After a strong 5-2 start to the season, the Devils have hit their first mini-crisis (for the moment) after back-to-back home games where they allowed a combined fourteen goals in losses to Washington and Tampa Bay. There’s only so much angst I can feel over the Devils not showing up for two straight games when the fact is I’ve been pretty ambivalent over the start of the season. With the Mets and likely Jets’ seasons both ending last Sunday though, it’s coming up on the time where my attention will be on the Devils starting with tomorrow’s home tilt against the Islanders on Friday, only the second game I’ll have been at this season.

Of course, before then the Devils do have a moderately important game in Detroit tonight – but I likely won’t be around to watch that either due to playing in a sports rec league. I could have easily gone to Saturday’s home game against the Caps but I didn’t feel like wasting one of the last nice outdoor nights of the year at an early-season Devils game, especially against a team they haven’t done all that well against in recent years, so I sold my seat and felt better off for doing so even though the Devils did come back twice from two-goal deficits in a sloppy game to salvage a point before losing in OT after a goal from perennial heel Tom Wilson.

From what I did see of the game, to be honest one point is probably the most we deserved out of that. At least for nineteen of the twenty players – Nico Hischier basically by himself willed the Devils into overtime, first with two quick goals to put the Devils back on level terms in the first minute of the second period after a dreadful first had them 3-1 down, then with a primary assist on Dawson Mercer’s goal at 3:39 of the third period that pulled the Devils back within one after the Caps had scored the previous two goals. Later in the third, the Devils finally managed to score a goal without Nico’s help after the first real Dougie Hamilton signing of the season with a power play goal at 12:28, the talented defenseman’s first goal of the season in his eighth game back after a long injury absence last year.

Considering Washington is 5-1 maybe we’ll look back on that game later in the season as one that wasn’t as bad a game as it appeared on Saturday night. I’m sure starting goalie Jacob Markstrom will want to do better assuming he starts tonight, after giving up six goals on Saturday. At least he wasn’t as bad as Jake Allen would be on Tuesday against the Lightning though, but more on that in a minute. Once again I opted for good weather over the Devils, though I’d already traded in my ticket for this game to get a credit toward next season’s invoice on my account I did think of swapping another future game to get a ticket and go the other night after opting out Saturday, but again – and this gets back to how blase I’ve been about the start of the season so far – I demurred.

Once again, it turned out to be a better decision for my sanity although even I wasn’t expecting what happened in the second period to happen, especially after Jack Hughes finally showed his superstar form of two years ago (plus the beginning of last season) by scoring on a breakaway at 11:02 of the first period for just his second goal of the season to date. Then just thirty-nine seconds into the second period, Hughes fed Timo Meier in front for Timo Time’s third of the year and the Devils’ second lead of the night at 2-1. Soon after that however, came the evening’s flashpoint moment when Erik Cernak leveled Jesper Bratt with a legal hit.

In the ultimate test of cause and effect, the Devils didn’t respond to that (and I’ll say again) legal hit, and then Tampa scored five unanswered goals in the second period basically ending the game as a contest after forty minutes. It was such a pronounced shift that everyone from the game announcers to reporters to fans picked up on it and wanted to make that, and the Devils’ non-response the story of the game. Maybe some of this comes from me not actually watching the game, but I don’t buy it – at least not as a sole reason for the Devils’ collapse. Allen had a bad night and the Devils’ D has struggled in recent games in general. Plus, this team had plenty of no-shows and games where they folded with adversity on the ice last year to really attribute it to that.

Would I have liked to have seen more pushback, yes – god knows other teams usually get after us the minute we hit someone hard (legal or not). Do I care that Sheldon Keefe took a pass and basically pooh-pooed that talking point in the postgame presser? Not yet…I wouldn’t exactly expect him to eviscerate the team’s heart openly ten games in. But I do hope behind closed doors, the message was sent that this is what people think of you and your lack of a response out on the ice tonight.

To his credit, Keefe did take the team to task after each of the last two games for their performances on home ice, which has been an issue year after year with this team. For the moment, that is what matters more than picking a fight with the locker room after less than a month over something that wasn’t entirely cause-and-effect. Would Allen have allowed two or three less bad goals on Tuesday if someone had fought or high-sticked Cernak? Doubtful. Would our defense – which has been struggling – magically play better? Also doubtful. Not to mention it wouldn’t have prevented either a bad penalty call on Mercer which led to the seventh Tampa goal, or a hideously bad break on the eighth goal which was the coup de grace last night in the third period.

At least some of the issues with the defense could be alleviated soon with the somewhat surprising announcement this morning that both Luke Hughes and Brett Pesce will return to the lineup tonight. Weeks ago, it seemed like Pesce would already have been back while Luke was supposed to be out for another few weeks but injury timetables are seldom linear.

Despite our depth, it seems clear who’ll be out of the lineup to make way for the returning defensemen. Seamus Casey, after a strong start offensively really struggled both defensively and with the hectic pace of the Devils’ early schedule and was sent down after Saturday’s game (clearly the final red flag was when he didn’t even get a shift in the 3-on-3 OT, where you’d figure you want your offensive D to play) for Daniil Misyul, another rookie playing his NHL debut on Tuesday but he’ll likely go back down to Utica as well with the two defensemen returning.

Though nothing’s official yet it seems obvious both from usage and their level of play that Simon Nemec might actually be the odd man out tonight, instead of Jonathan Kovacevic. While Kovacevic has stepped up, Nemec is suffering a classic sophomore slump, further hindered by his offseason shoulder injury in Olympic qualifying just before camp started. Perhaps he still hasn’t fully gotten past that either. Whatever the reason, I do expect Nemec to at least get a soft reset and we’ll see where the defense is after this weekend.

I doubt all the issues get fixed with just Hughes and Pesce returning however. We need more from Dougie, even though he’s had a point in his last three games they’ve been the only points he’s had all season so far and you need offensive machine Dougie if he’s going to continue to struggle defensively as much as he has. Perhaps both he and Brendan Dillon need a new partner on D, as that pairing has struggled in general but since Kovacevic and Jonas Siegenthaler have been good as a top pairing, Keefe seems loath to break them up even now with Hughes and Pesce initially slotting in as their own pairing.

Hopefully at least this team starts to move back in the right direction this weekend or concern’s going to turn to alarm pretty quickly. After all, if the Devils want to make the playoffs and show they’ll be a perennial playoff team going forward, Detroit on the road and the Islanders at home are the kind of bubble teams they have to beat more often than not. Not to mention, just in a vacuum it’d be pretty alarming if the team didn’t respond after two straight stinkers at home.