After Saturday night’s comeback win against the Islanders, the New Jersey Devils seemed to be riding high into Sunday night's matchup against the San Jose Sharks. However, the team and the game we all saw tonight looked terrible effort-wise. They did shoot 44 shots, but I wanted to talk about how they lost this game.
The first two periods didn’t see many shots by the Devils at all. While the Shark’s defense deserves credit, it’s still a very young core that the Devils should try to take advantage of. They didn’t show that whatsoever. The overabundance of passing when they needed to take shots in certain situations led to a shutout loss to former Devils goalie Mackenzie Blackwood. The first two periods showed this exact scenario.
In the first period, after the Devils had killed a Sharks powerplay, Brendon Dillion took a step, and Dawson Mercer made an excellent passing play for Dillion. However, instead of shooting the puck, Dillion tried to make a backdoor pass back to Mercer, which Jack Thompson easily broke up.
In the second period, on the first powerplay of the game for the Devils, with under 30 seconds left, the powerplay combination of Luke Hughes, Erik Haula, and Dawson Mercer just kept skating it around and making passes until Haula tried to pass it again before it was broken up. With just under 10 minutes to go in the 2nd period, the Devils spent about 2:30 in the offensive zone going in and out trying to get a shot off; the entire team on every line just skated around trying to make passes when they should’ve shot the puck. The crowd got so restless and infuriated that the Devils did not shoot the puck that they started a “shoot the puck” chant.
It also didn’t help that the only goal from the game scored by the Sharks was an own goal by Timo Meier. On a chance by Nico Sturm with 3:46 left to go, Sturm lost the puck, but when he got it back, he tried to throw back the puck, and it bounced off Timo Meier’s skate and into the net.
While the 3rd period was the best chance the Devils had all game to try and get a goal, Mackenzie Blackwood looked very comfortable and didn’t seem fazed by the Devil’s attack even once in the entire game. They had their chances late, too, but couldn’t get one by. The game came down to the players' decisions not to shoot the puck when needed, and there was very little pressure until they had to ramp it up. It’s a game the Devils could’ve won easily, but these games need to be thrown out quickly, and they have to go back to what worked because the schedule will only get more challenging as they play the Panthers on Tuesday.