What an immensely frustrating night.

Searching for their first winning streak of four or more games in two seasons, the Devils welcomed the lowly San Jose Sharks to town. There’s a little talent on their roster, but make no mistake, this is a very bad team. On the eve of a road trip that will feature a significant step up in competition, it was important that the Devils got a positive result against arguably the worst team in the league. That didn’t happen, as New Jersey failed to solve former Devil Mackenzie Blackwood in a 1-0 loss to the Sharks.

Any Devils fan who watched Blackwood in his five seasons in New Jersey knows that he is capable of breathtaking goaltending in both good AND bad ways. His time in the Garden State was mostly negative, with plenty of outings that featured horrific rebound control, embarrassingly soft goals against, generationally bad puck handling, and just so many games in which he failed his team in a big way. But the reason he kept getting so many chances in New Jersey was because he was also capable of games like tonight: a 44-save shutout. His rebound control was great, his puck tracking was on point, and his poise was unshakable. Based on his overall track record, it was more likely that the Devils would see the bad version of Blackwood tonight, but instead they got the good version. According to Natural Stat Trick, Blackwood saved 4.12 Goals Above Expected in all situations tonight, a truly remarkable number. After Blackwood found ways to “lead” the Devils to so many losses in his time here, he found a way to lead his old team to yet another loss.

Meanwhile, how did the lone goal of the game happen? Was it a tremendous display of skill from this past draft’s number one overall pick, Macklin Celebrini? Was it a rocket off the stick of former Devil, Tyler Toffoli? Was it a terrific passing play featuring another former Devil, Fabian Zetterlund?

Was it in any way a normal goal?

No, it was not.

A random fling of the puck off the shinpads of Timo Meier somehow bounced into the back of the New Jersey net. That was the only puck that got past Jake Allen, who was pretty great himself tonight. If there’s one positive to take from this game, it’s the continued strong play of Allen, who stopped 26 of 27 shots he faced, though it really is hard to fault him for the one “shot” that eluded him.

And aside from the goaltending and the one lucky bounce, the Devils sunk themselves with generally sloppy play. I did not think the energy level was a problem, to my admittedly untrained eye New Jersey had their legs. The problem was a severe lack of crispness. Passes off the mark, passes not handled cleanly, shots fanned on, shots passed up on (looking at you, Dawson Mercer), breakdowns in communication, losing board battles, and on and on and on. I know this was the second half of a back-to-back (more on that in a bit) but the seeming fatigue on display tonight was concerning. Again, I thought the compete the Devils showed was fine. But while the weariness didn’t show up in the effort level, it showed up in the sharpness of their play. They’re lucky they played a bottom feeder, otherwise we could have been looking at way more lopsided of a final score.

As stated, this was an immensely frustrating night. Blackwood coming out on the right side of his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act, when it was more likely he would do the opposite, was frustrating. The one goal the Sharks scored being a result of extreme luck was frustrating. The insane lack of crispness from the Devils skaters was frustrating. New Jersey getting a late power play, peppering Blackwood with shots, but failing to get anything past him in both 6-on-4 and 6-on-5 situations, was frustrating.

And a 1-0 loss to one of the worst teams in the league is as frustrating as it gets.

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

Grain Of Salt

I usually like incorporating advanced stats into these recaps, as while they aren’t perfect, they generally do a solid job of capturing who played well and who played poorly on any given night. But this is one of the rare games where I feel like the numbers just won’t tell the story of the evening. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Devils controlled play at 5-on-5 with an Expected Goals For% of 57.78%. Meanwhile more Devils than not were on the right side of 50% xGF% at 5-on-5, with only the Nico Hischier line and Luke Hughes-Brett Pesce pairing having particularly poor nights per the fancy numbers. And on the flip side of the coin, there were five Devils above 90%: The entire third line, plus Tomas Tatar and, incredibly, Kurtis MacDermid.

But honestly, I’m not putting too much stock into these numbers tonight. The advanced stats and lopsided shot total don’t tell the story to me. San Jose parked the bus in the third period, and the Devils got to inflate their numbers as a result. Even Blackwood, who genuinely played great this evening, was not tested nearly as much as the final stats would indicate. The numbers would tell you the Devils played well tonight. They really did not.

The Search Goes On

As mentioned near the start, the Devils missed out on reaching four straight wins tonight. It has been a frankly unacceptable amount of time since New Jersey put together a winning streak of four or more games. You have to go all the way back to a five-game winning streak from January 7th-16th, 2023 to find the last time it happened. You know who the fifth and final victory in that streak happened against? Yup, the San Jose Sharks. It would’ve been fitting for the Devils to beat the Sharks to end the drought tonight.

But it wasn’t meant to be. At this point it’s getting ridiculous. I have no doubt that the New Jersey Devils franchise will experience a winning streak of four or more games again at some point, but the fact that it hasn’t happened in almost two calendar years is insane. It’s not like we’re talking about an eight-game winning streak or something, we’re talking about a four-game heater, a very modest goal.

The Devils schedule gets very difficult after tonight. They draw the Florida Panthers on Tuesday and Thursday this coming week, both on the road (yes, really), then games against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes, and the surprisingly stellar Washington Capitals follow. I can’t fathom New Jersey putting together four or more wins during that stretch, so they really missed their chance tonight.

Same Old Story

One of the big storylines from last season was the Devils’ ineptitude in the second half of back-to-backs. New Jersey played 16 back-to-backs in 2023-24, and they went a dismal 3-11-2 in the second half of those situations. That’s eight out of a possible 32 points, which is genuinely hard to do.

Fast forward to this season, and the results haven’t been much better. Thanks to tonight’s loss, the Devils are now 1-2-1 in the second half of back-to-backs, which translates to three out of a possible eight points. New Jersey actually won their first second-half B2B of the year, which took place in their season-opening Prague games against the Buffalo Sabres. That means the Devils are winless in their last three tries.

New Jersey always gets saddled with a ton of back-to-backs thanks to their geographical placement. They need to figure out how to not be terrible when playing for the second night in a row, and fast. Otherwise it could tank their season just like it did last year.

Added Responsibility

Take a look at this tweet from this evening:

Sheldon Keefe has been deploying Jack Hughes in defensive situations far, far more than any other coach Hughes has had at the NHL level. Hughes was out defending a one-goal lead against Montreal with the Canadiens’ net pulled last game, and here he is logging notable shorthanded minutes tonight.

The entire team defense has been worlds better this season than it was at any point under Lindy Ruff in 2023-24, and Hughes is certainly a part of that. I’m not trying to tell you he’s Patrice Bergeron all of a sudden, but Hughes’ boosted commitment to defense has been noticeable. Credit to both Hughes for putting in that work, and Keefe for coaching him up on the defensive side of the game and trusting him in those situations.

Next Time Out

New Jersey hits the road for a road trip through Florida. Their first game on the trip is a meeting with the Panthers on Tuesday. Puck drop is scheduled for 7:30pm ET.

Your Take

What do you make of tonight’s game? Are you as frustrated as I am at the result and the lack of sharpness? What do you think of Hughes’ newfound defensive game? What are you expecting on the upcoming road trip? As always, thanks for reading.