Sutter calls out Zajac line

To Devils coach Brent Sutter, his teams’ recent struggles boil down to inconsistent play from his team’s top players.

“Your best players need to be your best players,” he said after the Devils wasted leads of 1-0 and 2-1 slip away in tonight’s 4-2 loss to the Penguins. “That’s what this month has come down to. We’ve had too much inconsistency. Other teams’ top players have outplayed ours.”

This was a common theme for Sutter when the Devils’ struggled early in this season. His target tonight different, though.

Sutter praised Mike Rupp, who scored his first two goals of the season, and also complimented Martin Brodeur’ goaltending and Patrik Elias and John Madden’s effort on the checking line, specifically because Elias was playing in an unfamiliar defensive role.

But, he made it clear he was unhappy with the play of the line of Zach Parise, Travis Zajac and Brian Gionta.

“Travis’ line, they’re considered top players and they have to be better,” Sutter said. “They have to handle that kind of stuff, right? They’re being asked to step up and they’ve got to deal with it the right way and look at it as a challenge to make themselves better so our team can get better.”

Sutter made it clear that it wasn’t about offense. He certainly noticed that line was on the ice for the Penguins’ first two goals tonight.

“This has nothing to do with scoring goals,” he said. “It has to do with the detail of the game, the little things, turnovers. I think that’s their problem right now. They’re worrying too much about scoring goals and there’s other areas that you have to be good at.”

Parise didn’t completely agree with his coach. “Tonight was bad, but I think we’ve been playing pretty well lately,” Parise said. “Yeah, we had a bad game tonight.”

Gionta filled in on the line in Jamie Langenbrunner’s usual spot at right wing. Langenbrunner was out with the flu.  Gionta appeared to injured his left knee or ankle on a second period hit on Pittsburgh Jeff Taffe – he received a questionable boarding penalty on it. Gionta would only say he “tweaked something.”

He missed the first three minutes of the third period while receiving treatment.

“It was a little sore, but it’s just like anything, when you catch something the wrong way it’s going to be a little sore,” he said.

Comments

[Jeremy Kenter]

TG, nice reporting as always. Many fans have told me that DVR has shown replays of Elias' first period dinger off the pipe as a goal which bounced out of the net. Were you able to see a replay or have a better view than mine at home?

Thanks, Jeremy

[TG]

I did not see any replay that showed it as a goal. It looked like it hit the pipe to me. I only saw the replay once, though.

And we're way up high, so my look at it live wasn't the best.

[TG]

Also, the NHL had the entire first intermission to look at that one because it came with only three seconds left in the period. So, it wasn't like they were rushed to call it a no goal.

The Devils could have even inquired with the league to look at it if their video people saw it as a goal. There was plenty of time to do so.

[jules]

Couldn't agree less with Parise. Love the guy, but aside from the Philly game he's been awfully cold recently.

[brian]

from my seat at tonight's game my review would be, in one simple word, FLAT! brodeur played great! you can only keep so much out when your defense is allowing the other team free reign in front of your net. poor oduya, not a great game. if most of the people sitting near me were gms than he would have been traded after the game. i think the devils had 5 hits all night. they were good ones, but they did not stop the pens from running all over them. i was so excited after that first powerplay. it was beautiful, but also there only ray of offense all night. i was wondering if sutter abandoned the bikes after the game for stair running instead?

[aarrghhh]

Why is Sutter calling out them for those two goals?

I mean, when Oduya goes off, he goes off, and he went off. He could be playing with Greztky/Lemieux/Bobby Hull and Orr.... and those pucks are still going in the net.

Stuff like this isn't good. I'm not saying the line had a good game, they didn't... but no line did alot offensively. He could have gotten them jumpstarted and Patty did play almost 24 minutes, I'm sure he could have gotten a shift or two with Parise/Gionta/both instead of pointlessly chasing around Malkin's line.

Sutter's forgotten "his" game that he brought to NJ, apparently, his last two games have been awful, the first one got masked by the god-awful game they played against the Habs, and this one I guess gets masked up too a little bit, but he did *nothing* in either game to stem the tide. If he's just going to stand there and yell at people and tell them to ride bikes, you know what, discipline and responsibilty are great, but *I* can stand there and yell at people and tell them to ride bikes.

