Until now I hadn’t actually watched the arena intro for the 2023-24 Devils, despite being at both home games on Thursday and Friday. Mostly out of laziness to be fair, since I left just early enough to arrive for intros at the home opener and for the national anthem last night. Of course, I’m not a big fan of 7:30 weekday starts but since our opener was on ESPN+, we have to be subject to the whims of TV execs. Not that TV execs always get it right, exhibit A the dopey Monday tripleheader. Sure, they actually managed to sell out Tampa’s arena for a 5:30 start but apart from it being a massive inconvenience for the local fans, who’s really watching any game on TV at 5:30?!

At least in this case I managed to remember it was a 7:30 start, as opposed to showing up early for a 7 PM game not realizing it’s a later start – as I’ve done on a couple of occasions in recent years. And fortunately, I was able to drive to the arena again – after my car issues late last season forced me to take the train to and from playoff games (and eventually get a new car). Thankfully traffic really wasn’t that bad for me either game, guess there’s something to be said for not getting caught in rush hour traffic.

I don’t usually go to back-to-back home games either, but given the fact I was already scheduled to miss Monday’s game and there wasn’t going to be another home game for a couple weeks I didn’t want to miss two of the first three after taking a pass on the entire preseason. In one respect, the Devils certainly made going to both games worth it from an entertainment standpoint and got me emotionally engaged in the season. And from a pure results standpoint, you’ll take three out of four points almost anytime. On the other, hopefully they started to take some lessons out of these two games from Detroit and Arizona.

If there was one frustration out of these two games, it was the extended slow starts in both. Against Detroit in the season opener they still looked like they were at preseason speed playing a team at regular season speed. Maybe that was part of the issue, the undefeated preseason on the heels of a franchise record winning season only added some more…arrogance to this team’s play? Particularly in the opener, it looked as if they were just waiting for Sweet Georgia Brown to play acting like the Globetrotters on ice with all the overpassing and reliance on skill. I guess teams like this will have periods where they overdo it on the skill, it’s a balance to be sure.

Thankfully, if the Devils themselves were a little slow to return to 2022-23 regular season form, Vitek Vanecek was not. My main fear of the Detroit game was if Vitek got racked, that could really put him in a bad place after his playoffs went horribly south. And it could have easily happened since he got no help in a first period where the Devils were outshot 14-6 and it wasn’t even really that close. However, Vitek brought back the memories of his shining regular season rather than his playoff stumbles with saves like this:

Unfortunately, help didn’t arrive in time for Vitek to finally give up the lead when a bad pokecheck led to a rebound goal by Daniel Sprong in front at 12:14 of the second period. If there weren’t boos by this point, there were certainly a lot of eyerolls like myself over how this was reminiscent of the early playoff games against the Rangers last year. Fortunately, the Devils found another gear after that goal – specifically Jack Hughes, who got his Hart candidacy off to a flying start with two goals (one on the power play) barely five minutes apart in the second period.

Somewhat amusingly, Hughes also torpedoed his Lady Byng candidacy in the same game with two minor penalties against Detroit – one short of his season long total from last year. That second penalty proved costly in the third, when Alex DeBrincat scored the tying goal on the power play. It has to be said both that it’s a bad retaliation penalty and typical garbage NHL officiating that their player gets to sit on Jack for a few seconds without attempting to move while a glancing slash retaliation is the only penalty called. Either call both penalties or call neither, be consistent! That’ll be a theme I come back to later.

With the game tied again in the third and the Devils’ top offensive forward already having scored twice it would be the Devils’ top threat from the blueline who would restore their lead when Dougie Hamilton did Dougie Hamilton things, scoring on a seeing eye slap wrister from the point, with just 4:23 left in the 3rd.

Then came a chaotic final three minutes where a Jeff Petry penalty with 2:40 remaining was followed barely ten seconds later by a dubious Jesper Bratt penalty, although he probably deserved it. You can’t really give the refs a chance to game manage cause they’ll take it. Still, a four-on-four isn’t the worst-case scenario with Devils skaters, especially when you have an empty net situation and Erik Haula put one in with the goalie pulled and barely a minute and a half remaining, all but icing it.

Still, this game was nutty enough that after I thought about going cross-arena to see my friends at the final whistle, I was like ‘nah, better not leave – with the way this game is going Detroit will score again and I’ll be biting my nails in the hallway’. Sure enough, that’s exactly what would have happened, after Robby Fabbri scored with just thirty-four seconds left to keep everyone watching until the final horn, which mercifully rang with the Devils still on top and Hughes, Vitek and Dougie a deserved three stars. Our most important players were our most important players in the opener, to borrow a Lou saying. Oh and I did get to see my friends on the way out at least, despite not leaving until the final horn. And I left the arena with one of the t-shirt toss t-shirts to boot, guess that proved to be a good omen!

Don’t really feel like going through last night’s shootout loss to Arizona much, especially since I only have about an hour or so before I have to go to my friend’s wedding, but that was another entertaining mess of a game where our chief bugaboos from the opener – lack of secondary scoring, slow starts and bad penalty killing – showed up again in spades. Hughes assisted on all three goals last night, great for his Hart candidacy (and great for Bratt, who had two goals as a result…though his breakaway hat trick attempt being stuffed in the third period proved costly) but eventually people besides Jack, Dougie and Jesper need to start pulling their weight when the games count.

It was 0-2 before that goal because this time, our slow start lasted thirty minutes and had us two goals down before the home team roared to life with three goals in barely over ten minutes toward the end of the second period. I even texted my friend this was 2001-esque, referring to the best offensive Devils team in history. And the penalty kill? Two more goals allowed last night after giving up one in the opener the previous night, and it didn’t help matters that on both unsuccessful PK attempts we had one of our main PK defensemen in the box (Jonas Siegenthaler and Brendan Smith). As usual, Smith’s penalty was particularly galling for it came in the offensive zone unnecessarily in the third period and inevitably Nick Schmaltz tied the game. At that point, I actually kind of wanted to see the three-on-three given how good the Devils were at it last year.

More referee selective game management proved our undoing in the end, though it didn’t directly cost us a goal. Still, when you see Ondrej Palat get cross-checked into the net late in regulation and two seperate Devils get tripped without a call on one shift in the OT you figure oh brother, the refs are going by playoff rules here. At least until a Dougie tripping penalty led to a Coyotes PP to end the OT. Are we game managing here or not? Again, BE CONSISTENT! If you’re gonna call that trip you should have called the two on us the previous shift! I’m not saying the refs necessarily had it in for us, but there’s a reason Lindy Ruff said (paraphrasing) there were a lot of strange calls on both ends to be fair after the game.

As positive as I was before the three-on-three is about how negative I was heading into the shootout. Even for our skill in the hockey aspects of the game, we just have not been good at that skills competition since the days of Parise and Kovalchuk pumping in goals every shootout. And as good as Akira Schmid was last night in his first start of the season, he looked like a statue on the two shootout goals against, while Timo Meier and Bratt predictably fired blanks and there went a point although if I’m being honest, one’s probably all we deserved last night.