A detailed review of all eleven New Jersey Devils shootout losses

The New Jersey Devils’ line in the NHL standings may be the saddest thing in the hockey world.

They sit at 34-29-16, good for 84 points in 79 games, which leaves them three points behind Columbus for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot. Despite a late surge, time is running out, and the Devils will almost certainly fall just short of the playoffs.

But that’s not the sad part. Keep scanning the row of numbers and you hit one that has literally never been seen before: 0-11. It shows up in the shootout column, and it represents 11 consecutive losses in the NHL’s tiebreaking sideshow. If the Devils end up going winless in shootouts this season, it will be the worst performance in league history. Only one other team, the 2006-07 Hurricanes, went an entire season without winning a shootout, and they only lost five.

In the nine seasons the NHL has featured shootouts, we’ve come to learn they’re basically all luck, in the sense that teams that are especially good or bad at them one year are no more likely to repeat the status than anyone else. There’s individual skill involved, sure, but at the team level, we’re essentially flipping coins. Do you know how hard it is to have a coin come up tails 11 times in a row? Go ahead and try it; I’ll wait here until you give up.

If the Devils had managed to just be bad in the shootout — let’s say four wins and seven losses — they’d be in great shape right now. But the Devils are 0-for-11, and they’re probably going to miss the playoffs because of it.

And, as broken down in detail here, they’re doing it despite a roster full of players who’ve historically had decent shootout success. Yet in a league in which shooters typically convert on about one-third of their shootout chances, the Devils have somehow managed to go just 3-for-39. Their team shooting percentage in the shootout is significantly worse than their shooting percentage during the actual games, which, when you really think about it, should probably be impossible.

And it’s not like they’re some expansion-level roster full of cast-offs — they have the league’s active leading scorer and all-time winningest goaltender. But none of it matters.

It almost defies belief. So just to make sure this hasn’t all been a bad dream, I went back and rewatched every shot of every Devils shootout from this season. And since I don’t like to suffer alone, now I’m going to make you relive it all with me.

October 4: Islanders 4, Devils 3

What Devils fans were thinking: Oh yay, a shootout, these are fun!

The goalie: Martin Brodeur

The shooters: Damien Brunner, Ryane Clowe, Patrik Elias, Travis Zajac, Michael Ryder, Jaromir Jagr

Did anyone score? No.

Highlights: The very first round gives you a hint as to how the rest of the year is going to go, as Brunner dekes past Evgeni Nabokov’s pokecheck attempt and then shoots it directly into his pad, followed by Brodeur stopping Frans Nielsen but appearing to hurt himself in the process. Clowe’s appearance briefly makes everyone wonder if they blacked out for 10 rounds. Pierre-Marc Bouchard tries Jason Allison’s patented “skate in slowly enough that the goalie might die of old age” move, but Brodeur stops him. Brodeur also stops John Tavares, then has to make a second save when the puck defies the laws of physics by trying to bounce directly into the net on the rebound because the hockey gods are sending a message.

New York’s Matt Moulson eventually wins it in Round 6, then vows to be traded at least twice before the Devils mange to win one of these.

How cruel was it in hindsight? Watching six guys fail to score couldn’t have been fun, though Brodeur looked sharp. Ah well. Get ’em next time, right?

October 7: Oilers 5, Devils 4

What Devils fans were thinking: Oh yay, a shootout, these are fun (except for that last one).

The goalie: Brodeur

The shooters: Brunner, Clowe

Did anyone score? No.

Highlights: Brunner tries the Forsberg move, but puts it wide. Jordan Eberle and David Perron both beat Brodeur with essentially the same move, and this one is done after just two rounds.

How cruel was it in hindsight? Pretty cruel, since the Devils had blown a 3-0 lead in regulation. And also, it was a loss to the Edmonton Oilers. Probably more that second part, actually.

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Weekend wrap: Gillis vs. Tortorella gets ugly. Sort of. Not really.

Each Monday, we’ll wrap up three of the biggest stories from the weekend and discuss how they’ll play into the coming week.

