With about seven minutes left in the second period, with the New Jersey Devils trailing 3-2, play-by-play man Don LaGreca made a comment about how you could hear a pin drop in the Prudential Center. New Jersey had stormed out to a 2-0 lead after the first period (the first time they’ve led by two goals after one in about two-and-a-half months), but three quick strikes by the Los Angeles Kings had indeed sapped the life out of the crowd at The Rock. It was almost the perfect encapsulation of the night, but a strong third period helped reignite the crowd and saved the Devils in a 6-4 win over the Kings on Saturday night.
There are a few big storylines from this evening’s contest, but the biggest one for the Devils was Nico Hischier. The captain didn’t have his fastball as far as driving play tonight, with a 5-on-5 Expected Goals For% around 37% per Natural Stat Trick (though let’s put a pin in that for later), but what he lacked in play-driving he made up for in production. Hischier registered four points tonight, two goals and two assists. His second goal gave the Devils the lead midway through the third period, his first assist gave them the lead again on Jack Hughes’ PPG late in the final frame, and his second assist sealed the deal on Timo Meier’s empty-net tally. He was in the right place at the right time in the most important moments of this contest, and he was the biggest reason why the Devils skated away with two points.
Another major storyline was Jake Allen reemerging from his bewildering, coach-imposed winter hibernation. Prior to this evening’s contest, the last time Allen played a game was in the 2-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on February 25. Jacob Markstrom had started seven consecutive games, including – for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend – both ends of a back-to-back twice in a row earlier this month. Goalies playing both games in a back-to-back is like being struck by lightning. Doing it twice in one season is like winning the lottery. Doing it twice in the span of five days is like being struck by lightning while winning the lottery. I think you get the point: Allen played for the first time in a while. And he sure looked like it too! He allowed four goals on 31 shots, good for a paltry .871 save percentage. The advanced stats are a little kinder to Allen, as Los Angeles posted 3.87 xGF in all situations tonight, meaning Allen basically broke even in that metric. But those numbers aside, I don’t think anyone would argue that Allen looked particularly sharp this evening. The lowlight was Anze Kopitar’s second power play goal, which might be the softest goal I’ve seen a Devils netminder give up this season, which is saying something. Allen didn’t play well, but he was put in an impossible situation by his coach, and he didn’t receive much help from the team in front of him tonight. So I won’t be too hard on Allen, I’ll simply leave it at this: he was set up to fail and he couldn’t rise above his circumstances. Hopefully it won’t be another three-and-a-half weeks until we see him again.
The last major storyline to me was the play of the third line. Cody Glass, Arseny Gritsyuk, and Lenni Hameenaho played a very strong game together. The numbers at NST don’t jump off the page (an xGF% a shade below 43 in 10:34 of ice time together), but they were among the strongest play-drivers for New Jersey tonight. And of course, they provided two of the Devils’ goals, with Gritsyuk making a sweet pass to Glass for a one-time goal in the first, and then Hameenaho and Gritsyuk combining for one of the prettier goals of the season:
Why yes, that IS a Hameenaho toe-drag past Mikey Anderson and a Gritsyuk baseball-style goal on the other end, thank you very much.
This line really was terrific this evening. Hockey Stat Cards had them as the three highest-graded Devils forwards of the night, which makes perfect sense to me (yes, even over Hischier, who is virtually tied for third anyway). All three players have been revelations for New Jersey this season, even as the rest of the team around them has sunk like a stone. As we enter the home stretch of the campaign, seeing Glass, Gritsyuk, and Hamneenaho thrive, separately or together, would give me hope for the future.
There were plenty of negatives from tonight’s game, one of which we already went over in Allen. But aside from that, there was also Johnny Kovacevic continuing to look absolutely lost on the ice. And while I’m sympathetic to the argument that he’s not fully recovered from his knee injury, I still have very little confidence that he will provide positive value over the life of that moronic extension that Tom Fitzgerald signed him to. Brenden Dillon followed Kovacevic’s lead with a terrible game of his own, leading me to once again wish more than anything that the defensive defensemen who can’t even play defense anyway are somehow jettisoned from this roster over the summer. Jonas Siegenthaler suffered a pretty nasty gash on his face after going hard into the boards in the second period, though thankfully he stayed in the game. Production from Hischier aside, the top six looked pretty awful for most of the night at 5-on-5. And second periods once again plague the Devils.
But for all the negatives, they managed to scrap together just enough positives to win a game. When LaGreca made his comment about how dead The Rock sounded in the second period, I was utterly convinced the Devils were going to lose. Thankfully they proved me wrong, and while one win over a mediocre Kings team playing the second half of a back-to-back in the middle of a cross-country trip does not inspire a ton of confidence in me, New Jersey needs points however they can get them. It is still almost certainly too little too late, but at least for tonight, they flashed potential and lived to fight another day.
