New wishes for the new year

As New Year Day fast approaches, there are many teams and players in the NHL who would like a fresh New Years start.

I'll start out with one of the bigger stories in this NHL season, New Jerseys inability to win. The Devils have been a long time power house in the Eastern Conference, who have always achieved success by playing a strong defensive game. However this year the Devils came into the 2010-2011 season with a new rookie head coach in John MacLean and an All-Star sniper in Ilya Kovalchuk, who is armed with a long term high paying contract. But the start of the season hasn't been kind to the once mighty Devils. By December 27 New Jerseys record was 9-24-2 making them the worst team in the NHL by 4 points. In the 35 games played, the Devils managed only to score 61 goals all the while letting in 112. So far the the Devils have tried waving the rights to veteran forward Brain Rolston, who has managed only 5 points in 21 games and is a minus 12, but the vet went unclaimed. Then the team decided to part ways with head coach John Maclean and gave the team rains back over to former coach Jacques Lemaire, who should be able to get the team back to playing typical defensive Devils hockey. Entering the new year the New Jersey Devils are hoping that they can reestablish their defensive game and make a push for the playoffs. Although with a strong Eastern Conferance, almost no cap room and a long term injury to Zach Parise, who wont start skating until March, the playoffs seem like a long shot.

It seems that the New York Islanders are always in the same place this time a year, or at least it seems like that because the team ends up near the bottom of the standing at the end of every season anyways. The Islanders came into this season much the same way they did last season, with the only real positive note being that John Tavares has a year of NHL experience under his belt. However any positive momentum the Islanders could have built over the summer was smashed by early injuries to the likes of Rob Schremp, Kyle Okposo and Mark Streit, the latter two are still out. Although the team started hot they faded fast, but GM Garth Snow says the team will stay its course. The bright side to the Islanders, this season, is not only have they won their last three games, but the young looked good doing it scoring 11 goals while allowing only 3. Entering the New Year the Islanders would like to see some more consistent play, combined that with a healthy roster the blue shirts from Long Island could be in the playoffs; however, the streaky team will have to fight history of being a hot/cold team.

In Montreal there is much hype around the young star P.K Subban, who after having a strong playoffs last season has struggled to stay in the line up this season. Between
being called out in the media by Fylers captain Mike Richards, heated arguments with teammates and sloppy defensive play the spotlight seems to be shining hard on the young Subban, but i guess that comes with the territory of playing in Montreal. However Subban is looking to refocus this new year and he'll try to find his game from the playoffs last year. If Subban does find his game Montreal should be well poised for a long playoff run.