Tort Liability

Here’s a quick summary of the last 12 months in Vancouver: a first-round sweep at the hands of the Sharks; a coach firing; the trade of their star goaltender; a reasonably decent start to the regular season; a terrible second half; injuries aplenty; one ridiculous brawl; the trade of their other star goaltender; a trade request by one of their best players (which went unfulfilled); and, any day now, officially missing the playoffs for the first time in six years.

So, after all that, how do they close out the show’s final act? Well, could I interest you in a good old-fashioned passive-aggressive battle between the coach and GM? That’s what played out this week, as general manager Mike Gillis and coach John Tortorella took turns firing shots at each other. Sort of. Maybe. If they did, they were actually kind of polite about it. This is how turf wars play out in Canada, after all.

Gillis took the first swing Thursday, when he told a Vancouver radio station that he didn’t like the style the team played. That was widely interpreted as a dig at Tortorella’s defense-first approach, an impression that wasn’t helped when Gillis replied to a question about Tortorella’s job security by saying that “everyone’s open for evaluation.”

Tortorella got a chance to respond the next day, and for the most part he took the high road, telling reporters that he and Gillis had a “fantastic” relationship and were on the same page. But he also attributed some of the Canucks’ woes to a lack of depth in the lineup, which could be seen as a rebuke of Gillis’s work if you’re the sort who likes to assume the worst from people. (Which, for the purposes of stirring this controversy, we will assume you are.)

The whole thing may be overblown, but there’s little question that both Gillis and Tortorella are on shaky ground, and Canucks ownership will ultimately have to sort this all out once the season ends. It seems unlikely that both will keep their jobs, and if only one stays, then right now the odds are that it’s Gillis.

Oh, the Canucks did play a game last weekend, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. They hosted the Kings on Saturday night, and rode a pair of third-period goals to a 2-1 win. Eddie Lack outdueled Jonathan Quick to snap a personal three-game losing streak, and Brad Richardson scored the winner with under 90 seconds to go.

It wasn’t an especially meaningful game for either team — the Canucks aren’t making the playoffs, and the Kings are locked into third place in the Pacific and have essentially nothing left to play for during the regular season. But a comeback win over a legitimate contender could still provide some small measure of optimism for Vancouver’s brain trust going forward. Whoever that happens to be.

Grab bag: There's no such thing as "real fans"

In this week's grab bag: Introducing the Phoenix Coyote Bandana Guy; do "real fans" have to support bad teams?; Mean Gene's son played in the NHL; I hate YouTube's search engine; and a YouTube breakdown of one of the many times that Dominik Hasek went crazy.

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Ranking the ten most likely first round playoff matchups

With 10 days left in the season, the NHL’s playoff picture is coming into focus. Over the past few weeks, we’ve spent plenty of time looking at the various bubble teams that are scrambling to earn the final playoff spots. But today we’re going to shift focus slightly and concentrate on the teams that are already in. Specifically, we’ll look at the matchups those teams will have in the first round.

So here’s what we’re going to do: Let’s take the 10 most-likely first-round matchups as of Wednesday. (All odds are from Sports Club Stats projections, which are based on current standings as well as strength of schedule over the rest of the year.) And then, let’s rank each series based on how excited we’d be to see it.

Of course, by “we” I mean “me,” and this is all completely arbitrary. But that doesn’t mean I’m not right. Here we go.

10. St. Louis vs. Dallas (44.8 Percent Chance of Happening)

Claus Andersen/Getty Images

The Stars have won three straight and are starting to pull away from the Phoenix Coyotes in terms of odds, if not in the actual standings (the two teams are tied at 85 points), based largely on their two games in hand and their edge in the ROW tiebreaker.

And that’s not exactly a bad thing, because Dallas seems like it could be a fun team to watch in the playoffs. It has young stars Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin up front, Kari Lehtonen in net (plus the possibility of a Tim Thomas sighting), and a fun cast of “Oh yeah, I forgot he was even still in the league” veterans like Ray Whitney and Sergei Gonchar. After seeing them paste the Capitals 5-0 on Tuesday, you could get behind the idea of watching these guys for a round. Unfortunately, a round is all they’d get if they end up drawing the Blues, who would beat them in five games.

