New Jersey Devils: Lightning Beat Devils In One Major Area

The New Jersey Devils came out flat in their first playoff game in six years, however it seems closer than it looked. The Devils need to fix one area of their game to make this series even closer.

We have New Jersey Devils hockey in the postseason. Taylor Hall scored his first ever goal in the Stanley Cup Playoffs on a beautiful steal and shoot in the Lightning defensive zone. In the third period, he turned a three-goal deficit into a one-goal deficit when he threw a pass off Travis Zajac’s stick that he tipped passed Andrei Vasilevskiy.

That’s about where the positives end for the Devils.

It’s wasn’t the best performance by New Jersey, but it’s not too unexpected. The Devils never really did well with extra rest. After a bye week against the Philadelphia Flyers in January, the Devils lost 5-3. However, immediately after that game they went on a run.

Looking at this game from afar, it looks like a dominating performance by the Lightning. However, if the Devils can do one thing much better, this series can turn around in one game.

That’s passing. The Devils passing was basically awful for most of the game. Outlet passes were the worst of them all.

Just look at how good the passing was for the Lightning in the first period. Both of their goals came off great passes. The first goal, Tyler Johnson put a perfect pass onto the stick of Ondrej Palat. He was rushing in the middle of the Devils defense, and a pass being off by a few inches either allows Hall to poke check it away or could knock Palat off balance. However, it was perfect.

Just four minutes later, Lightning passes came back into effect. This time, Palat and Johnson traded places. It started with Mirco Mueller unable to get a pass off from behind the net, turning the puck over, then a perfect centering pass to Johnson who does not miss from a foot in front of Keith Kinkaid.

It was clear that a combination of nerves and rustiness took out the Devils early. They weren’t able to get crisp passes out of the zone. When passing across lines, the Devils either sent it too hard and the receiving player couldn’t control it, or the pass came the same second a Lightning player was on top of them.

One must give credit to the Lightning. Their forecheck was 2012 Devils level good. They were suffocating, forcing the Devils to make split-second decisions. Knowing a player was about to be in their face, the Devils forced stupid passes that lost them possession.

There was a lot going in the Lightning’s favor. The crowd was rocking for the first game of the playoffs. Those clappers were absolutely awful. Awful. I hate them. I could write 500 words on how much I hate those clappers, but let’s see how game two goes.

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Back to the point, the two Devils goals were directly affected by how the team played passes. One came from Hall jumping a pass from the Lightning and immediately throwing the puck past Vasilevskiy. It gave the Devils a little momentum, and it was a perfectly played turnover. Then, the Devils second goal came off a perfect pass from Hall to Zajac. Hall waited until the perfect time to send a pass near the crease, that Zajac just had to tip into the back of the net.

Besides those two plays, and the team’s first power play, the passing was basically awful. They couldn’t get the puck to the front of the net. Since they couldn’t move the puck inside, Vasilevskiy didn’t have too many hard saves he had to make. He was able to control where the puck landed because a lot of shots came from outside the circle.

It’s one game. We’ve seen worse games from the Devils this season. If the Devils can work through the nerves and get their passing back in check, then this series can flip. This is a seven-game series. Expect the Devils to fight back starting on Saturday.

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