Sequence That Sent Devils Into All-Star Break On A High Encapsulated Stellar Start To Season
Jack Hughes’ overtime winner at Dallas on Friday night perfectly encapsulated the manner in which the Devils will enter their 10-day All-Star respite.
Well, everyone but Hughes will be off for the full break, as New Jersey’s electric center will be team’s sole representative during next weekend’s All-Star festivities. Hughes tallied goal Nos. 32 and 33 against the Western Conference leaders, with Friday’s game-winner coming just 20 seconds into the extra session.
The sequence had everything that has transformed the Devils from NHL doormats into the league’s surprise team that has a 99% of qualifying for the postseason for the first time since 2018, according to The Athletic’s projections.
It started with a faceoff win by Erik Haula, an offseason trade acquisition with Boston in exchange for underachieving forward Pavel Zacha who has been mostly snakebitten in terms of offensive production this season but comes to the rink every night with the right battle level mindset, even if the results often have had Devils fans smacking their foreheads in frustration, such as when his sliding attempt to block a centering feed by Dallas forward Ty Dellandrea from the left wing corner banked into the Devils’ net off Haula’s skate to give the Stars a 1-0 lead a little more than halfway through the first period.
Still, Haula’s draw back to defenseman Dougie Hamilton was huge, for it allowed the Devils to open the overtime with possession and with their three most dynamic players on the ice after Haula quickly got off, with wing Jesper Bratt joining Hughes up front. Bratt kept himself in proper body position to fend off Dallas’ top defenseman Miro Heiskanen as he entered the offensive zone after receiving a long pass from Hamilton, but then Bratt passed back out to a streaking Hughes, knowing that he had to get back over the blue line to prevent being offside.
Hughes had a bit of a step on Dallas center Tyler Seguin as he bore down to the top of the left circle, but Seguin got a stick on Hughes’ slap shot. Of course, Hughes’ shot stayed on target, only the changeup fooled goalie Jake Oettinger, and the puck found the back of the net to give New Jersey another improbable win in a season chock full of them.
The victory enabled the Devils to head into the break on a high note, which didn’t seem all that likely after they gifted multiple goals in a 6-4 loss at Nashville the previous night. New Jersey (32-13-4) owns the NHL’s third-best record though they are two points behind Carolina for first place in the Metropolitan Division, with the Hurricanes also holding a game in hand.
How did this happen? All of the ingredients detailed in the 20 seconds above made it happen:
1) A killer offseason
Haula’s trade was just an ancillary offseason improvement constructed by Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald, who brought in a handful of players with significant playoff experience to speed up the development of what was a very young team. Defenseman John Marino, before his injury on December 20, was a steadying force and two-time Stanley Cup winning forward Ondrej Palat is just starting to get his legs back on the Devils’ top line after undergoing groin surgery. Most of all, the trade-and-extension of goaltender Vitek Vanecek upgraded an area that had doomed New Jersey to many years of failure. The former Washington netminder stood on his head in Dallas, stopping 33 of 35 shots on goal, to earn his ninth consecutive win. In this stretch, he ranks third among NHL goalies in save percentage and second in goals saved above expected, per NaturalStatTrick.com. Bear in mind that though New Jersey had been darlings in terms of advanced puck possession metrics for much of the season, they haven’t had their “A” game on many nights this month, ranking 26th in both Corsi percentage and expected goals for percentage during Vanecek’s streak, per NST. When a team goes 10-2-2 with those numbers, you always have to credit the goaltending first. And for that, credit Fitzgerald.
2) High Hockey IQ
I’m sure Devils Head Coach Lindy Ruff spends many nights fretting about his club’s “puck management”—which is the term du jour for turning it over to the other team to ignite scoring chances against--but the facts don’t support that high a level of concern. According to NST, the Devils have surrendered the fourth-fewest scoring chances and the fewest high danger scoring chances this season. The difference between this season and last season in number of giveaways and effectiveness in defending the net front areas has been night and day. It has allowed two of the league’s elite puck-movers in Hamilton and Damon Severson to initiate counterattacks with regularity, be it with stretch passes or joining the rush. In Friday’s second period, Hamilton sent Hughes in for his breakaway goal that jump-started the Devils’ second period comeback from 2-0 down. You don’t see those against the Devils all that often (except on Thursday in Nashville), yet those connections are common occurrences with New Jersey’s d-men. Defensive zone execution is never going to be perfect, and there have been times where the Devils have been stuck in survival mode until they could clear the zone, but in general, this team has played smart. And in those 20 seconds in Dallas, they executed the plan perfectly, from Haula’s faceoff win/quick change to Hamilton’s long pass to Bratt’s play at the blue line before finding Hughes.
3) Game-changing speed and skill
If you listen to every opposing coach talk about the Devils, the first remark is always about the team’s ludicrous speed, to borrow from the film “Spaceballs.” When New Jersey can find ways to get to that speed, few teams can stop them, because with players like Hughes, Bratt, and Nico Hischier, their wheels are accompanied by elite skill with the puck on their sticks. Devils wing Miles Wood, who tied Friday’s contest 2:50 after Hughes got the ball rolling in the second period with his first goal in 21 games, is super-fast, but it takes the ability to stop, shift, and start to consistently make game-changing plays. Everyone went gaga, and rightfully so, over Hughes’ incredible zone entry/centering pass while prone to the ice along the right wing wall that put the puck on a tee for Hamilton’s overtime game-winner that beat Vegas, 3-2, on Tuesday night, but lost in the celebration was an incredible effort by Bratt that led to New Jersey’s opening goal about four minutes into he first period. Bratt had generated his own scoring opportunity with one of his patented jitterbug maneuvers going down the right wing, but after it was thwarted, he raced back to disown the puck from Vegas wing Jonathan Marchessault just as he hit the Devils blue line. With a swift curl and pass to Palat, Bratt then sent New Jersey back on the attack. Palat and Hischier worked a give-and-go that ended with Palat beating goalie Logan Thompson from in close. The whole sequence took about 25 seconds, or five seconds more than Friday night’s overtime period.