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Lou is losing, too.
The Devils’ longest losing streak in nearly 10 years means it’s time for Lou Lamoriello to prove he isn’t guilty of a foolish consistency, the proverbial hobgoblin of a small mind. It’s time for the Devil GM to salvage his team before it follows its second
Stanley Cup with a second embarrassment.
It’s time for the GM to give a little and bring Jason Arnott and Scott Niedermayer back to the Devils. It can’t happen too soon, since the Devils are nosediving towards disaster, and it will take time before Arnott and Niedermayer would be enough help, even if they signed today.
It’s time. The two are believed to have been in Toronto this weekend, deciding where to go from here, ready to return and ready to bend to break the stalemates with a little giving from GM. The longer Lamoriello waits, the more stubbornly wrong he’ll look, and more importantly, the worse this could get. “Team first” is Lamoriello’s credo, and right now, he’d better apply it against his tough guy reputation.
The fans who were left at the Meadowlands last night knew it, too, chanting “We want Arnott,” in the third period of the Devils’ 4-0 loss to the Sabres. The remnants of the Stanley Cup champions fell to their fifth straight loss and a share of the Atlantic Division cellar, falling below .500 this late for the first time since 1995-96.
The Devils are losing, and that’s why Lamoriello is also losing in this situation, where only Arnott and Niedermayer were supposed to lose. While he has usually managed to survive playing hardball with one player at a time, two are too much to handle.
The Devils last lost five straight during the 1990-91 season, when they dropped six in a row, and their six-game winless streak is their worst since that 1995-96 season when they became the first defending champs to miss the playoffs in 25 years.
“It’s a very helpless feeling for a coach,” Larry Robinson said. “These are the same players that made Pittsburgh [a 9-0 victory Oct. 28] look like a pee-wee team.”
Having already assured themselves a night earlier of a losing record in their longest homestand of the year, the Devils picked up where they left off in losing to Pittsburgh 4-2 Friday. Dominik Hasek handed them their first shutout of the year, and their first since he blanked them 5-0 last April 5 at the Meadowlands.
Outshot 11-2 midway through the first, J.P. Dumont’s game-opening goal seemed inevitable, coming at 18:38 of the first on a power play. Miroslav Satan slid the puck across the crease from the right side, and unlike a similar play from Doug Gilmour to Dave Andreychuk moments earlier, this one clicked.
Petr Sykora, Patrik Elias and Sergei Brylin hit posts behind Dominik Hasek, who recorded his 47th career shutout to tie Ken Dryden for 19th place all-time.
Ex-Devil Dave Andreychuk added insurance at 1:01 of the third period, faking out Ken Daneyko 1-on-1 on left wing to cut to the slot and beat Martin Brodeur on the short side. Rhett Warrener made it 3-0 at 8:23 as Dumont notched his third point of the night. Maxim Afinogenov made it 4-0 on a breakaway at 14:37.
“It’s not a fun place to be right now,” Colin White said. “We’re in a slump and it’s getting bigger every game.
“We’re all pointing fingers and you can’t do that. We’ll go to the rink [today] and see if we can’t straighten this out. It has to be dealt with, now.”
The obvious solution is the return of Niedermayer and Arnott. We’ll see if the GM is big enough to do it.
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Brodeur returned to start last night despite leaving Friday’s game after being knocked out when he hit his head on the ice, trying to stop a goal. Brodeur was denied his 250th career victory for the fourth time . . . Devils conclude homestand Tuesday vs. Sharks and visit Bruins Thursday . . . In their first four opening games of back-to-backs, Devs were 0-2-2, while they were 2-1 in their previous second games.