You can’t blame Ondrej Palat for this one, now can you? The New Jersey Devils are now losers in two straight games after putting together an impressive Western swing, sans the final game.
The Winnipeg Jets were quick out of the gate, but the Devils did themselves no favors in a 4-3 regulation loss on home ice to the 30th-ranked team in the NHL.
Were the Devils a bit distracted by the Palat trade that sent him to the New York Islanders, with some draft picks, in exchange for Maxim Tsyplakov?
After the 4-3 loss, Devils captain Nico Hischier—clearly emotional about it—had this to say.
“I think everybody in here knows what [Palat] meant to this team, to this organization,” Hischier explained. “He is a guy that won it all. He’s a guy who taught us a lot. He was always a guy I asked for help if I needed it. He was just a great teammate.”
Palat said goodbye to his teammates just before the Devils and Jets took the ice for warmups. And just like that, the Palat era is over.
Regardless, there was a game to play, and the Devils weren’t prepared for it.
A quick Jets lead was negated in the first period, but the Devils let it unravel in the final 40 minutes.
Let’s get to some observations.
Observations
- The odd-man rush was the reason the Devils lost. They gave up several on Tuesday, and all four of them resulted in goals. It started with an awful change by Brett Pesce, giving far too much space to Gabriel Vilardi, which led to Mark Scheifele opening the scoring. You can hardly blame Cody Glass for hobbling off the ice injured on the second Jets goal, but on the third, Johnathan Kovacevic was far too deep in the Winnipeg zone, and the last was self-inflicted with Paul Cotter and Simon Nemec colliding and losing puck possession. It was, quite frankly, embarrassing.
- Speaking of Glass, his night was cut short. He blocked a shot and hobbled off the ice and left in the second period. He tried to come back but couldn’t hack it. Sheldon Keefe explained he’ll need further evaluation to know what the Devils are dealing with.
- It’s a shame, because his line was really going. And, of course, got the scoring started for New Jersey when Arseny Gritsyuk and Lenni Hämeenaho applied solid forechecking pressure in the neutral zone that resulted in Hämeenaho’s second NHL goal and first on home ice. Their night was cut short with Glass missing for most of the second and the third, but they still ended the game with an even 1-1 scoring chance differential.
- The next few observations are why the Devils are starved for a natural scorer. The Devils still aren’t shooting enough with urgency. In the second period, Dawson Mercer was left the puck by Jack Hughes at the top of the circles in the Jets’ zone with ice to skate with in front of him. The frustrating part is Mercer opted to pass it cross-ice to Gritsyuk and negated the play completely instead of finding a high-danger chance to shoot. Too much of that has gone on this season. Especially since the Devils had just 11 shots on goal at that point with about four minutes remaining in the second period.
- And in the third, the Devils applied heavy pressure on Hellebuyck. The Devils threw 15 shots on goal in the final frame, and in the closing moments, New Jersey pulled Allen for the extra man. With nearly three minutes to go, Hellebuyck made several stops at the top of his crease on plays where the Devils tried to jam the puck to the crease for rebounds. Hischier eventually scored, but too much time was shaved off the clock by then. The Devils had numerous chances to score earlier, but no one is shooting for scoring chances or, at the very least, to create rebounds. The Devils continually try to move the puck to the crease and jam it by the goaltender. Perhaps moving Palat was the start of finding that scorer on the trade market.
- And lastly, another point—secondary assist—for Dougie Hamilton. In fact, he has 10 of them in his last eight games, which is the longest current point streak in the NHL. Ho hum.
