New Jersey Devils: Losing Sami Vatanen Could Be A Death Blow

The New Jersey Devils lost their top defenseman Sami Vatanen in their game four loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. If he’s going to miss games, it will be near impossible to win this series.

The New Jersey Devils lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning in game four of the Eastern Conference first-round series. However, it was still not the biggest loss of the night. The Devils lost defenseman Sami Vatanen after a blow to the head from Nikita Kucherov.

Say what you will about the hit, we’ll let the NHL Department of Player Safety deal with that, but losing Vatanen for any amount of time could be the end of the Devils.

Would the Devils have a chance to beat the Lightning in game five if Vatanen can’t play? Of course. They held the Lightning without a goal until they scored on an empty net with 90 seconds to go. Clearly, this team learned how to stop the Lightning at least in the short term.

It’s still hard to fathom what this defense looks like without Vatanen. Andy Greene, who’s played ridiculously better since he was paired with Vatanen, now has to anchor a line with a much lesser defenseman. He had a very bad game in game two, and now he may not have Vatanen to bail him out. He may even get paired with Ben Lovejoy, who was a disastrous pairing last season.

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The Devils will have to make pairings with Greene, Lovejoy, Will Butcher, Damon Severson, John Moore and likely Mirco Mueller. Who’s a defenseman there that you have any confidence in? Obviously, Butcher has been very good this season. He’s grown tenfold, but he’s still a rookie who has been given very favorable matchups. The rest have not shown anything of substance to step into Vatanen’s role.

We can be optimistic about Vatanen’s injury. We’re still waiting on what exactly happened. It’s possible that maybe it was a hit to the chest and he didn’t get a head injury.

The truth is, that’s not likely. Kucherov rode up Vatanen’s chest to hit him in the chin. His head snapped back, and he left the ice almost immediately. Don’t expect to see Vatanen back for game five, and expect the Devils to struggle mightily to replace him.