Sorry, Dallas fans. That paragraph kind of took a turn on you at the end. I probably should have eased into that more.

Random old YouTube clip to get you fired up: Here’s former Blues star Brett Hull scoring his first postseason goal as a Dallas Star against his old team during their second-round matchup in the 1999 playoffs. It’s one of three times the two teams have met in the playoffs, and the only time the series didn’t end in a sweep. (The Stars won in six, on their way to winning the franchise’s only Stanley Cup.)

9. Anaheim vs. Minnesota (52.7 Percent)

Derek Leung/Getty Images

These odds may seem high, given that the Ducks are still dueling the Sharks for first place in the Pacific, but Sports Club Stats thinks they’re pretty much a lock so who am I to argue. But for our sake we’ll hope they ended up being wrong, because there’s not much to get excited about in this matchup.

These two teams have met twice in the playoffs, once in the first round in 2007 and once in the conference final in 2003. If you have no recollection of that latter meeting, it may be because the Wild set an NHL record by only scoring one goal in the entire series.

This series might not be much better, but at least it would have more Teemu Selanne in it.

Random old YouTube clip to get you fired up: This is the first YouTube result that came up when I searched for “wild + ducks.” I’m not completely sure it’s any less entertaining than this series would be.

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A look ahead at the rest of the NHL schedule

Today is April 1, which means two things: Any minute now, the Toronto Maple Leafs will shout “April Fools’!” and we’ll all have a good laugh about the series of increasingly dumb things they’ve spent the year saying and doing; and the NHL regular season is heading down the homestretch.

That last part is probably more important to the rest of you, so let’s focus on that. We’ve got less than two weeks of action left before the season concludes on April 13. With all four wild-card spots up for grabs and every team other than the Bruins and Penguins still fighting for playoff seeding, there are plenty of important nights left on the NHL regular-season calendar.

Of course, they can’t all be winners. So to help you plan your next few weeks of viewing, here’s a day-by-day breakdown of the April schedule.

Tuesday, April 1: 11 games

The can’t-miss matchup: Dallas at Washington — An interconference battle between two teams that are just on the outside of the playoff picture and desperate for points. (Why, yes, this will end up being a three-point game, why do you ask?)

Other good options: Montreal at Tampa Bay is a first-round playoff preview that will help decide who gets home ice. Rangers at Canucks gives Alain Vigneault a chance to all but bury the playoff hopes of the team that fired him. The Flames visit Toronto in Brian Burke’s first trip back to Toronto since he was fired last January, and if he doesn’t spend the whole game pelting Dave Nonis with waffles then I’ll never forgive him.

No thanks: There’s really no reason to watch Panthers at Islanders, unless you’re a top-five prospect in this year’s draft. By the way, the Islanders are going to show up a few times in this section. Sorry about that, Islander fans.

Entertainment quotient: 8/10 — This is shaping up as a fun start to the month.

Wednesday, April 2: Four games

The can’t-miss matchup: Boston at Detroit — These two Original Six teams haven’t met in the playoffs since 1957, but could be headed for a first-round matchup this year.

Other good options: The Coyotes can solidify their playoff spot with an upset win in Los Angeles. Oilers at Ducks is a Viktor Fasth homecoming, which isn’t really interesting, but there are only four games tonight so I’m reaching.

No thanks: The Senators and Islanders are a completely forgettable pairing.

Entertainment quotient: 2/10 — Pass.

Thursday, April 3: Nine games

The can’t-miss matchup: Los Angeles at San Jose — The Sharks need to keep winning to have any shot at the division title. If they don’t, then this is a preview of what’s likely to be the first round’s most brutal matchup.

Other good options: The Sabres visit the Blues for the first time since the Ryan Miller trade. Both the Wild at Blackhawks and Jackets at Flyers should will be key games for the wild-card races. Rangers at Avs features two good teams. Boston at Toronto is just a jerk move by the schedule maker at this point.

No thanks: I guess it’s Flames at Lightning by default.

Entertainment quotient: 7/10 — There’s something for everyone.

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