As someone who’s been down on this team for months and really the better part of two years, I have to agree with the coach here…last night was nothing short of a heroic display of grit and determination at home. Not just because the Devils finally ground out a 3-2 win in double OT but because of the circumstances surrounding the game – while we did get some unexpectedly good news with a surprise return of Jonas Siegenthaler for Game 3, it was also pretty well timed considering we were already going to be short Brendan Dillon and Luke Hughes on the blueline after their respective Game 2 injuries, then on top of that lost Jonathan Kovacevic at some point late in the first period last night to an undisclosed injury, he wouldn’t return so the Devils played with five defensemen for more than three full periods last night.
Playing shorthanded with essentially three top six defensemen out of the lineup and another one who was supposed to be on a shift count with a lack of conditioning, things looked bleak even after we came out on the front foot in the first period and Nico Hischier scored the opening goal, seemingly willing the puck past Frederik Andersen to get the sellout crowd back out of their seats waving the towels.
A moment about the crowd and the atmosphere, while I definitely think there were…tense moments at times, for the most part everyone stayed in the game and stayed around even as the game got extended deep into the night. I also think the team or media department – I never really know who to credit with stuff like this – did a good job with the intro video. While the music wasn’t quite as goosebump inducing as the 2012 video, the rest of it was well done and the small lights around the arena to add ambiance certainly helped as well.
My exact comment to a friend via text – ‘we can’t waste this intro on a two and done’ meaning us being done after two home games. Which is what I feared before last night (and could very well still happen). Back to the point though…the atmosphere was as electric as you’d expect with a Friday night playoff game, in spite of the peril of being down 2-0 with major injuries throughout the lineup. Aside from Siegenthaler, who heroically played twenty-seven minutes last night in his first game back with only a couple of interference penalties to critique, showing his rust with timing. I do kind of wish they’d put him in the starting lineup for a little extra juice during intros but I get it, maybe they were worried he could get too excited.
Although we were ahead after the first period, the aforementioned Kovacevic injury dampened my mood a bit when my friend told me he was out, and my exact text back was great, we have basically 4.5 defensemen with Siegs ostensibly on a shift count and one of them is (Simon) Nemec who sucks. Yes, I’m telling on myself a bit here – to be fair to myself, I didn’t think he started off too well in Game 3 with a couple of early turnovers either but to Nemec’s credit he did settle in, perhaps taking a regular shift and knowing he couldn’t get the hook upped his confidence level a bit with dramatic results at the end.
Back to the game though, things looked as bad as I feared they could get the first twelve minutes of the second period with Carolina making their expected push, but thankfully Jacob Markstrom was up to the task yet again, along with some well-timed shotblocking by Brian Dumoulin and Brett Pesce. Dumoulin actually wound up leading the team with 36:24 played, and finished with a +2 to boot. Of course everyone on the Devils was either a plus something or even – but I’ll get to why later. Pesce put in another determined game with 32:30 and credited with six blocks (Dumoulin just behind him with five). Again to their credit, the Devils settled in and kept the score unchanged through the second intermission.
While I don’t always follow the advanced stats and think they’re accurate, if you look at Markstrom’s numbers, they pretty well match with the eye test so far this series. Still, I didn’t think one goal would cut it unless Markstrom literally had a 35-40 save game. We were going to need a second one, one that should have been scored by Timo Meier (and I thought had been scored but waved off due to a whistle after a long netmouth scramble, it wasn’t until I saw the replay that I realized to my disbelief it was actually saved).
I can’t even feel sorry for him at this point, dude just hasn’t done one thing right this series really although he also doesn’t get any breaks when it comes to the refs either. From the headbutt by Brent Burns in Game 2 that got missed to being tripped in the third period on a play that was similar to a call on Dougie Hamilton in the first that wasn’t called for him in the third it seems like the refs are just as down on Timo as Devils fans are! At least the refs didn’t decide the game last night though, and actually showed some balls giving Carolina two OT penalties when I was rolling my eyes at the people around me demanding penalties in OT thinking the refs would never call crap at this point.
