The New Jersey Devils scored a goal on one of the craziest sequences of the 2018-19 season. With all of its stars on the ice, a team effort turns a 3-2 lead into a 4-1 lead.
I’ll go out on a limb and say the New Jersey Devils scored the craziest goal of the season so far on Friday night. Just watch this sequence:
This entire sequence... WAS MADNESS. https://t.co/Yb7vCMEYjV
— NHL (@NHL) December 22, 2018
That’s the best word for what you just watched: madness. The Devils were an inch away for seeing their lead cut in half, something we’ve seen before this season which snowballs into a loss. Yet, despite how things have gone this season, the stars proved themselves on this one play.
It all started with Sami Vatanen. Keith Kinkaid watched as a puck deflected off a player, and right to Brady Tkachuck, who’s having a very good season as a rookie. His eyes must have been as big as dinner plates when he saw all the real estate there was in net for him to shoot on. However, Vatanen wasn’t having it.
He put his stick in there, deflected the puck away somehow, him and Nico Hischier dove, and kept the puck out of the net.
Then, Hischier made an extremely smart move. He pushed the puck away from the net. He could have tried to get it to Keith Kinkaid to cover it up, but with all the Ottawa Senators on the net trying to push it past the line, it made much more sense to push the puck out of harm’s way.
The puck went to Mark Stone, but Kyle Palmieri was able to poke the puck away from him. He pushed the puck to himself to put him off to the races. He raced towards net, but he was not alone.
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Taylor Hall absolutely flew past Dylan DeMelo to make it a two on zero against Craig Anderson. This might have put the Devils in a situation they’ve seen before, where they made the pass on a 2-on-1 where they should have shot, but this wasn’t that same situation.
Palmieri put a perfect pass on Hall’s stick, and he put it home for the 4-1 lead. It was amazing. It was nothing short of miraculous. That goal shows that the Devils have a core to make things happen in the future.
How can one goal bring optimism? It showed so many things from this one five-person line. It showed how good Vatanen can be at keeping pucks out his own net. Hischier proved he’s willing to make the dirty plays that don’t show up on the score sheet. Palmieri had great instincts to push the puck with his hand when it got stuck on an errant glove on the ice. Hall used his speed to get into the play.
It’s really hard for teams to get a top line like this, and it’s much easier to fill out secondary scoring than it is to get top-line scoring. Sure, the Devils season has been bad with these things, but this one goal proves what this team can do with a few changes. Steve Santini didn’t even get a mention, but he’s been good since slotting into the lineup and he was a part of this play.
This one goal doesn’t get the Devils back in the race. The Metropolitan Division had a really good week, pushing the Devils to nine points out of a playoff spot. However, this one goal can change a team’s mindset in an instant. Things were so bad, but now we can just focus on this one play. The future is still bright, even in a lost season. When things get bad, just come back here and watch this play over and over again.