The New Jersey Devils' season is over. Game 5 of the first round series went to the Carolina Hurricanes in double overtime. The game was just terrible for Devils' fans, as they went from leading the game 3-0 to blowing the lead just a few minutes into the second period. Everything went wrong for about a seven-minute stretch, and it made life impossible for New Jersey on the road.
There is so much we can point out. Jacob Markstrom was amazing in the third period and overtime. Unfortunately, he was making up for his own mistakes. He was dreadful in the second period, giving up terrible goals to both Jackson Blake and a game-tying goal to Andrei Svechnikov on a snap shot with no screen. Markstrom should have had both shots pretty easily.
The story of this game is twofold: the Devils ran out of gas and the referees made life easier for the Hurricanes. We hate talking about officiating, but the referees were awful this game, and it was pretty one sided. There were a few egregious calls, like when they ended a delayed penalty because the referees didn't realize the goalie had been pulled and tried to call an ominous penalty that didn't exist.
We'll skip a few other penalty calls, but the call that ended the game has to be discussed. Dawson Mercer shot the puck up the boards, and his stick hit a Hurricanes player on the follow through. That not only caused a penalty, but it caused a four-minute penalty. The Devils had no chance to survive that.
This is a microcosm of the Devils' season. Honestly, this whole game felt very similar to the Devils' season as a whole. They looked really good to start, but things started to unravel after their first break (like the Christmas break and the first intermission). After some adversity, they started to at least weather the storm (the third period and the time after the 4 Nations break). Then, things just started to look bad (the end of the season and the first overtime).
At the end of the day, the Devils played their heart out. They avoided the sweep and made this series competitive. Sure, they lost in five games. That's going to look bad when looking back at this season, but this is a team that was held together by Scotch tape. Playing as well as they did shows a level of guts we weren't sure they had. This type of tenacity can boil over to other seasons.
If the Devils make the right moves this offseason, and the players they are getting back from injury, it could mean something special for next season.