Let’s just come out and get it out of the way, Thursday night was embarrassing. A no-show from everyone on the team except for one Igor Shesterkin. Which thank god, cause that could’ve been a lot worse if he too decided not to play. I wrote a very frustrated blog laying in bed mother fucking the team to all ends and I decided it wasn’t the way and left it in the drafts.

Listen, just to address the elephant in the room, we need the big guns to start playing which they haven’t in the past few games. Plain and simple, absentee hockey in the postseason will not be tolerated, I don’t care how many regular season points you have. I won’t name names because we all know who I’m talking about, but I have no reason not to believe they won’t show up tonight, we’ve seen it happen before with them at least we can say they dial it in when it matters. I do also believe that Igor’s little outburst may be the equivalent of the helmet throw. Lord knows our actual captain hasn’t done anything to fire up the squad and that’s part of the problem.

We’re done talking about it. The past is the past and the truth is the playoffs are hard as hell to navigate. Look at the Boston Bruins, statistically speaking the best team in the history of the NHL, and the Florida Panthers, a wild card team, just forced a game 7 last night. Anything happens, anything goes. We’ve been here before and I’m ready to bring the same energy I brought last year, it’s picture-esque. We were down and out against the penguins and it truly felt like the end was neigh, but the good guys prevailed and we moved on. And I’ll tell ya what, I was a hell of lot more scared of that Penguins team than I am this Devils team. My montra of the day is that the Devils will be unable to close things out. Is that true? I don’t know, but I’m certainly telling myself that.

There is one giant difference tonight against all the other games played. JERRYS GONNA BE IN THE BUILDING TONIGHT BABY!!!!!! Section 227 so if you see me come say Hi (all 10 of you that read this but we love our fans). I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing I haven’t been to a game all season, but I will say this. I am going to be bringing an energy that I can just hope is infectious in that building. Watching the silent night of game 4 left me ashamed to be a part of this fan base, especially after what the Knicks were able to do the night before.

Some keys I can definitely point out like I’m GG in the locker room. Number 1. We CAN NOT let them go up early. In the past few games they’ve scored within the first 5 minutes and it’s deflated us to no end. We need to come out guns blazing early and often. Number 2. We need to get physical, we need to beat the shit out of them and be the bad guys. If you’re gonna beat us fine, but we gotta rough you up and make sure your path through the next rounds isn’t an easy one. There have been several instances where there should’ve been punches thrown or at least a skirmish and there has been nothing. NOTHING. And lastly, we need our superstars to show up. I don’t know how many more times I can state the obvious, but they gotta do something here. People are riding Kane really hard for no reason, he has 5 points he’s been doing alright. It’s Bread and it’s Mika that needs to step it up. It’s infuriating that these guys can both put up 90 in the regular season just to do this when it counts. But whatever, if they don’t we need an unsung hero to fill the void. Perhaps one of the kids, or Adam Fox, or screw even Jimmy Veesey I don’t know just someone be a hero. It would be pretty sick if Captain Trouba did captain duties and gave us a Messier-like performance. He probably won’t, but I bet #20 does because he’s my goddamn captain always and forever.

Good vibes only going into this game, namaste.

PS – Remember, this isn’t a song about Rocky and his fight back to the top. No, its a song about Clubber Lang. It’s a song about staying hungry and fighting to survive.