You digress… and totally misrepresent it.

As a Devils fan, I’ve had to listen to a lot of crap about the team I love by hockey fans who know little to nothing about hockey and even less about the Devils themselves (note that I am not counting you among this number), so I’ve made a point of educating myself on both subjects. So without further ado,

A) The only high scoring Devils team that ever won a championship was the team that won the Cup in 2000. That year the Devils offense was powered by what was the best top line in franchise history until Langenbrunner-Zajac-Parise established itself last season, which consisted of Czech wingers Patrik Elias and Petr Sykora centered by Jason Arnott. The ‘A-Line’ was backed up on offense by nineteen-year-old rookie forward Scott Gomez, a rarity on the veteran-laden Devils, who won the Calder Trophy centering Alexander Mogilny, and on the defense by vaunted two-way defensemen Scott Niedermayer and Brian Rifalski. The Devils were able to duplicate the same offensive success to following season, coming within a victory of repeating as Stanley Cup champions, but the loss in Game 7 of the Cup Final to Colorado in ’01, coupled by an first-round exit in ’02 prompted Lou Lamoriello to retool the team. Deciding o revert back to the Devils stricter defensive system of yesteryear, Lou broke up the A-Line, keeping only Elias and trading Sykora and Arnott away for players that would play an instrumental role in the Devils ’03 championship.

B) I disagree. In my opinion, Martin Brodeur is the greatest goaltender ever to play the game, but he would be the first person to say that one great player cannot win a championship. If it did that second Stanley Cup banner hanging in Colorado would be hanging from the rafters of the Rock and the Devils would have won the Stanley Cup every year since Brodeur broke into the league. No. Individual players do not win Stanley Cups. Teams do.

C)The Capitals have skill. The only problem with their skill is that it only really exists in one area, offense. As exciting as offense is to watch, however, it does not win championships. Defense does. And from what I have seen of the Capitals defense, it is, to put it kindly for a team that claims to have Stanley Cup aspirations, very poor. When I was watching the Devils play the Capitals last week, the objective side of me was nothing short of horrified by how sloppily the Capitals played while protecting a one goal lead in the third period with less than ten minutes left to play. The Capitals defenders essentially chased the Devils around in their own end for about two minutes while the Devils banged away at Jose Theodore (who I actually felt bad for) until David Clarkson finally scored the even-up goal. Allow me to quantify this, if you will: the Capitals basically allowed David Clarkson, much-maligned around the league as nothing better than a pest, Dainius Zubrus, who, honestly, is a complete and total bust, Mike Mottau, who was considered a career AHL defenseman until Lou Lamoriello snagged him from the rubbish heap and put him in the Devils system, and Niklas Bergfors, a Swedish rookie, free reign to do whatever they wanted in the Capitals zone. And they did. I’m pretty sure not even Calder Cup-winning Hershey Bears defense plays so poorly.

In my personal opinion, the potential success of a team like the Washington Capitals will never be met unless their coach takes some of his players’ focus away from offense and forces them to incorporate the basic fundamentals of good defense into their game, regardless of what position they play. Semin is often singled out by his coach, the press and Capitals fans as being extremely offensively talented but defensively irresponsible, and has often been bumped down a line or two as ‘punishment’ if Bruce Boudreau is upset with him for taking too many undisciplined penalties, but Alexander Ovechkin is really not much better in that respect than Semin. He takes far too many penalties, his ‘physical play’ often walks a fine line between borderline illegal to stupid and dangerous (the slew foot, the knee-on-knee hit on Sergei Gonchar, that Tampa Bay defenseman he hospitalized on a hit from behind last season, leaving his feet on practically every hit, his inability to keep his elbow tucked down and into his side, etc.), and expresses little to no interest in play away from the puck (i.e. backchecking). There’s a pretty appalling (at least, in my opinion) photograph of Ovechkin dawdling along the Penguins blueline, watching as Sidney Crosby skates in on Jose Theodore at the other end and scores a goal during a regular season game last year. I don’t understand why a player with Ovechkin’s speed didn’t take off after Crosby in an attempt to backcheck or knock the puck away from him, but there is no excuse, short of injury, for just standing there and watching an opposing player skate up the ice and score on your goaltender.

I don’t know what the deal is with Ovechkin, whether or not he thinks play away from the puck is beneath someone of his talent level or what, but if he wants to win the Stanley Cup as badly as he says he does than he better get over it. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are players who are just as good, if not better, than Ovechkin, and both of them backcheck and play a sound two-way game. They both also have Stanley Cup rings. Could the two perhaps be related?

D) The point I was attempting to illustrate is that the West, as a whole tends to be much more wide open offensively than the East, and it isn’t completely strange to see teams like the Calgary Flames, especially when they play teams like Vancouver or Edmonton, get into one of those games where it’s essentially a shooting gallery. Again, that style of hockey may be exciting, but it isn’t going to win you many games in June.

As for the Devils style of hockey taking more discipline than skill, I’m not quite sure I agree with you there. It’s so much more subtle, so much more nuanced than that. For example, Scott Stevens was a brilliant defenseman when the Devils acquired him in ‘91 and was well known around the league for both his physical play and his offensive upside. It was Jacques Lemaire who turned him into the stalwart defensive defenseman he is best remembered as today. How did he do it? He told him to focus less on putting points on the board and more on keeping them off. He taught Stevens how to play so that his stick was always on the ice in a position to deflect shots on goal from opposing forwards away from the net. In hockey, you’ll often find that it’s the little things, rather than the flashy goals or the big hits, that spell the difference between victory and defeat.