“Any time you get to play a rival that’s right across the river, it tends to have a little bit more into it than any other team.” – Devils Head Coach Lindy Ruff before his team’s 5-1 loss to the Rangers.
Thursday night at Prudential Center, The Battle of The Hudson wrote its latest chapter and this one resulted in a lopsided, 5-1 victory for the Rangers. Alexis Lafreniere’s two goals, Artemi Panarin’s three assists, Vincent Trocheck’s goal and assist, and Igor Shesterkin’s 39-save performance fueled the Rangers to their ninth consecutive victory.
On the opposite side of things, the Devils entered the game searching for momentum after dropping their previous game – a 6-2 loss to the Capitals on Tuesday – and having squandered the momentum they built from their victory over the Flyers at The Stadium Series.
With the seasons’ of these two age-old rivals seemingly headed in opposite directions, let’s take a look at how each team stacks up in four key on-ice categories: offense; defense; goaltending, and special teams.
OFFENSE
One team – the Rangers – put five pucks in the back of the opposition’s net, while the home team – the Devils – only managed to tally one goal. That’s a pretty clear discrepancy. But this isn’t just about tonight.
The hallmark of the Devils over the past couple of seasons is that they have a good young nucleus of forwards who can score in different ways. The problem is, those young forwards can get easily frustrated and can be prone to making more mistakes as they press to make up for previous errors.
Case in point, against the Rangers, the Garden Staters had several glorious power-play opportunities, including a five-minute and a four-minute power-play. And while they combined to put up eight shots on goal during those nine minutes, they scored no goals. There was too much blind passing to the middle of the ice. Too much passing out of a high-quality chance and into a low-quality chance. Basically, the Devils kept looking for the perfect play instead of simplifying things and getting pucks to the net.
In other words, they did what the Rangers were guilty of the past couple of seasons. Talk about irony.
DEFENSE
When you look at the final shots on goal tallies – 40-18 in favor of the Devils – you could make the mistake of assuming the Devils were the superior defensive team. But the truth is, the Rangers were the better team in their own zone.
The Blueshirts kept the Devils shooters to the outside, mostly allowing only perimeter shots; in other words, shots that Igor Shesterkin could easily see and save.
Meanwhile, even though the Devils held the Rangers to a scant 18 shots on goal, they routinely allowed New York to get to the middle of the ice and take high-quality shots against Nico Daws.
Again, this isn’t just a one night thing. In fact, a couple weeks ago – during the All-Star break – Devils’ Head Coach Lindy Ruff revamped his team’s system to focus more on its defense. In their “new system,” the Devils are playing more of a zone defense, keeping their wingers on their respective sides of the ice and keeping their centers below the top of the face-off circles. This is all done to keep the Devils tight in the middle of the ice and hopefully limit the high-danger chances they had been giving up throughout the season.
Unfortunately for New Jersey, they didn’t manage to keep the “house” intact against the Rangers.
GOALTENDING
Igor Shesterkin is having – by his own admission – a down year in net. And even though he faced 40 shots against the Devils, he was rarely tested to the point of needing to make a spectacular save.
On the other hand, Nico Daws was left to hang and dry on multiple occasions. Mika Zibanejad’s first period power-play goal was one in which Daws had no chance to save. Ditto for Alexis Lafreniere’s first goal of the game; when the Rangers’ youngster intercepted a pass in the middle of the ice and sniped it past Daws to give New York a 2-0 lead.
Chris Kreider’s goal was scored off a two-on-one rush in which Daws had to respect Artemi Panarin’s shot and couldn’t get over in time once the pass was made to Kreider, who put it into the back of the net. Lafreniere’s second goal was off a partial break-in. Did Daws have a chance to make the save? Yes. But it would have been an unbelievable one had he pulled it off. And finally, Vincent Trocheck’s dagger goal in the third period was also off a two-on-one rush in which Daws had to respect Panarin’s shot and couldn’t get over in time.
The blame for this game does not rest solely on the skates of Nico Daws, but, it would have been nice if he could have come up “big” with a couple of key saves.
SPECIAL TEAMS
When you go 0-for-5 on the power play, including failing to score on both a five-minute and a four-minute man advantage, it’s going to be a rough night for you. And that’s exactly what this was for the Devils.
On the flip side, not only did the Rangers gain momentum by preventing the Devils from scoring on those extended power plays, but they also scored a power-play goal of their own. And once again, this is not a one-time thing.
While both teams have seen their power plays struggle of late, the Rangers have always been able to rely on their steady penalty kill. That’s not something the Devils have had the luxury of having. When both of your special teams struggle it can make life very difficult and wins hard to come by.
CONCLUSION
Lindy Ruff’s quote pre-game made it seem like both teams would have a little extra in the tank for this contest. However, only the Rangers showed that “extra” spark.
The Devils were far from a “flat” team. But they didn’t get to the “dirty” areas and didn’t play a hard enough game against their bitter rivals.
If New Jersey is going to turn its season around and make a late push for the playoffs, it has to start now. The Garden Staters have to learn from this game and make the appropriate changes to how they play, otherwise, last year’s playoff appearance will seem like an aberration, rather than a portent of things to come.
