New Jersey Devils Fall Short in a Crazy Game Against Wild

After beating the Tampa Bay Lightning, the New Jersey Devils came home to face the Minnesota Wild. For the Wild, right now, they’re tied for 4th in goals with the Anaheim Ducks. Minnesota has a lot of scoring power on their team. Kirill Kaprisov is continuing to shine like a star for the Wild, scoring 18 points. For the Devils, we saw Yegor Sharangovich having himself a game which led to the comeback against the Lightning this past Saturday.

Late Bus Plus Bad Luck Equals Horrifying Results

Perhaps the most bizarre moment of this game happened before the puck dropped. When the Wild were on their way to the Prudential Center, they hit significant traffic coming out of the Holland Tunnel. While we all have experienced important traffic issues before in Newark, it turns out the Wild weren’t staying in a Newark hotel. The Wild we’re staying in a hotel closer to Manhattan, and we all know how awful traffic is there. Because of the traffic, they had to push the puck drop back to 7:38.

Usually, hockey is an unpredictable game. You can have a team trying to apply pressure to score one goal. Other times, they find their opponents get a couple of rushes, and a goal gets scored easily. That is what exactly happened with the Devils in the first period tonight against the Wild. Twelve minutes just passed by in the first period, and the Devils have a chance to score on goalie Cam Talbot. Cam Talbot got every shot despite Andreas Johnsson, Dawson Mercer, Jesper Bratt, Pavel Zacha, and Dougie Hamilton applying pressure. Then the very next chance, the Wild had to shoot in their zone. Once there, they got a goal thanks to Ryan Hartman, who deflected a tip by former Devil Dmitry Kulikov.

 Mark Recchi’s Powerplay Fail On a Whole New Level

We’ve all seen how bad the special teams are. The number of times we saw the powerplay pretty much do nothing while the penalty kill was doing most of the work is frustrating. While it did improve the next couple of weeks slightly, nothing could prepare us for how bad it was tonight. Tonight, the Devils had four powerplays in the entire game. Each time the Devils went on it, they scored 0 goals. To make matters worse, toward the end of the first, the Wild ended up scoring a shorthanded goal. With a rush coming back the other way, Nico Sturm scored the goal on Mackenzie Blackwood on a two on 1 with Frederick Gaudreau.

The backbone of this powerplay came in the third period. After Ryan Dumba tripped P.K. Subban, the Devils had their 4th powerplay of the night. Almost towards the end of the first powerplay, Matt Dumba crosschecks Pavel Zacha, which led to a five on 3. During that five on 3, the Devils didn’t score a single goal on it. The fact that this team cannot score on a two-person advantage is one of the furious issues about the team and the main reason they lost tonight. But despite that, the Devils eventually did tie it up.

The Post Loved Cam Talbot while Sharangovich and Zacha are Clutch.

Something else that was infuriating about last night was how many times the Devils hit the post. Cam Talbot is a great goalie, but even he must acknowledge, the bar was his best friend in this game. If every shot that went off the post went in, the Devils could’ve scored a lot more than two goals Wednesday night. The worst of it came in the third period. The Devils thought the game got tied thanks to a P.K. Subban slapshot. It turned out the puck ended up hitting the post and the crossbar. Even when the post did stop the Devils from scoring, Cam Talbot still managed to block every shot the Devils had in the first two periods.

However, the Devils finally beat Talbot to get their first goal of the game in the third period. With a beautiful pass from Nico Hischier, Pavel Zacha continued to become as clutch as he is and get the Devils on the board. However, the clock was winding down to a minute, and the Devils needed to get a goal fast. Thankfully, Yegor Sharangovich, returning to himself again, scored the tying goal with a nice shot that found itself getting past Talbot.

When both teams went to overtime, they experienced a lot of problems. Despite keeping the puck for the entirety of overtime, the Devils never got the puck in the net. Dougie Hamilton hit another post early, which was the best chance the Devils had. For the Wild, the one chance they had with Kirill Kaprisov. They just sat around waiting for an opportunity until they took one shot that didn’t go in. Of course, it ends up going to a shootout, where Kevin Fiala scores the only goal in the shootout leading to a Wild win. We’ve seemed to be seeing that a lot from this year’s team. It was a brilliant effort from Devils, but those are two points the Devils really could’ve needed there.