After the Devils’ humiliating Black Friday home loss to the Blue Jackets (a game I fortunately wasn’t able to attend), I was at about my low ebb with this year’s team, even more than blowing the Rangers game in the third period two weeks ago. After eighteen games, this year’s Devils team hadn’t in my view given a full sixty-minute effort once this season. Even more than our crappy goaltending, that was the underlying reason I really wasn’t feeling this year’s team. From our undefeated preseason, it looked as if maybe we had started believing our own hype. When you respond to a dead as a doornail performance two nights earlier in Detroit by having a team meeting, then just delivering much of the same against one of the league’s worst teams, alarm bells start to go off. A too little, too late rally in the third came up deservedly short.

Almost every game followed the same pattern – start slowly, come on with a mad rush and hoped that some Jack Hughes magic and a dominant power play would be enough to sneak points out. Which to be fair it was some of the time, but even winning games early before our recent skid this team felt like a shadow of last year’s regular season juggernaut. Even our dominant win over a scuffling Sabres team that just lost Tage Thompson to injury on Saturday wasn’t enough to get me out of my disillusionment. It was the most meh feeling 7-2 dominant blowout I can remember being at – I barely celebrated most of the goals, and all I could think was ‘geez boys, where was this kind of sixty-minute effort all year?!’ My atitude was basically cool, now show me that kind of sixty-minute effort again.

I’d sold my ticket for tonight’s game a while back cause I wasn’t sure if I was going to have plans tonight or not (the answer turned out to be no) but could have gotten in the building cheaply if I’d really wanted to go. I thought about it, but my lack of belief in this year’s team pretty much compelled me not to go. And after the better part of two periods it certainly looked like the wise decision as the Devils again were the victim of bad goaltending and dumb plays, going from 2-1 up to 4-2 behind almost in the blink of an eye. I felt like Randy Quaid in Major League 2 in my cynicism.

To be fair, the Devils’ goaltending is evoking comparisons to New York Jets quarterbacks with how bad they – and specifically Vitek Vanecek – have been for much of the season. Look I love the guy personally just like I adored Cory Schneider, both are affable, standup people who take responsibility for their own poor play and take it to heart. But this organization has to face the facts, it’s just flat out over for Vitek here. I’m sorry…maybe last year’s playoffs broke him, or maybe his slump down the stretch even before the postseason was a warning sign that this was coming anyway. Either way, you can’t keep running out a guy with numbers like this indefinitely.

While I’m not a big fan of xG…no matter what numbers you want to give – analytical or traditional – Vitek’s been god-awful in all of them. There’s only so much you can slag the defense for stuff like a Matt Barzal breakaway on goal #2 where he was so clear of anyone he looked like a striker in soccer beating the offside trap. Yes, the defense has been bad this year but at some point you need your goalie to make saves for at least a full game here. Giving up a one-timer shortside on goal #1 and a greasy goal #3 might not be too bad if you’re playing well but when you’re not, you kind of lose patience for anything that isn’t a clear one-on-one goal.

Not that Akira Schmid has been much better this season to be fair, but still he needed to come into the game at 4-2 with things slipping away yet again and after his brutal October he seems to be straightening out a bit in November, but you wouldn’t know it with how infrequently he’s played though. He’s had just three starts in the month – all losses, though to be fair he only allowed two goals on two of them. Vitek only allowing two goals or less happens once in a blue moon now, like when you dominate a bad Sabres team on Saturday and only give up two power play goals among like a dozen total shots in the game.

Even at this point though, I started to get visions of our comeback win late last season against the Capitals. Why that game? Because Schmid came in relief of an ineffective Mackenzie Blackwood, steadied the ship and the team rallied from 4-1 down to win in a game that likely got Schmid put on the playoff roster in place of Blackwood. For some reason, even as negative as I was down 4-2 tonight in the back of my mind I was thinking, if we could just come back tonight maybe this’ll be the game that finally gets Schmid some real run as a starter a la how game #82 last season changed our playoff fortunes in the long run. Who really believes the Devils would have come back from 2-0 down if it was Blackwood and not Schmid skating out for Game #3 against the Rangers?

Of course, Schmid had to do his job and did so stopping all eight shots he faced including a couple of high-danger chances but when you’re down two goals, steadying the ship was only half the battle. You also need someone to help turn it around…enter our two franchise centers, both finally healthy (after Nico Hischier’s return on Saturday) and producing again. First, it was Jack rifling home a one-timer to draw the Devils closer. Then it was Nico Hischier tapping home a rebound to tie the game on a 4-on-3 – yes, another power play goal! For Nico, it was his second goal in two games since returning from his still undisclosed injury and after a scoring slump late last season extended to early this season, it’s been a doubly welcome sight to see.

Before I get to the finish tonight, a word on Nico’s return on Saturday against the same Sabres team that injured him – specifically defenseman Connor Clifton (who’s so insignificant I thought his name was Kyle before looking it up). Boy if you could write a get even script, that game would pretty much be the dream scenario…Nico scores on his return with Clifton on the ice, Brendan Smith wrestled him to the ice as he ran away from a fight and Clifton proceeded to go -4 on the night. Not everyone likes being the heel, and I’m sure our booing him every time he touched the puck was a stark reminder he was a marked man.

Anyway, back to the wild finish tonight. A finish made more improbable by the fact the Devils lost Dougie Hamilton for the third period to an undisclosed injury which was a bit of a double whammy, forcing us to move Smith back to defense after (quite honestly) he looked far more at home at forward than he ever has as a defenseman. Maybe his obsessive need to play in the offensive zone as a defenseman was a tell. He’s certainly looked the part in his pair of games as a winger so far. It is getting frustrating as we seem to lose one or two players every time we gain one back – case in point, Erik Haula going out to injury once Nico returned on Saturday and missing tonight’s game as well. Timo Meier’s return date is still up in the air, but it did make a difference having our top two centers reunited the last two games.

As all winning teams can attest however, you don’t just need your stars to do the job but you also need your role players to pinch in. Perfect case in point, Curtis Lazar’s dramatic last-minute goal which turned out to be the winner that not only ended the Isles’ six-game unbeaten streak in regulation but also truly gave me the first 2022-23 Devils type feeling I’d had all year, after all our dramatic late goals and comebacks in the previous season:

After my negativity toward the Devils this year, tonight’s game really felt like it could be the start of a sea change. Yeah they weren’t great throughout but they at least competed and fought back as a team. Akin to that point in the movie Major League 2 where the Indians get big heads from the previous season, start the next with all sorts of on and off-field problems but finally get over their crap and start playing together again.

All I wanted from this team is…like the point of this scene, for the Devils to show marbles and fight with consistent effort throughout. Indeed, they did so tonight. Now with winnable games coming up, the Devils need to use this game as a springboard just like the fictional Indians used this Cerrano home run to get back to the land of the living.