On the heels of a hard fought shootout win in Vegas, the Devils popped over to Utah and hung on for a close fought win on the heels of strong performances from Connor Brown, Nico Hischier, and Jacob Markstrom. This win puts them back in the top 3 in the division with 41 points, just one point behind the Caps for 2nd.
Since the overall game was relatively low event, below wound up more about some general trends and state of the team and some players. After looking like the wheels were coming off the past few weeks they have steadied the ship a bit, and are now 3-2 in their last five, and are heading home after this quick road trip with 4 points. Their 10-game moving average of xG differential has also crept up past break even, signaling they have been getting the better play of late, albeit scoring still seems like a herculean task.
This game had a good pace and energy early, with both teams trading chances in the first. Utah plays a diet version of Carolina’s stress hockey (credit: Jared), and felt like they were right on top of our guys across all three zones. Led by Keller, Guenther, and Peterka (Baderka? Perdurka?) they were able to generate a ton of speed through the neutral zone and have good active defenseman in Marino (hi Jon), Sergachev, and Durzi.
Markstrom was locked in early with a great cross-crease save on But, and a couple mid-period sprawling saves on Hayton. He made several sturdy saves throughout the game, included one great glove save on a naked Durzi in the 3rd. We need this guy to be competent back there, and aside from the TB debacle where he got pulled he has strung together good starts in Ottawa (3GA), Vancouver (2GA), and now Utah (1GA) – with tonight probably his best start of the season. He finished with 32 saves on 33 shots, and kept us clean through the late 6 on 5 and 6 on 4 in the last 2 minutes.
I love Connor Brown, probably top 2 or 3 ginger in the state of New Jersey. After a little lull in his play after coming back from his injury, he now has 3 goals in the last 4 and is one goal off the team lead. That line of Glass-Brown-Palat has been fantastic of late, and are just a perfect combination of annoying guys to play against. They give you no space, hound the D constantly, and force errors.
This was a great zone entry from Dougie, nice little shimmy shake from Brown to work it down low while Nico fought for real estate in front. Brown finished his route back out the other side, and buries it short side. Handsome gentleman type stuff here:
For the 4th game in a row, we took an early penalty, and for the 3rd time it was Dougie Hamilton with a lazy trip after getting caught flat footed. I wrote this summer how we couldn’t move on from him just yet, largely predicated on what the alternative was, but his offense doesn’t off set his defense anymore (which it consistently has, by a lot, argue with a wall). All of his shooting rates, scoring rates, and chance generation rates have dipped significantly from what had been pretty steady across the past few seasons. He should retroactively get a point tonight (as of now he does not have one) which gives him 1 official assist since coming back from injury. With the emergence of Nemec it’s time we say goodbye. I know a lot of people think we should’ve over the summer but we just couldn’t with the state of the D Corps – and we are still investigating what executive is responsible for that.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Mammoth got on the board first on the subsequent PP, the 1st NHL goal for Daniil But from Durzi. Luke didn’t get enough on a clearance, and after a nice keep by Durzi, he found But left alone in the slot. The return of Pesce is a godsend, because this PK has been a dumpster fire of late, now ranked 28th in the league after starting the season near perfect. Through the month of December it is clicking at 52.2% – that isn’t a typo – just awful stuff. While they have given up a PP goal against the past two games, it has largely looked better, they are challenging on zone entries, clearing the puck with authority and getting in shot lanes. During their roughs stretch they were getting beat because of effort and structure, the past two were off broken plays.
Similarly the power play has been just awful, converting on 1 for their last 21 and 13% in the month of December. Gross. They got a golden chance in the 1st with a 5 on 3 but generated next to nothing except for a few shin bruises for the Mammoth. I get losing Jack is a tough blow, and he is a unicorn dual threat coming downhill on the left flank, but it is just far too static right now. The 5 on 3 was a good distillation of that, they largely stayed still in an umbrella passing around just to bury shots in Utah’s shinguards. One of Jack’s other talents is creating shooting and passing lanes through motion, and the rest of the guys seem to read off him well and it causes massive problems for the opposition PK. The non-Jack related problem is we don’t have any real shooting threats – our 3 best in Jack, Timo and Gritsyuk are on the shelf and Dougie is a shell of himself at the moment. We are putting Ondrej Palat out there on the first unit – that’s pretty bleak. They did find one in the 3rd finally, in a play reminiscent of early last season – with Noesen collecting a rebound and burying one net front. That is the type of goal they’re going to need to manufacture not he power play, get a shot through get a rebound, crash the net. the pretty passing plays aren’t it right now.
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that Crookshank penalty was a bad call. Just a light scrum after a big hit (by DeSimone, miss you buddy) is a nothing burger. Not to be the old man that yells at clouds here, but I have been slowly working through a conspiracy blog about refs, I just feel like we have been on the bad end of some egregious calls more than we haven’t been. I also think that Mercer call in OT against Vegas was awful too, they were jockeying for position on a loose puck, Stone didn’t have it on his stick. I am by no means a blame the ref guy, but something needs to be said about it.
Nico picked up 2 assists tonight, but we need more from him, Bratt and Mercer. These guys are the 1st line right now, and coming into tonight in their last 10 games: Nico had 1 goal and 3 assists, Bratt had 5 pts (1 goal, a throwaway against TB) and Mercer had 1 goal and 3 assists. That is just flat out not good enough from these three. That is also 1 goal for Mercer in his last 18 games, who made some questionable plays tonight and has regressed significantly after a promising start. We need the best players to be our best players. Period.
Gold star if you can call the movie that the title is from.
I didn’t intend for this to just be mostly negative, gutting out 2-1 wins with strong goaltending is not a bad thing. We needed that one. It’s just we can be so much better. It’s also late, these time zones should be abolished.
Let me know what you think! Good? Bad? Ugly?