devils lines

Winning 12 in a row is great, but gotta feel for Holtz and Bahl. They thought they were sitting one game and here we are…a month later.

This team is so good holy **** how did this happen

For sure....I understand Holtz "has nothing left to prove" in the AHL, but playing games would be better than eating popcorn.... There are certainly arguments for Bahl getting in over Smith at some point. Smith played well two games ago (I didn't get to watch the OTT game, thanks NHL Network), but he's had some bonehead penalty games too. I could live with equal amount of mistakes from Bahl if I know they are all learning bumps.

Smith can be painful at times, especially with some of the bad penalties. But I think his physicality, enforcement, protection (whatever we call it these days) keeps him in lineup as there is no Geertsen and both McLeod and Bastian are quite awful at fighting.

Haven’t seen same from Bahl (yet).

To be fair we've seen Smith have.....one fight this year?

I don't mind a roughing call or something once and a while when he pushes the line, but that one penalty, I believe against MTL(?) where he made a BLATANT interference hit for no reason could have cost us when we didn't have the engines going early in the game. If he can avoid those boneheaded plays, I won't complain too much, but at least get Bahl time somewhere. Get another random vet to fill in as a #7.