New Jersey Devils Must Learn To Finish Games
The New Jersey Devils played the Boston Bruins on Thursday night, and there is a glaring problem with these players having an increased role.
The New Jersey Devils lose to the Boston Bruins 5-1. That score makes it look like they got blown out, which is something we specifically didn’t want them to do. The score, however, is not indicative of how the game actually went from beginning to end.
The Devils actually played the Bruins well for the most part and made it hard for them to generate chances early on in the game. After a while, the Brad Marchand–Patrice Bergeron–David Pastrnak line became too much on top of their depth outweighing the Devils depth by a lot. Let’s be clear, the Devils are without Taylor Hall, Nico Hischier, Kyle Palmieri, Sami Vatanen, Miles Wood, among others. That is very hard to make up. You can work very hard, but eventually the talent barrier comes into play as well as the hard work.
The guys the Devils have in the forward lineup right now minus Blake Coleman, need to develop the finishing touch to their offensive game if they want to be everyday contributors on this team. If they do not, they will quickly be career AHLers. A guy like Michael McLeod has played well in every aspect of the game, except offense. Eventually, he is going to have to start scoring a bit more.
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Hopefully, the Devils don’t deal with this many injuries next season, and with a potential top-five pick on the horizon, they could get back to playing competitive hockey. Especially injuries to their key guys like Hall and Hischier. If everyone was healthy, they would not be a draft lottery team. That is why these guys getting their chance need to make something of it because those spots will be much more limited next year.
Guys like Kenny Agostino and Kevin Rooney have made an impact and been noticed, so their chances of sticking with the big squad into next season are more likely than some others. These guys just need to learn how to finish.
A good complimentary bottom six to compliment the big guns is what will be key to success going forward. They already have a few franchise players in place so the depth and defense are what will be improved.
Don’t forget about Pavel Zacha. Lots of people like to call him a bust based on where he was drafted. The ugly truth is that players drafted in the top ten are not guaranteed to be superstars. Zacha is an NHL player which is more than can be said about many of the youngsters currently in the organization. Zacha made a beautiful cross-ice feed to Drew Stafford to get the Devils on the board against the Bruins and he needs to keep that type of good play up.
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The Devils are back in action when the Arizona Coyotes come into the Rock to try and get themselves into the playoffs. This will be a desperate team and it is yet to be seen if there will be some injured players returning to the team by the weekend. This one will be a matinee edition of Devils hockey. Seven games left, let’s roll.