First Period
After the New Jersey Devils got off to a good start in the game, getting the first three shots on goal, Beckett Sennecke blew by Simon Nemec and Dennis Cholowski to beat Jake Allen high. The Anaheim Ducks
took a 1-0 lead less than five minutes into the game on their first shot of the game. Neither of the Devils’ third pair looked very good on this goal against.
The Hischier line had the best response in the next few minutes for the Devils, with both Hischier and Arseny Gritsyuk having great chances to score. On Hischier’s chance, Gritsyuk retrieved the puck below the goal line and backhanded it back out to Hischier for a point-blank shot, but Lukas Dostal made the save. The Devils eventually had something go in their favor when Sennecke was called for holding Jack Hughes, sending the Devils to the power play just after the halfway mark of the first.
Dawson Mercer and Dougie Hamilton were on the first power play with Hischier, Hughes, and Bratt. Hischier lost the first draw and the Devils had to take it from their own end, but Troy Terry quickly got a breakaway after a bad entry by the Devils. Allen made two big stops here, and the Devils continued to have trouble gaining the offensive zone until Bratt was called for offsides at the end of the first minute. The second unit came out, and Luke Hughes started the breakout from their own end after another clear by Anaheim. A shot from Luke Hughes trickled through the crease but was just too far on the other end from Stefan Noesen and rolled wide of the net. At the end of the power play, Gritsyuk got a pass across to Timo Meier for a one-timer, but Dostal made a glove save.
The Ducks took a 2-0 lead when the Devils got hemmed in their own zone after a bad change. Dawson Mercer finally had a chance to clear the puck out, but he passed towards Hischier in the middle, turning it over. Frank Vatrano fired off a one-timer, and the Ducks took the two-goal lead. Right after play resumed, Luke Hughes was called for tripping in the neutral zone, giving the Ducks a chance to put the game away early.
The Devils sent out Glendening, Bratt, Siegenthaler, and Hamilton to start the penalty kill. The Devils got a chance to go the other way early on, but Glendening was unable to feather the pass through to Bratt on a two-on-two rush. Mercer and Hischier came on while Siegenthaler and Hamilton did not change. The Ducks set up low, but Siegenthaler blocked a pass to Kreider. The Ducks went back high until a pass went through Jackson LaCombe to give the Devils a break. Dillon and Nemec changed on with Hughes and Palat to finish the kill, and they did finish the job to keep the score as it was. Luke Hughes sent a blind pass from the corner to the front of the net after he got out of the box, but Jack Hughes was just too late to redirect it into the net.
Second Period
The Devils were hoping for a better second period, but they quickly fell down 3-0 after Timo Meier failed to get the puck out of the defensive zone with a chance on his stick. He tried to push it out again at the blueline, but the Ducks worked it back down to the goal line. Cutter Gauthier just slid it low, and the puck went under Allen’s pad.
Mason McTavish was temporarily sent to the box four and a half minutes into the period when it looked like Timo Meier took a high stick, but it was called back when Brenden Dillon was discovered to have been the one who high sticked Meier. Thus the game stayed at five-on-five. The Devils looked like they had a great chance to end the shutout when Stefan Noesen found Jack Hughes in the middle of the ice on a three-on-two rush, but Jack did not seem to get a great shot off, and it was frozen by Dostal with just a little rebound off of Bratt’s skate that was quickly swallowed back up.
When Allen was tested, the Ducks had some incredible chances. Sennecke was denied on a one-timer in the slot, and Kreider had a big chance after a terrible defensive zone turnover by Simon Nemec. Allen came up big on both occasions, and the Devils stayed somewhat in the game at that point. They ran out of steam as the period went on though, drying up almost entirely as they just tried to survive the end of the period, taking the game towards its merciful end.
Third Period
Down three goals, the Devils still got off to a slow start in the final frame. The third line got their first good chance of the period, as Arseny Gritsyuk split the defense in the neutral zone and went on a two-on-one with Juho Lammikko. Gritsyuk sent the puck across but Dostal stopped Lammikko’s one-timer. On the other end, Ross Johnston got himself a breakaway, and his backhand went off of Allen’s left pad and the post.
Nico Hischier took an elbow from behind into the boards five and a half minutes into the period from Jansen Harkins, and Dawson Mercer immediately jumped in for retribution. Only the retribution was called, and the Ducks went to the power play. The Ducks did not threaten much here until late in the power play, when Jake Allen made a point-blank save on a one-timer. The Devils got the puck up to Mercer out of the box, who slid a pass across to Jack Hughes to make it a 3-1 game with over 12 minutes to play!
The Devils played frantically over the next few minutes, but they had no luck on their chances. Then, they started getting stuck in the neutral and defensive zones again. They finally got back into the offensive zone with five and a half minutes to play, and Dostal froze a weak shot from the boards to give the Devils a stoppage and a faceoff. They did not make good use of it, though, as Chris Kreider got off to a breakaway that was stopped by Allen.
The Devils had the net empty for the last two and a half minutes. They had a perfect chance to score when Lukas Dostal misplayed the puck with Stefan Noesen blocking his attempt at the empty net, and the Devils were unable to score as Dostal scrambled around the crease. The Ducks took it the other way, and Chris Kreider scored the Ducks’ fourth goal of the game, sealing the 4-1 Ducks win.
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
Weak
The Devils all shared in a common weakness today.
Jake Allen really needed to stop two of the three goals he gave up. The shot under the pad was a must-save, and he probably could have had the first shot by Sennecke, as well. This is not to say that Allen played a bad game on the whole (the Devils certainly did their part down the stretch to give him the appearance of good statistics on the night: it could have ended up a 6-1 or 7-1 game), but if he had some of his late-game saves in the first period, the Devils might not have given up halfway through the second period.
That visible decline in skating and connectivity halfway through the game was difficult to watch. Literally at the 30-minute mark, the Ducks started getting chance after chance, which continued until Dawson Mercer went after Jansen Harkins. Once Mercer came out of the box and set up the shutout-breaking goal for Jack Hughes, the Devils flipped a switch and suddenly started playing like it was the first period again. Then a bad decision by Jack Hughes in the defensive zone led to that momentum falling apart, and the Devils skated just like they did in that middle section of the game until they had the empty net.
By then, it is too late to pull a comeback together.
Thankfully, the Devils are no longer on the road after tonight. They have a three-game homestand starting on Thursday, giving them three days of rest, before they have a five-game Eastern Conference road trip. They won’t have to travel for a Western Conference game for a month and a half — their next such game is December 17 against Vegas.
Wasting Time: Cholowski-Nemec Must End
A big step in the right direction, lineup-wise, would be fixing the third pairing. One of Dennis Cholowski and Simon Nemec might need to play, but not necessarily both of them. As a duo tonight, they had a 31.03 CF% and 16.40 xGF% and the goal against on Sennecke’s tally. They had a particularly bad effect on Jack Hughes’s line. When Jack Hughes played with Cholowski (8:03), the Devils were out-attempted 18 to six and outshot eight to three. So, Jack had a 12.44 xGF% with Cholowski on the ice compared to a 60.95 xGF% in the 12:31 he played without Cholowski.
Ethan Edwards is available. The Devils have Colton White. If they really need a left-handed defenseman to play with Nemec, it should not be Dennis Cholowski. It’s one thing to say that the Devils just need to kill some minutes with their third pairing. But when they are actively holding Jack Hughes back from creating offense (especially when already playing from behind), Sheldon Keefe needs to let Tom Fitzgerald that it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Brett Pesce will not be back for another three to five weeks.
Your Thoughts
What did you think of tonight’s game? Did you think the Devils would look this poor? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.