Better get back to the drawing board and think his way out of this.

[Steve f]

I've never posted here before, but just a thank you to Tom Gulitti for this blog. It is THE best source for Devils news on the net. Thanks for all the hard work !!

As for the game, Parise's comments were way off. I wonder if he thinks the team played well versus Montreal ??

[Devilswede]

I watched the Pittsburgh feed, which showed a great replay of Elias' shot. It clearly hit the far post and bounced back out.

[Mike]

when is Sutter going to stop being stubborn, and reunite Parise Elias and Gionta ? When they were together for a couple of games earlier this year they were tearing it up ?

[Mike]

when is Sutter going to stop being stubborn, and reunite Parise Elias and Gionta ? When they were together for a couple of games earlier this year they were tearing it up ?

[MoonDragn]

I too think we need to reunite Parise, Elias and Gionta. They don't work quite as well in the other combinations. Madden does fine no matter who he pairs with and Zubrus plays well with Zajac.

Lines like :

Parise - Elias - Gionta
Zubrus - Zajac - Langenbrunner
Brylin - Madden - Pelley
Asham - Rupp - Clarkson

Is going to work much better than what Sutter has used in the last two games.

[Mike]

I think Zubrus ultimately needs to wind up on the 3rd line with Madden & Pandolfo. We need to acquire a playmaking LW to play either with Elias/Gionta or Zajac/Langenbrunner. If we need to deal Clarkson, Bergfors, Greene, etc so be it. None of those 3 will be stars in this league

Asham and Rachunek need to be traded for low draft picks.

[Mike]

I think Zubrus ultimately needs to wind up on the 3rd line with Madden & Pandolfo. We need to acquire a playmaking LW to play either with Elias/Gionta or Zajac/Langenbrunner. If we need to deal Clarkson, Bergfors, Greene, etc so be it. None of those 3 will be stars in this league

Asham and Rachunek need to be traded for low draft picks.

[JJ]

Coach is right, the best players have to be better at both ends of the ice and trading a bundle of the "blue collar" guys for one star will not make this team better either. Elias has been better lately but how come nobody criticizes him for basically being a pedestrian this year? I'm tired of hearing he's a slow starter, the guy's the highest paid player on the team and he's pretty average if you ask me.

[pk]

I think Elias has played well over the past 10 games. He heated up when he was put at center, cooled for a few games, and since then has been playing well. Gionta has been a no-show all season which is incredibly disappointing. Parise started out very well, but just has not been creating the same buzz around the puck in the past couple of weeks that he had been doing consistently up through the new year. I guess guys just get hot and cold on their own, but when a really strong energy guy like Langenbrunner is out, and Pandolfo is out, a Parise at 50% and a Gionta at 30% cost the team dearly.

I think Oduya should be trade bait, but last night hurt our ability to trade him. Dump Oduya and Tallackson (and/or Noah Clarke) and bring a top 4 defender and a proven scorer and we are good to go.

I think the real problem is identifying some rent-a-player that we can re-sign for a longer term deal. Maybe doing away with Asham would free up some cap space to make that happen. After all, he hasn't really brought anything (not that Zubrus has, but Zubrus seems at least to be improving) to the club.

[Chris]

I don't know what games everyone here has been watching, but I agree 100% with what Sutter said Zajaac aside everyone on his line has been getting worse instead of better and the opposite can be said of Elias' line. Elias has been an abolute joy to watch since the Western Canada trip we had (Calgary game with the overtime game winner to be specific) and Zubrus has been super-humanly strong on the puck all year, but lately he has taken it a step further and is creating chances with it and buying time for teammates. This is my assesment of how the players have been recently.

Impressive: Elias, Zubrus, Madden, Martin, Mattau
Improving: Zajaac, Greene, Rupp, Oduya
On Target: Brylin, Clarkson, White
Getting Worse: Parise, Langenbrunner, Rachunek
Disapointing: Gionta, Vishnevski, Asham, Pelly

[Jac]

Parise couldn't be more wrong, I think he's a great player going through an extremley long slump but maybe that comment proves what is wrong with the team: they think they're playing half-way decent. When in reality, they aren't playing nearly as good as they can. I've also noticed that Parise hasn't really been around the net as much as he used to. Instead of being in there hungry to score goals, I tend to see him a lot on the outside.