New Jersey Devils End Road Trip On A Winning Note
The New Jersey Devils beat the Vancouver Canucks to end their five-game road trip. This win secured a winning record on this trip.
The New Jersey Devils lost two games in a row after winning two in a row to starts a long road trip. Wins against the Winnipeg Jets and Carolina Hurricanes were immediately followed by losses to the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. This game against the Vancouver Canucks was going to decide if this road trip was going to be a winning one or a losing one.
They earned a gutsy win over the Canucks on the back of goals from Wayne Simmonds and Jesper Bratt. They also had outstanding goaltending from MacKenzie Blackwood, whose only blemish was a power-play goal by Brock Boeser, one of the best young snipers in the league. The team effort got them just enough in order to make it a winning trip, and now they head back home to the Prudential Center.
If you were to ask most people if they would take six points and a 3-2-0 record from a daunting road trip that included lots of travel, they would say yes. It had many flaws, but there were some good things that allowed them to have that amount of wins. They also outplayed the Oilers and kept Connor McDavid relatively quiet, but they had no finish and it ended in a 4-0 loss. It would be nice if they start to win all the games that they play better than their opponent but sometimes it just doesn’t fall that way.
There are plenty of guys who should be feeling good about their games after this trip. Taylor Hall had a point in every game on the trip except the 4-0 shutout loss in Edmonton. Jack Hughes looks confident whenever he has the puck now and he has the ability to make others around him better, especially when he is on the top line with Taylor Hall and Kyle Palmieri. They need to make sure this line is always cooking if they are going to continue to have some success scoring goals.
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The Devils are finally coming home. They have two straight in Newark, starting on Wednesday night when the Ottawa Senators come to town. The Senators have been having a rough go of it since they were one goal away from reaching the Stanley Cup Final in 2017. The Devils need to have a strong game against them because it only gets harder from there to close out November. It was good to have a winning road trip, but there are still a lot of things to work on going forward.