New Jersey Devils Season Ends With A Rough Game Against Lightning
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils have been eliminated in five games against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Their final game of the season did not breed much excitement for Devils fans.
The New Jersey Devils scored with about three minutes to go in the third period, while down two goals to the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was a great shot from the point off the stick of Kyle Palmieri. It was just about the only big play made by a Devils player not named Cory Schneider on Saturday afternoon.
The Devils season is now over, so there’s not much else to say about what transpired. However, it was sad to see the Devils performance with their season on the line.
Schneider was the only reason the Devils had any shot at all to even make a comeback. If a lesser goalie was in the net, this could have easily been a 5-0 game in the third period.
The Devils didn’t do much in the first period, despite leading 11-10 in shots. Most of their shots hit the chest or the leg pads of Andrei Vasilevskiy. Not sure the actual stats, but outside Jesper Bratt‘s shot that hit him in the shoulder, nothing looked like a high-danger chance.
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The second period, the Devils were on the penalty kill for a majority of the time. They took five penalties in the period, one they killed off in the third. Schneider was great, and the penalty killers were able to get a chance here and there. Outside of that, Tampa just swallowed up the Devils.
It seems like a lot of the Devils just ran out of steam. Taylor Hall carried this team for a majority of the season. After still taking over in the first three games, Tampa seemed to figure him out in the last two. Pavel Zacha‘s line was invisible for much of the game, as they also just could produce chances. Marcus Johansson was good at zone entries, but when it came time to shoot he only got two on goal.
The Devils were the inferior team. Tampa is built to win today. New Jersey’s built to win tomorrow. It’s hard to be really disappointed, since almost nobody picked the Devils to even sniff the playoffs. More people picked Arizona to make the playoffs rather than our Devils. So, this season was great, we just all wished it would have ended with a much better game for fans.