The Game Stats: The NHL.com Game Summary | The NHL.com Event Summary | The NHL.com Play by Play Log | The NHL.com Shot Summary | The Natural Stat Trick Game Stats
The Game Highlights:Courtesy of NHL.com
Sometimes, Life Just Isn’t Fair
Thanks to tonight’s regulation win, the Devils now have 68 points and 33 wins in 66 games this season. Meanwhile the Kings now have 69 points and 27 wins, also in 66 contests. The difference? In the Eastern Conference, the Devils are 11 points back of a playoff spot as of this writing (Detroit lost in overtime and Pittsburgh is still in action as I write this, so New Jersey could be as many as 12 points back by the end of the night). As for the Kings…they are a single point back of a playoff spot in the Western Conference.
Only one more point, and, incredibly, six fewer wins. Yet the Kings are in infinitely better shape to get into the postseason this year than the Devils. This is not to excuse New Jersey, they deserve their fate. It’s just something that I thought would be morbidly hilarious to point out.
The Good Ol’ Line Blender
Obviously I can’t pay close attention to all 32 teams in the NHL. But even still, I have a hard time believing there is another franchise out there that is less creative and bold than the Devils. They are led by Tom Fitzgerald, a general manager who is scared of his own shadow and is completely incapable of thinking anywhere close to outside the box. There’s also Sheldon Keefe, who still coaches like it’s the Dead Puck Era, rips his team constantly without accepting any blame himself, and has completely and totally lost the locker room with how stale his tactics and “motivational” methods are. These two men are some of the dullest hockey minds I have seen in positions of authority in a long time.
Which is why it was so refreshing to finally see even a modicum of creativity in the third period of this game. After a truly terrible second period, Keefe decided to switch Hischier and Hughes in the top six. Hughes started the game with Jesper Bratt and Connor Brown, while Hischier centered Meier and Dawson Mercer. Neither line was working, so Keefe flipped his two centers in an attempt to create a spark.
Did it work? In Hischier’s case it was an emphatic YES. With Meier and Mercer, his line had combined for a 41% xGF%, but once he slotted in with Bratt and Brown, that trio dominated to the tune of a 100 xGF%. That’s not a typo, they really did post a clean sweep of Expected Goals against the Kings. Granted, they were only together for 2:45, a small sample size. But it was worlds better than what the Devils were doing previously with Hischier, so I for one would like to see more of this line in future games.
As for Hughes, the results were more mixed. In 6:40 together, Hughes, Bratt, and Brown were shockingly bad, with a pathetic 8.11 xGF%. For some reason Natural Stat Trick does not give us the numbers for the specific line of Meier-Hughes-Mercer, but in 5:40 with Meier, Hughes posted an xGF% of 41.62, and in 4:43 with Mercer, Hughes posted an xGF% of 43.77. So we can extrapolate from those numbers that, while the new-look Hughes line still didn’t look outright good, they performed significantly better than Hughes’ old line.
Again, it’s almost certainly too little too late, especially for Fitzgerald and Keefe who I still have zero confidence in anymore. But at the very least, it was nice to see some effort made to show some creativity and fix a problem.
A New Benchmark
With his goal tonight, Cody Glass now has a new career-high for goals in a season with 15. His previous career-high of 14 was set in 2022-23 with the Nashville Predators, which was also the only other time Glass has scored double-digit goals in a season. For as much as I have criticized general manager Tom Fitzgerald, I have to give credit where credit is due: His trade for, and subsequent re-signing of, Cody Glass has been an exceptional move. I’m still not ready to anoint him as part of the core, but Glass has proven that he has the potential to be an important piece of a contending team.
Kopitar Passes Dionne
I mentioned Kopitar’s two power play goals, and unfortunately for the Devils, those markers included a historical note to them. The lifelong King entered tonight’s game with 1,306 points, one behind the great Marcel Dionne for the most all-time in Los Angeles franchise history. His PPG in the second period drew him even with Dionne, and he quickly passed him with his second goal in the third. The entire Kings team emptied the bench to congratulate him on the achievement.
Of course it had to be against the Devils, right? For New Jersey fans old enough to remember, Kopitar was one of the main villains of the 2012 Stanley Cup Final, scoring the overtime winner in game one at The Rock (not so fun fact: I was in the building for that game. I’ll never forget it). So of course he made the Devils and their fans suffer the indignity of creating more history against them 14 years later in his final season. And once again on New Jersey ice.
The Devils have had a horrible, pathetic, embarrassing season, and so they deserved to have Kopitar rub their noses in it one last time. I suppose the silver lining is that New Jersey won the game anyway. Small comfort in a season as maddening as this.
They’re Calling It “The Monochrome Matchup”
With the Los Angeles Kings, a team whose primary colors are black and white, in town, the New Jersey Devils decided to go with their black Jersey jerseys tonight. I’m still deciding whether I loved or hated how colorless the matchup was, but either way it was certainly a choice.
Next Time Out
The Devils wrap up their seven-game homestand on Monday when they host the Boston Bruins. Puck drop is scheduled for 7:00pm.
Your Take
What did you make of tonight’s game? Did the third line impress you as much as it impressed me? Do you also want to see these new-look top six lines continue on together? What did you make of Jake Allen’s return to game action? As always, thanks for reading!