Given how nutty the NHL schedule is with one game in over a week followed by four games in six nights, maybe it’s fitting Devils games themselves have become a roller-coaster ride this season. What matters (so far) is that the results have been there with a 4-2-1 start, and for the moment there are no major injuries – though Nico Hischier had to leave last night’s game against the Sabres twice after a cheapshot from Connor Clifton (who was given a major and match penalty), his absence from the third period was termed precautionary for the moment. Fortunately, the team rallied around their captain in a back-and-forth game to get a hard-fought 5-4 win against the Sabres but we’ll get back to that more in a bit.
Just in these last three games you’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly with the Devils. Let’s start with the good – their 5-2 win in Montreal on Tuesday, clearly the team’s most complete performance in their first six games to date. Despite again giving up the first goal (which has happened in all seven games now), New Jersey gradually took control of the match. Alexander Holtz’s backhand rebound goal just as a Devils power play had expired was key. Although the Devils dominated the second period, it wasn’t until late in the middle frame where they finally took the lead for good when Tyler Toffoli scored the first goal in what turned out to be a hat trick night against one of his former teams.
Our power play stayed hot…after the aforementioned Holtz goal early which all but came on the power play, the Devils’ man advantage led to two more goals in the first several minutes of the third…captain Hischier finally got on the board for his first of the season thirty-four seconds into the third, then Toffoli got his second of the night at 7:17 to widen the Devils’ lead to 4-1. Fittingly, it was Toffoli who sealed the game with an empty-netter that got him his hat trick and the Devils a relatively comfortable (in the end) 5-2 win while Jack Hughes had the quietest four-point night ever given that they were all assists and overshadowed by his linemate’s hat trick.
That was on Tuesday, the less said about the following night’s home game against the Caps the better – or at least the first and third periods. Figures that I actually allowed myself to think before the game this was the first time in like a decade I had any reasonable expectation for beating the Caps in a game, with their arrow trending down and ours trending up. Three first-period goals later I was once again annoyed at both this team’s penchant for bad starts and its regressing goaltending. Two of the goals were clearly howlers by Akira Schmid, who’s definitely off to a sophomore slump this season (to the tune of a 4.07 GAA and .863 save percentage in his three starts). Small sample size yes, but he’s been so bad I’m actually starting to think in terms of it might be time for a reset in Utica if this continues through another game or two.
Don’t let the bad goaltending mask the fact the team just didn’t show up for the first period either. You can give up a two-on-one with poor defense and decision making and still have goalies give up a goal on a bad shot, we gave up two-on-ones and breakaways galore Thursday night. I’m sure there were words exchanged in the locker room after the first period since the team came out with Game 7 in a playoff series type urgency in the second, turning a three-goal deficit into a lead in the space of just five and a half minutes when it was raining goals at the Prudential Center. A red-hot Toffoli had the first and last goals of this surge at 4:31 and 10:01. In between, Timo Meier finally got his first of the year while Hischier got his second in two games. And Jack? Just another three assists that period, continuing his march for a lot of major awards this year.
You would have thought at that point the Devils would see things through…but a bad shift at the end of the second period led to a Nico penalty, which led to an early Caps power play goal in the third period that sucked all the momentum out of the building. After Vitek Vanecek had done a fine job in relief of Schmid in the second period, he gave up a clunker of his own when the Caps took the lead just 2:09 into the third period. I pretty much went from thinking we were going to win to knowing we were going to lose at that point, sure enough the Devils looked almost as dead in the third period as they did in the first with an Alex Ovechkin empty-netter finally sealing our inevitable fate.
I wasn’t happy after Wednesday, and was a bit annoyed even before the start of Friday’s game, and not just because Lindy Ruff had benched Holtz in the third period against the Caps and demoted him to the Mike McLeod line for Friday’s game, but also because I had to jump through hoops just to use one of my season ticket rewards for the game. I’d picked club seats for a game, but since there’s supposedly so much demand they reneged on club seats and offered Prudential lounge passes in its place.
Never having been there before (it’s relatively new) I had no idea what that really entailed. I thought it was just a different kind of arena sitting like the club or the restaurant between the first and second levels, and since that pass has a QR code I figured I could just use that pass to get into the arena and then find the lounge when inside. As a result I sold my ticket for the game, only finding out when I got there that you need to enter with your game ticket – and at the main entrance at that, you can’t even enter at the area just outside the arena where it says Prudential Lounge! – then they’ll let you into the lounge. Fortunately, I figured this kind of thing might happen so I was prepared to use the Devils’ ticket swap option to trade in a future game for another ticket to last night if need be, which I wound up having to do on the spot.
The lounge basically had club seat food, only with no direct access to any seat in the arena, and a few TV’s on mute so being there during the game isn’t that ideal. As a result, I stayed long enough to sample enough food, then went up to my seat with a bottled water midway through the first period. My seat wasn’t that bad all things considered though it’s a bit confusing in section 228 realizing the first row is actually row two given the way the nearby sections are configured. I saw the first half of the first period game on one of the aforementioned mute TV’s – which was enough to see another clunker goal given up by a goalie (this time Vitek), followed by a surprising Holtz goal on the fourth line. Guess Lindy’s a genius after all, hah.
I did get to my seat in time to see Clifton’s cheap shot and resulting match penalty, which came seconds after Tage Thompson gave the Sabres back the lead. Of course the NHL being the NHL, they also took two minutes off our major power play for an instigator on Ondrej Palat – inarguably his best contribution of the season so far in standing up for the captain. Ironically our only goal during the major came during the four-on-four during Palat’s instigator penalty when Jesper Bratt avenged his buddy with a goal to tie the game again. You would have liked to get a goal on the actual power play, but given how effective it’s been this season it’s hard to be mad at a rare time it failed. Still, the game was another evidence of what has been ugly this season – meaning Devils goaltending. Although to be fair to Vitek, he came up big during the second period when the Devils short-circuited.
It really was that bad, but surprisingly the Devils went in front in spite of themselves, and on a Sabres power play no less when Erik Haula scored a short-handed breakaway to give the Devils their first lead of the night. Back and forth we went once again when Rasmus Dahlin tied the game again just a few minutes later, and it remained tied through the second intermission. Atoning for their earlier sin of not scoring on the Nico major, the Devils’ power play did get on the board early in the third when – who else? – Hughes scored in what was a disputed goal, seemed like nobody could tell who scored it for some reason. I thought it was a Timo tip-in, my buddy at home thought it was Toffoli and at the arena they announced it as…McLeod’s goal? Judge for yourself, but no doubt you’ll be able to score it better than whoever gave McLeod credit for a goal he wasn’t even on the ice for. Devils Twitter first identified Timo as the goalscorer, then Toffoli.
Whoever scored, it gave the Devils an early third period lead which shockingly they looked ready to hold this time, playing excellent lockdown defense in giving the Sabres’ high powered offense only four shots in the third period (outshooting them 17-4 total). Unfortunately…one of those shots was a weak wrister from Dylan Cozens that trickled through Vitek, who rode the biggest roller coaster of all. I’ve seen goalies be inconsistent game to game but a goalie who’s up and down IN THE SAME GAME?! At least this time, the Devils’ suddenly shaky goaltending didn’t cost them as Haula played hero again with a tip-in goal less than two minutes after Cozens scored to give the Devils their third – and final lead – of the night. This time there would be no mistakes and Vitek even stopped a couple of…stoppable shots late to seal the win. Praise be to small wonders.
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Derek
Battle Of Hudson 
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