It’s not often that editing presents itself to me as a real terror. This far into the season, I have enough of a rhythm in writing these profiles that I know roughly how much information I need to gather, and I can plan accordingly. The New Jersey Devils, however, present a unique opportunity. They’re one of only two teams I’ll be able to write about from a game in which they played the Blues, and that game was a mere six days ago. As such, my cup runneth over.
In fact, in transcribing my interviews from New Jersey, I generated 1,076 words of content. The quotes themselves, then, are longer than the space I have to write about the Devils, so up front, allow me to shut up and show you what the Blues themselves think about tonight’s opponent.
Ryan Reaves: “I think the biggest thing is we just played a full team game for the whole 60 minutes. I think we’ve been getting away from that. We’ve been having a good period, a good half period there and then we start slipping and the game kind of slips away and teams pull away from us. I think we played the full 60. We didn’t let up when we got the lead, and that’s just how you gotta play every team. It’s not really just New jersey.”
Kyle Brodziak: “They’re not an easy team to play against. I think we saw it a few times; when we make a mistake in the neutral zone, they [have] a ton of speed. They come at you hard, and when they get the puck in our zone they swarm it well, and they’re strong on the puck down there. It’s not easy to play against, so we gotta make sure we’re playing a smart game against them; respecting the things that they do well and trying not to feed into their game.”
Robby Fabbri: “We don’t see a lot of these teams in the east too much. When you play teams like that, you just gotta worry about your game, mostly, and stick to what you guys have been doing.”
Ken Hitchcock: “I think they use their speed now to check. And I think when you use speed to check, [...] it puts a lot of pressure and forces mistakes. I think that’s the big difference. The players here put a lot of pressure on you to make decisions quicker than you want. At times they make you panic, and they include their defensemen in their forecheck a lot, so you’re under constant heat. You gotta be able to perform in that, because they’re willing to work to create chances. They turned the game around here. They’ve always had quick players, but they got quick, tenacious plyers now. It’s not just [Taylor] Hall. [Devante] Smith-Pelly has added a lot to them. They’ve got some quickness but they use it as a checking mechanism too.”
Hitch, in person, is particularly loquacious. It’s likely that his reputation for such precedes him, as I was also a witness to the following exchange between two significant Devils alums who shall remain nameless: “Yeah, they had to listen to Hitch this morning.” “Oh god. Fuuuuuck.”
The Devils and the Blues certainly have a great deal of history. Judge Edward Houston’s name still rings loudly in the ears of Blues fans after his decision to award Scott Stevens to the Devils in 1991 as free agent compensation for the signing of Brendan Shanahan, especially after the Blues had surrendered five first round picks to sign Stevens the previous summer. It also appears that Blues assistant general manager Martin Brodeur has some loose connection to New Jersey, though it may just be because the huge statue of a goalie out front looks a lot like him.
The Blues, as the visitor, had the unusual advantage of having easier travel for this game than the home team. While St. Louis played an easy bus ride away in Brooklyn the night before, the Devils had a midnight flight home from Montreal after a bruising game. As the game wore on, the difference became obvious, and the Blues were able to use it to their advantage.
“I think it starts with our positional play,” said Brodziak. “We know that they’re gonna be trying to push up the ice and make a little bit of a charge at us, and I felt we did a really good job positionally not giving them anything, and it allowed us to counter at them a few times.”
The discrepancy in the typical between Eastern and Western Conference teams was a topic I was eager to ask about. In talking to David Backes for my pending profile of the Boston Bruins, he indicated that there was a lot to get used to in moving from one conference to the other. Ken Hitchcock seemed to echo those sentiments.
“In the east it feels like you’re in the playoffs,” he said, “because in the west you’re either playing a lot or practicing a lot so you get blocks. We call them blocks. Out here there’s no blocks. You’re playing almost a schedule where you’re playing three and a half games a week[...] It feels like you’re always in this playoff mode, whereas in the west you play three in four nights, take three days off, play three in four nights. Here it’s every second night, so it’s a little bit different. I think that does take some getting used to.”
The Devils enter tonight’s game incredibly well rested, having not played since a 5-0 loss to the New York Rangers on Sunday. They’ll be the beneficiaries of one of the rest blocks that Hitchcock described, whereas the Blues will be playing their sixth game in 10 nights, coming off a disappointing 1-3 road trip. Whether the Devils will be able to make the necessary adjustments may determine the start this game gets off to, and the Blues will need a solid start to erase the recent demons.