Sunday, March 6, 2011

Devilish Sunday @ the Barn

I cannot be upset with this game. Okay, it was a little on the boring side, but hey... that's Devils' hockey at it's finest.

There were a lot of red jerseys in the over 15,000 patrons that showed up this afternoon, but there were also a few Gillies 14 shirts along with this sign on the wall.

The Devils out shot the Islanders 29 - 22. Obviously a very low shot percentage game. There were large stretches of time where no shots were recorded (see opening statement).

Brian Rolston finally put the Devils on the board four minutes into the 2nd on a power play goal It took until almost the end of the second for Josh Bailey to tie it up at one.

Less than 3 minutes into the third, Ilya Kovalchuk (of course) put the Devils up by one and then it became a game of trying to not get even further behind. Blake Comeau tied the game at 2 at 16:18, much to Marty Brodeur's dismay.


Frans Nielsen scored on Marty Brodeur in the shoot-out with his patented "gimmick" as Howie liked to call it. Kovalchuk scored on Montoya. It wasn't until Brian Rolson had waited for seven shooters to fail before beating Al Montoya to give the Devils their two points.

While it was a hard fought game with Comeau and Okopso throwing some big hits along with Jack Hillen taking another chance on offering up a hip-check (and getting away with it this time! Nice!), there were no fighing penalties. Although I'm pretty sure if Michael Haley had his way, there would have been. John Tavares was knocked down more times than he'd like to think about and Matt Moulson was roughed up around Marty's net. He didn't seem to be very happy about it.

Al Montoya did an amazing job keeping the Isles in the game though out. Even if the shot total was low, the shots the Devils take are quality. To a man, everyone speaks highly of Al Montoya.

"We're a young group of guys and we showed a lot of patience tonight." PA Parenteau told Stan Fishler. He called Montoya "Monty" twice and was happy with his first shoot out performance in net.

"This is the direction we're going and we want to keep going this way. It's about leaving our best effort on the ice." Montoya told the media. He also told them he wasn't nervous for is first shoot out. This guy is cool, like the flip side of a pillow.

It would have been nice to get him the two points. It will also be nice to get him a contract for next season. Um, yeah.


Thanks to Nick6489, whom I had the pleasure of meeting tonight at the pre-game meetup. He was with Bob, whose cowbell you hear during almost every home game. I had no idea they have their own radio show, but they do. So here is my impromptu interview with Nick & Bob for HKCRadio.com.

2 comments:

neilmairs said...

Amazing Dee - 1st time I've heard your voice after reading your work for many months now. You sound EXACTLY like I would have imagined, and your love of what you do and sense of humor come across the same both written and verbal. Keep up the great work - very entertaining.

~me said...

Love the title!!!
you scorpio you~

xoxo

come to Pittsburgh in two weeks and see me- the kids and the grandbabies!!!
gonna be a great line-up!