Devils Cure-All Recipe For First Win: Roasted Ducks
The catcalls were raining down from the Prudential Center denizens at the end of the first period on Tuesday night after the Devils trudged off to the locker room trailing, 2-0, to lowly Anaheim, an opponent playing its third game in four nights while losing the first two by a grotesque combined score of 13-6.
New Jersey, which dropped 5-2 decisions to Philadelphia and Detroit to open the 2022-23 campaign, seemed destined to lose a third consecutive contest to a team that missed the playoffs last season. Further continuing a trend, the Devils couldn’t put away some glorious scoring opportunities and goalie Mackenzie Blackwood stopped just four of six Anaheim shots on goal.
Not the recipe for securing that elusive first win.
Fortunately, the Ducks were roasted from their trip east. The Devils skated rings around them over the final two periods to pull out a 4-2 victory that, for the moment, staved off some difficult questions, particularly as it related to the status of embattled Head Coach Lindy Ruff’s job.
The Devils registered 15 of the last 18 high danger scoring chances in the final 40 minutes as measured by NaturalStatTrick.com. There were shifts where the Ducks were stuck on the ice for extended stretches before the puck could clear their defensive zone, a scenario often reserved for New Jersey, especially in second periods where you have a long change.
The Devils were bound to eventually sneak some shots past Anaheim goalie Anthony Stolarz, who at times looked like Denis Lemieux from “Slap Shot” as he tried to follow pucks flying at him from all angles. Ondrej Palat and Nico Hischier tallied their first goals of the season in the second period and then Dougie Hamilton broke the tie 33 seconds into the final frame off a gorgeous backhand cross ice feed from Jesper Bratt. Dawson Mercer later added an insurance marker for his first of the year.
Blackwood woke up as well, making some beauteous saves in the second period that kept the Devils within striking range. Sure, he got a little lucky that former Devil Adam Henrique’s breakaway attempt caught iron, but who knows how the game would have played out if he hadn’t come up big and New Jersey had fallen further behind?
A few other notes from the game:
1) The Devils 2021 No. 7 overall draft pick Alexander Holtz played 5:55 in the first period…and then sat on the bench for the remainder of the contest. I checked the advanced metrics—the Devils weren’t getting dominated in those minutes nor was he on the ice for a goal against. Per Ruff, Holtz wasn’t hurt; it was just that he decided to cut down to using just three forward lines. What are we doing here? If the reason Holtz failed to earn at least 10 minutes of ice time for a second straight night is that you don’t trust him to execute the game plan properly, then just send him down to Utica where he can play. Stop messing with his head.
2) The small sample sizes in early season stats can be humorous. Because the Devils have trailed in their first three games and needed to push the pace to attempt to get back into them, some of the individual metrics like Corsi are out of whack. New Jersey boasts the first (Nathan Bastian), second (Fabian Zetterlund), sixth (Bratt), 10th (Damon Severson), 12th (Yegor Sharangovich), 13th (Erik Haula), and 16th (Hamilton) highest Corsi for percentages in the league. Expect a severe regression to the mean when the Devils start to face tougher opponents. Of course, the only numbers that matter are: 1 win, 2 losses.
3) When Ducks forward Jakob Silfverberg faces the Devils, he morphs into Alex Ovechkin. With his two goals on Tuesday, Silfverberg is now up to 11 goals and three assists in 16 games against New Jersey over his 11-year career. This is a guy who has reached 20 goals in a season just four times, with a high of 24. Sometimes a player just has a particular opponent’s number.