New Jersey Devils: Goaltending Needs To Be Better To Win

The New Jersey Devils played very well against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday night, but they couldn’t get enough saves to win the game.

The New Jersey Devils lost in overtime to the Tampa Bay Lightning. It wasn’t your average game as the Lightning sealed their victory by scoring their seventh goal of the game to win 7-6. It was a monster offensive game except for the fact that the Lightning didn’t really deserve to score seven goals. The Devils dominated them in all facets of the game and still came out with the defeat in overtime. This loss stings as much as every other loss because they blew a multi-goal lead at home once again.

They outshot the Lightning 42-23. The Bolts really had no business winning the game but the Devils couldn’t get a save from Cory Schneider when they needed it most. He let up seven goals on 23 shots and that is simply not good enough. They are going to need him or MacKenzie Blackwood to step up and play better if they want to win. It doesn’t matter how good you are as a team if you can’t get a save, and the Devils couldn’t get a save on Wednesday night.

Cory Schneider was one of the best goalies in the world at one point, but he has not been really good over the last two or three seasons. He has had flashes of his old self, but overall this season has not been good. They need him to be better otherwise he isn’t going to see much time this season as opposed to Blackwood.

The line of Pavel Zacha–Nico Hischier–Jesper Bratt became a thing in this game and it was awesome. Bratt had two goals and Hischier assisted on both of them while Zacha had an assist on one of them. This is a fantastic second line and if they can play like that all season long then they will be a much better team in all three zones. Hischier needed a breakout game offensively and getting two assists is good for him. Once he gets his goal it will be off and running for him so hopefully, a great offensive performance like that won’t be wasted on bad goaltending again.

The defense could be a little better, but in no world should a team have this sort of game offensively and lose. You can argue that if the goaltending was even slightly better they would have won. Now, they will stay home for one more game as the Philadelphia Flyers come to Newark for one last game before they hit the road. October is behind them, so let us hope that November and beyond is much more pleasant as Devils fans.