Brodeur leads Devils past Rangers 4-2

For the first few games you saw signs that for once in a while there was a Ranger team willing to play 60 minutes.

Tonight just looked lazy to me…and that’s sad. Hopefully Tortorella doesn’t let that become a theme again.

This is really starting to look a lot like last season.

The defense has really struggled with this new system lately. Last night Staal and Girardi looked horrendous, as did Rosival.

Jim, I’m not sure if by “them” you meant the team or the 3 defensemen, but I felt as a team the first period was bad. As a team, the 2nd and 3rd periods were not bad and if not for a bad bounce things could be a lot different. As individuals, I thought Rosy, Staal and Girardi were terrible. Defensive zone turnovers were a problem, losing position on the opposing forwards was a problem, getting beat to the puck was a problem, etc. They just seemed to get beat all night long. The 3 improved as the game went along, but I don’t think it was a good effort at all.

On the flip side, I thought Gilroy, MDZ and even Redden were solid. I didn’t find myself screaming vulgarity followed by Redden’s name at all this game. Gilroy had to be bailed out on 1 occasion that I recall and MDZ got beat at the offensive blueline more than once, but I thought they played well overall.

I’ll continue to hope this team is battling the flu bug and not having a repeat of last year.

if girardi and staal dont make those uncharacteristic breakdowns in the first the game would have gone much differently, if u ask me the devils kind of looked like us last yr. finding a way to win with no real scorers besides parise.