Former Devils coach Jacques Lemaire, who coached the Devils to the Stanley Cup championship in 1995 is back as bench boss in Newark. Lemaire has spent the last nine seasons coaching the Minnesota Wild and never achieved the same level of success in Minnesota he enjoyed in New Jersey. Lemaire tends to employ a form of a neutral zone trap which many define as boring hockey but that gives less talented teams a shot at winning as the style lies in wait to capitalize on opponents turnovers and breakdowns while not necessarily pushing the offense. It makes your eyes bleed is what it does.
Lemaire's record with New Jersey from 1993-1998 was 199-122-57.
Lemaire inherits a Devils team without a lot of defense first forwards which may make his style somewhat of a difficult one to operate early on until the Devils players buy into it. Interesting season ahead at the Prudential Center to be certain.
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3 comments:
Great - clutch-and-grab hockey. Will they give complimentary forks to all the attendees so they can poke themselves in the eye or leg to stay awake?
LOL, it's a strange move to be honest. Granted, Sutter left the Devils late so many of the coaching candidates were gobbled up but really, in 9 seasons in Minnesota, what did he do? He's a safe choice and a familiar choice but not much more. In the 'new' NHL I think the style may have passed his neutral zone trap by.
And didn't the league change a bazillion rules to try to squash the NZT and promote increased scoring to make it exciting for the people in the cheap seats (aka, expansion team fans who don't know the game and think it's cool to do 'fang fingers')? This is a step back in my estimation. Starting to feel glad Buttman is not into inter-conference play - I won't have to fight off narcolepsy by watching it regularly.
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