New Jersey Devils beat the Montreal Canadiens in a battle of the Eastern Conference's best

The New Jersey Devils won a game that they absolutely needed on Thursday night. The Montreal Canadiens are one of the best third-period teams in the league. Yet, they watched as the Devils tied the game with just over a minute left in the game and then won it in overtime.

For the most part, the Devils were in control for most of the game. At the end of the game, they had 60 chances to Montreal’s 42. Many of those chances were on the power play, but they ended the game 0/5 with the man advantage. 

On top of that, Jacob Markstrom was not great again. He allowed three goals, and all three were not exactly superstar attempts. He was good on the high-danger chances, but he left in at least two softies and one strange one that was deflected off a player’s chest. 

The Devils held a 2-1 lead after Ondrej Palat scored his first goal of the season. When he scores, it seems essential that the Devils need to win those games. They held that lead into the third period. 

At least he locked it down at the end, keeping the Devils in the game through the final 10 minutes and into overtime. That gave the Devils a chance to tie it when he was pulled.

1. With a little over a minute left in the game, Timo Meier got to a rebound and lifted it over Jakub Dobes to tie the game. The Devils survived a final flurry, and the game went to overtime.

With the two top teams in the Eastern Conference now going to 3-on-3 overtime, it was essential for each to get ahead. They want to show they are the trend setter in the NHL this season. The winner can stake a claim as the new kid on the block. Whichever team scored in overtime would be the number-one seed in the Eastern Conference as of this night. 

Thanks to Jesper Bratt, the Devils get to take that claim. 

The Devils get two points when they absolutely needed it. We can’t stress it enough. This was a wildly frustrating game. The Devils deserved two points for how they suffocated an incredible Montreal offense and still got chances of their own. Yet, they needed overtime.

Bratt’s breakaway goal off a strip was the play that led to the win, but the process was more than that. They got better games from struggling players like Palat, Simon Nemec, and a returning Cody Glass made huge contributions to the win. Unfortunately, the Devils did lost Dougie Hamilton in the second period, but we don’t want to worry about that until we have to.