If Timo couldn’t get the Devils a much-needed insurance goal, Dawson Mercer did early in the third. Unlike the Timo miss, this was a goal I actually couldn’t see go in the net, I just saw the puck at the side of the net after the play was over and was puzzled we were celebrating (now seeing the replay I understand why), but hey I’ll take it!
Even a negative nancy like me felt at a certain point we had it at 2-0 with the way the team was playing five-on-five. It was really one of the best games I’ve seen at five-on-five all season, which is saying something given the circumstances. I was feeling good right up until Siegenthaler’s interference penalty at 5:05 put us on the PK, without one of our main PK defensemen. The results were predictable with a quick one-two by Sebastian Aho and Seth Jarvis through the middle of the Devils’ defense (Hamilton and Pesce) setting up the latter to score and then it was fingernail-biting time again. That shift and a delay-of-game penalty several minutes later were the only missteps from Pesce in an otherwise brilliant game, unfortunately the latter also proved costly as our compromised PK was again unable to shut down their 26th ranked PP. This time it only took ten seconds and Markstrom even made the first save on this sequence before Aho scored the tying goal.
Now I was annoyed…not the least of which was the now likelihood of OT where both me and my arena friend feared their healthy lineup would eventually grind us down. Of course, we did get to OT but only after another heroic save by Markstrom at the end of regulation which could very well have been another ‘Hurricane playoff moment’ at the end of a regulation game.
Apparently, the Devils got the memo about coming out fast, but much to my surprise they kept coming throughout the entire OT period and it was Carolina who looked the more tired team (perhaps due to not having the desperation factor we did). As I told my friend in the first intermission, we were great for sixteen minutes of the period, it’s just the four we were on the power play that we sucked. Yes, the power play of doom, which seems to know only one way to play, pass around the perimeter and look for the perfect play even without two of their key cogs on the PP. You would think at some point we would just dumb it down a bit, try to just get shots on net, traffic in front and all the other hockey cliches you want to use. Carolina’s league-leading PK has caught on to our too-fancy style and snuffed out our once-mighty PP to an alarming level in this series barely allowing a shot on each OT power play we shockingly got.
Despite our hideous special teams, we were still one shot away from winning it. While I wasn’t sure we could keep up our pace from the first OT by this point a strange thing happened…I was actually starting to both enjoy the actual game itself, and revel in the length of it. Admittedly, my original plan before the game was to leave if the game went past the first OT since I hadn’t slept well lately and didn’t really want any part of a no-sleep night for a series that was hanging on a wing and prayer in terms of actually staying competitive. Last night’s effort pretty much compelled me to stick it out though, not to mention the realization that I hadn’t actually sat through a multi-OT game since the team played at the Meadowlands when Jamie Langenbrunner beat Ottawa in a series where that wound up being our only win. I vaguely remember not wanting to go to Game 5 when we were down 3-1 in that series because I wanted that game to be the last one I was at in East Rutherford.
Fortunately everyone’s best efforts – team and fans – got rewarded last night thanks to an unlikely hero, the aforementioned Nemec who channeled Scott Niedermayer with practically an end-to-end rush through the Canes’ defense for a stunning goal.
Also give credit to Justin Dowling whose turnover just before that sequence led to the Devils getting the puck, and the 21-year old who’s been under fire from within and without did the rest, finally reminding us of the promise he seemed to show last year while the team as a whole reminded us last night of why we’ve had such high expectations of both this franchise’s present and future. Things in the present still seem cloudy at best, but for one night at least it was fun to be a Devils fan again. Sort of like a standalone episode in a series – the unexpected feel-good story in an otherwise serious drama show. I’m still not expecting to win the series or even be close, but at least I got home in enough time to get seven hours’ sleep and I’ll be at tomorrow’s game now. And if we ever win that one, well…
hasan4978
Derek
Battle Of Hudson 