter hanging on to the puck way too much because so many times throughout the series you’d see cotter circle the entire offensive zone looking for some magic perfect play and instead of any sort of scoring chance the puck would be knocked off his stick and going the other way for his line to spend the next 30 seconds pinned in their own zone. Every time I saw it each game it drove me nuts lol.
Really thought we’d see a better showing from him but maybe his first proper playoff outing being in the lineup each night made him overthink things and get away from his game. Would love to see his next playoffs make that jump like we saw with Bratt, who looked much better suited for playoff style hockey this year.
Disagree on Haula, he was trash in game 5. Our faceoffs sucked and obviously special teams too. That is what sunk us. At least special teams could be fixed with a full roster. Markstrom sunk us on game four and helped contribute to the game 5 collapse before going lights out, but too late.
Haula played very well this series and I’m glad this guy mentioned it.
7 comments
Markey deserves more praise. The whole team shit the bed in G1P1 and G5P2. He’s the only reason 3 and 5 made went so long.
The only somewhat surprising thing to me in this write up is Haula. I didn’t think he had a particularly good series, but if the numbers say otherwise I guess he did.
I’m glad they brought up Cotter hanging on to the puck way too much because so many times throughout the series you’d see cotter circle the entire offensive zone looking for some magic perfect play and instead of any sort of scoring chance the puck would be knocked off his stick and going the other way for his line to spend the next 30 seconds pinned in their own zone. Every time I saw it each game it drove me nuts lol.
Really thought we’d see a better showing from him but maybe his first proper playoff outing being in the lineup each night made him overthink things and get away from his game. Would love to see his next playoffs make that jump like we saw with Bratt, who looked much better suited for playoff style hockey this year.
Disagree on Haula, he was trash in game 5. Our faceoffs sucked and obviously special teams too. That is what sunk us. At least special teams could be fixed with a full roster. Markstrom sunk us on game four and helped contribute to the game 5 collapse before going lights out, but too late.
Haula played very well this series and I’m glad this guy mentioned it.
> Impressed: Erik Haula
lost all credibility with this one
Eye test:
Great: Nemec, Dumoulin
Very good: Hischier, Meier, Siegenthaler, Pesce
Ok: Palat, Mercer
Up and down: Bratt, Markstrom
Actively terrible: Dougie, Haula
Invisible: Noesen, Cotter, Tatar, Bastian, Dowling, Glass, Cholowski, Casey
Dead: Jack, Luke, Dillon, Kovacevic