Right now it’s a good news, bad news situation for the Devils. The bad news is they’re basically a three-man team – the good news is those three players are REALLY good. I’m talking of course about defensive triggerman Dougie Hamilton (three goals through four games including a big PP goal late in the first period tonight to break the lock Ilya Sorokin put on the Islanders’ goal), Jesper Bratt who’s off to a flying start with eight points in his first four games including three assists tonight, and of course Jack Hughes who’s already making an early case to be the Hart frontrunner with no fewer than ten points in his first four games, capped off by tonight’s OT winner in a wild 5-4 showdown.

Individual brilliance, and the Devils’ ridiculous effectiveness on the PP (all four regulation goals came with the man advantage) are glossing over our issues right now, and they’re a plenty. Lack of secondary scoring for one, not to mention injuries starting to creep in with Erik Haula already out for tonight’s game and captain Nico Hischier getting knocked out after two periods tonight, forcing Mike McLeod to play major minutes in the third. To be fair, the Devils did play better tonight than in the first three games in spite of the injuries – and in spite of getting outscored 4-0 with at least five Islander skaters on the ice but a familiar bugaboo came back to bite the Devils early and often – goaltending.

Yes it’s early in the season but it’s mildly concerning we’ve had back to back clunkers from Vitek Vanecek on Monday against Florida and now Akira Schmid tonight in Belmont. To be fair, I saw very little of Monday’s game but from all accounts Vitek gave up at least a couple of clunkers in that game and almost every goal Schmid gave up tonight looked like a clunker. They aren’t exactly proving GM Tom Fitzgerald wrong so far in kicking the tires on potential goaltending improvements this offseason. Of course, one of them is off the board at the moment with Connor Hellebuyck re-upping in Winnipeg as they double down on a mediocre team.

I do think we’ll see better from both Vitek and Schmid, closer to the first two games of the season than the last two. I was out for most of Monday’s game, the first time I even looked at a score it was 3-0 Florida after two periods. I sighed and didn’t turn it on until our third-period junktime surge turned serious as the Devils nearly tied the game after going down 4-0, finally coming up short in a 4-3 defeat. At least you felt maybe the spigot on our offense would finally start to flow after that late surge – of course the NHL being what the NHL is, somehow we went from having three games in four days to having one game over the next eight days (tonight).

If nothing else, you can’t really accuse the Devils of being boring this season. I actually kind of wanted to go tonight to check out the Islanders’ new arena, but you pretty much have to drive there and pre-purchase a parking spot. Or spend over an hour on trains (after driving a half hour to South Orange to take the train into Penn Station in the first place) with two connections before going on a shuttle or walking to the arena from the LIRR stop. I did figure out that I’d probably be getting home after 12:30 if I had gone the train route and who the heck knows about driving – allegedly it’s slightly over an hour from my location but again, that’s not accounting for finding parking on the way in or traffic on the way out. All told it probably would have cost close to $100 adding in the cheapest game ticket possible, with inconvenient travel and given all the Devils games I already go to that’s not really appealing.

Entertainment wise it might have been worth it on the one hand, given how crazy the game turned out to be. We outshot the Isles 13-8 and outplayed them in the first period but Schmid gave up the first of his bad goals when Brock Nelson picked a corner after getting a far side shot in transition. Shockingly a power play that scored four goals on the night actually fired blanks on their first man advantage – but Dougie took it upon himself to get the Devils off the schneid with five shots on net in the opening twenty minutes, culminating in one of his patented bombs for a power play goal in the final minute of the period.

It should be said it was a nice play by Timo Meier to enter the zone and get the puck to Dougie, this after a poor start to the season and multiple bad penalties on Monday led to him being benched for most of the third period. It probably helped that he was finally put back on the right wing after playing left wing early, and it was nice to see him get on the scoreboard – hopefully the goals will come soon. Just ask Tyler Toffoli, who finally opened his account in New Jersey with another power play goal a mere twenty-one seconds into the second period on a wrister through traffic after Jack made a nice zone entry and laid the puck off to Toffoli in shooting range.

Unfortunately it was Nelson who struck again less than two minutes later, this time taking advantage of some brutal Devils defending with Brendan Smith losing his stick and Luke Hughes turning the puck over in the defensive zone both contributing to a one-on-one situation giving Nelson time and space to beat Schmid five-hole. Almost as quickly as Nelson scored to tie the game, Luke would atone for his mistake on yet another Devils power play ripping home a slapper off a primary assist from big bro to get the lead back. All three goals came in the first 2:37 of the period and chaos was reigning supreme. Shockingly, over three minutes went by before the next goal – another hideous clunker by Schmid, who got beat by Horvat at literally a ninety-degree angle, if not a touch behind the goalline. It’s a one-timer you’d only see scored in the video game NHL94. Unfortunately, that real-life goal tied the game again.

Despite the NHL’s best efforts to game manage temporarily avoiding giving the Islanders a fifth straight man disadvantage by hitting up Timo with a phantom roughing retaliation in the second period, the Devils’ power play wouldn’t be denied for long. Our fifth man advantage of the night early in the third period saw our fourth goal scored, when a Jack tip-in put New Jersey back in front and gave the ‘elder’ Hughes his third point of the night. After everything that already happened, it seemed inevitable when the Islanders tied the game on an empty net situation with just 1:11 remaining. Giving the Isles a point might be annoying down the road, but for the moment it just served to set up the even more dramatic winner from Jack in OT, ending a wild night on the island.

With the game in hand concern turned to the update on Nico’s injury, which of course was not much of an update with it being termed an upper body injury and ‘we’ll see how he feels tomorrow’. At least the long breaks this week will help in managing our early-season injuries (which include defenseman Colin Miller getting injured despite not playing yet in the regular season).