The New Jersey Devils are expected to be a much better team in 2022-23 as the last decade has mostly been spent losing. On the flip side, the Philadelphia Flyers are expected to be amongst the worst in the league.
That is why the loss that New Jersey took to Philly in their opening game was a bit stunning. It was a sloppy game for the Devils in the early portions of the game and they waited way too long to start playing the right way. By the time they started to look better, it was too late.
It started out well for the Devils as Alexander Holtz scored his first career NHL goal. From there, however, the Flyers scored four unanswered goals before New Jersey finally made it 4-2. An empty net goal was added for Philly and they took the 5-2 victory.
Again, it was a bad loss for the Devils as they should be able to beat the Flyers out of the gate. It is also game number one and this team has a long way to go before anyone can have too high of expectations of them anyway.
There is one thing for them to take away from this game and build on. It is the fact that they were a much better team in the latter stages of the third period. After the Flyers opened the third period with a power play goal 1:31 in, it was pretty much all Devils from there.
New Jersey outshot the Flyers 37-25 in the game too which is mostly because they dominated play in the third period. Carter Hart made some big saves to keep New Jersey away from tying it up.
The New Jersey Devils have a lot of things to learn from their first game this year.
If they weren’t so bad defensively early in the game, they would have never needed to beat a red-hot Carter Hart late. That means that going into the next game, they can be better at trying to emulate what went right for them in this opening game against the Flyers.
We don’t know if this is another “same old Devils” kind of year but things looked better at the end of the game. Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt (who needs more ice time), and the other top scorers on this team certainly had their chances but they need to bury them going forward.
Getting Nico Hischier back should also provide a boost as they look for that vaunted first win of the season this weekend. The next crack at it will come on Saturday night when they host the Detroit Red Wings in the home opener.