Devils defenseman Colin White will return to the lineup Thursday night against Atlanta after missing the last five games with an undisclosed upper body injury.
Devils coach Brent Sutter said after today's practice that he would make his decision on which defenseman will come out of the lineup Thursday morning. The signs during practice today pointed to Jay Leach being the odd man out.
Sutter admitted it's not an easy decision.
"Sure it's difficult, but you've got to make decisions and Whitey's going to go back in the lineup and someone's going to come out," he said
White still wouldn't reveal the exact nature of his injury, but said he is 100 percent now. Asked if it took longer to heal than he expected, he said, "They always talk longer than you want."
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Center Dainius Zubrus skipped practice again today for "maintenance", but said he will play again Thursday.
Could this be a nagging thing that will stick with Zubrus for a while?
"It's a maintenance thing and he's going to be fine," Sutter said. "We're trying to be smart so he's allowed to be able to play in games."
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The Devils did a lot of fine tuning during today's practice after not being sharp again in Tuesday's 3-2 loss in Carolina. That's four of the last five games in which the Devils have not played particularly well, but they've managed to find a way to win three of those games.
"There's no need to shake anything up," Sutter said. "It's just little things since the Ranger game (a 4-2 win on Dec. 27) that we've allowed to get away from our game. There's just things we have to get better at doing again that have allowed us to be good offensively and allowed us to score goals and allowed us to do certain things. The reason we've been abele to do that (score goals) is we've been good in other areas and we've gotten away from those certain other areas. Just little things.Things that up. Little things in our game that's taken away from our puck possession time because we're not doing the smart things right now on a consistent basis.
"It's a long year and you know you're going to go through ups and downs, but what we're trying to do is just making sure everyone recognizes it and making sure they're aware of it so we can correct the issue."
What are these little things?
"You get tired from playing so many game, so you have to play a little bit smarter," left wing Patrik Elias said. "One of the big things is we're getting rid of the puck and not putting it in places that we can get it back. We're not making the good sharp passes, short passes. We're not making those. We just keep throwing it at each other. What happens from there is a lot of the times we're just standing still and it's because we're not supporting each other well enough and we're not coming as a five-man unit."
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The Devils have won their last 16 games in which they have score at least three goals. They are 19-1-1 for the season when scoring at least three.
They are only 4-12-2, however, when scoring two or fewer.
"It's a real hard league to win in 1-0 now," Sutter said. "You hope to keep your goals against down, but when you look around the league -- I've heard other coaches talk about it -- it seems like the magic number is three (goals) now. And it's probably true. You're going to win the odd game 1-0 and 2-1. Last year, we felt we had to win every game that way because we weren't scoring. Our offensive guys and other guys have chipped in and that's allowed us to score.
"That's why we were working on things again today. Our goal production has dropped off here a little bit because we've gotten away from some things we were doing well out."
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Sutter said that while coaching in Red Deer he pulled the goaltender with 12 minutes remaining in a game in which the Rebels trailed 3-0.
"We were down 3-0 and we ended up winning in overtime, 4-3," he said.
On Tuesday, Sutter pulled Scott Clemmensen with 8:03 left and the Devils trailing 3-0 while on the power play. They scored a goal with the 6-on-4 advantage to cut it to 3-1 and cut it to 3-2 with 21.5 seconds left, but didn't have enough time after that to complete the comeback.
Sutter pulled Clemmensen on the fly after the Devils'' power play had begun to try to surprise the Hurricanes with the sixth attacker. Carolina coach Paul Maurice joked after the game that Sutter should not have done that with his son, Brandon, on the ice as a penalty killer.
"Can you believe he did that while his kid was on the ice?" Maurice asked.
"People don't recognize how many guys are out there," Brent Sutter said. "Everyone is looking down at that end. They don't even see him coming."
TG,
did you feel as nervous as you looked last night?
haha!
lunchbox
Posted by: mike | January 07, 2009 at 02:15 PM
Great stuff as usual TG.
By the way, are there any plans to have you as an intermission guest again in the future? It'd be cool if you got a little spot every few games or so. Either way, it's great that you were able to get some more publicity for the blog, although they should have showed the address on the screen so that people could actually find it.
Posted by: Josh | January 07, 2009 at 02:40 PM
TG, good job yesterday ^^ as nervousness goes, you reminded me a lot of Dan-o's first few ventures onto the screen but hey, that's to be expected! One thing I wanted to ask though - can you guys tell where the camera center is? I noticed both with you last night and others who aren't usually on tv that you look way over the camera, almost like you're looking at the wall behind us (the viewers at home).
Anyway thank you for bringing some solid, non-speculative insight to the broadcast and for brightening an otherwise crappy night for the fans (minus, of course, the 8 minutes of excitement)! Hope to see you on there more often.
Posted by: Cory | January 07, 2009 at 02:45 PM
Leach deserves to stay in the lineup. He is better then White, Mottau and Greene.
Posted by: Mike | January 07, 2009 at 03:17 PM
@Mike,
I disagree with your analysis.
Leach is a decent 6-7 defenseman but not a good puck handling defenseman. He's adequate at best(this is not to trash him at all (I like him)but there is a reason he has been a career minor leaguer.
I hope that all those years in the minors continues to allow him to play at the level he has been playing at the past 10 games.
Posted by: Prokat | January 07, 2009 at 04:47 PM
Taking Leach out is a mistake. Mottau and Greene, more often than not, are liabilities in there own zone. Leach gives Devs D what they need most. Size and Strength.
Posted by: JRCACTS412 | January 07, 2009 at 05:32 PM
Andy Greene is not a liability and if anyone should sit, it's Mie Mottau.
Posted by: Philly Devil | January 07, 2009 at 10:03 PM