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Coleman Scores Two, DeAngelo Scores Three; Devils Fall to Rangers

The Devils finished off their New York tour facing the Rangers at Madison Square Garden tonight, losing 6-3 after falling to the Islanders in overtime on Tuesday.

We’ll get right to the nitty gritty of this one since it was not pretty from the perspective of the Devils.

Jesper Bratt and Jack Hughes remain out with injuries, although according to Erika Wachter of MSG Network, interim head coach Alain Nasreddine said that they are progressing “well” and could return soon. Connor Carrick was again the healthy scratch as the Devils iced the same lineup for the third game in a row.

The goaltending matchup saw Mackenzie Blackwood (minus the four teeth he lost in the Islander game on Tuesday) start for the Devils, making 20 saves on 25 shots for an .800 save percentage. He was pulled after the fifth Ranger goal in favor of Louis Domingue. Domingue, making his return from injury, made 11 stops on a dozen New York shots for a .917 save percentage. The Rangers ended the game with 37 shots.

For the Rangers, they went with rookie Russian goalie Igor Shesterkin. He was actually a teammate of Nikita Gusev’s at SKA Saint Petersburg of the KHL where they won a Gagarin Cup championship together in 2017. He made his first NHL start and got his first NHL win versus the Avalanche earlier in the week for them. Tonight, he made a whopping 46 saves on 49 Devil shots against for a .939 save percentage.

This game was a wild one to begin with. It began 5:42 into the first when Artemi Panarin put New York ahead 1-0. It was a tic-tac-toe passing play where Tony DeAngelo fed Panarin from behind the net and Panarin took a one-timer from the far faceoff dot. He beat Blackwood to give the Rangers the early lead. Adam Fox had the other assist. A lot was to come for DeAngelo tonight as the New Jersey-native had one to remember.

At the 8:06 mark of the first, Kevin Rooney tied things up for the Devils. It came shorthanded while PK Subban was off for interference. Following a offensive zone start, Pavel Zacha pounced on the puck and threw it on net. Rooney crashed in and put the rebound through Shesterkin’s five-hole to end his 33-game scoreless streak and notch his first of the year. It was also the Devils’ fourth shorty of the season.

DeAngelo got that one right back 1:41 later when he snuck in to the top of the slot and took a pass from Mika Zibanejad. He kind of shot it off of the toe of his stick, as Ken Daneyko of MSG Network observed. That led it to kind of flutter in like a knuckleball on Blackwood. It beat him to give the Rangers back the lead at 2-1.

At the 12:16 mark, Chris Kreider scored on the power play to advance the Ranger lead to 3-1. John Hayden was off for interfering with Kaapo Kakko at 11:32 and New York was on the man advantage. This was a weird one as DeAngelo fired a slapper all the way down the rink. It bounced off of the end boards, and Kreider was there to negate the icing. He had snuck behind the Devils’ defense and was now all alone with the puck. He then put it behind Blackwood for his 300th career NHL point. Zibanejad had the secondary assist.

But the Devils got back on the board before the first intermission at 18:10 when Damon Severson took a pass at the Ranger blue line. He then walked the line and got into a position to shoot, firing it in on Shesterkin. Blake Coleman tipped it by him and in to make it 3-2 Rangers. The Devils had come back to cut the lead to one.

It would seem that the Rangers got that one back when Pavel Buchnevich scored on a breakaway with 1:13 left in the first. There was no signal from the referee right away and the red light did not immediately come on. The officials got together and had a look and the replay showed that the puck hit the crossbar, bounced down and out, but never did cross the goal line. The goal was waved off in the first of two big breaks the Devils would receive on the evening.

The second period began with the other big break for New Jersey. 8:56 into the second frame, Severson ripped a shot that Coleman drove to the net on. It was an innocent looking play as Rangers defenseman Jacob Trouba pushed Coleman and the net was dislodged. However, the officials once again got together and looked at a replay from the situation room in Toronto. The call on the ice was no goal, but replay showed that Trouba pushed Coleman and, in a continuous motion, the puck crossed the line as the net was coming off the moorings. The goal counted and Coleman had his second of the night while the Devils had miraculously tied things up.

Tony DeAngelo, however, had other ideas.

At the 12:08 mark of the second, he scored his second goal of the game by taking a pass from Marc Staal at the Devils’ blue line and wristing a shot through traffic to make it 4-3. It was his second goal and fourth point, making him the first Ranger defenseman to have a four-point night against the Devils since James Patrick in 1986 according to MSG Network.

He struck again at 15:02 of the second to complete the hat trick and score his fifth point of the night – factoring into all five Ranger goals. It came on the power play (Nico Hischier was off for high-sticking Fox) when the Rangers just used good puck movement to work it around the perimeter to DeAngelo in the slot. He shot through a screen again to make it 5-3 Rangers.

He became the fist Rangers defenseman to record a hatty since Reijo Ruotsalainen on March 17, 1982 against the Flyers. That was during the 1981-82 season so the Devils were still in Colorado, that is how long ago this happened!

It was after this goal that Blackwood was pulled in favor of Domingue.

But Domingue did not fare much better. In the third period, at the 12:56 mark, Jesper Fast scored on a 2-on-1, taking a pass from Ryan Strome and burying it behind Domingue to make it 6-3 Rangers. Panarin had the other assist. New York had doubled the Devils up and that was how it ended.

On special teams, the Devils were 0-for-2 with six shots (in addition, they also had five shorthanded shots) while the Rangers went 2-for-5 with seven total shots (five on Blackwood and two on Domingue).

The Devils doubled up the Rangers in the third period on shots (18 to nine), but had nothing to show for it.

The Devils won 46-percent of the game’s faceoffs with Nico peronally winning 68-percent of his. They edged the Rangers in hits 20-19, had more blocked shots at 19-17 and had less turnovers at nine to the Rangers’ 13.

Individually, Sami Vatanen led in ice time with 24:24 (2:10 on the power play and 2:42 shorthanded included) and Kyle Palmieri led the forwards with 18:30 (including 3:31 killing penalties).

Miles Wood and Subban led in shots on goal with six each, Coleman led in hits with five, Severson led in blocks with three and Palmieri led in takeaways with two.

Next up, it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire as the Devils head down to Washington to take on the juggernaut Capitals. That game is a 7 PM faceoff and we will have coverage for you right here on Saturday.

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Devils Bid for Fourth in a Row Buried by Avs

The Devils were gunning for their fourth straight win – they had three in a row after beating the Islanders on Thursday and at least a point in their last five games – but a Mikko Rantanen hat trick and a Colorado Avalanche win said otherwise. The Avs won the game at Prudential Center 5-2 to sweep the season series for a second straight year.

First, some injury news as Jesper Bratt is out day-to-day officially with an injury suffered in the game at the Islanders. Likewise, Jack Hughes was missing his second game in a row due to his upper body injury suffered against the Bruins last week. Connor Carrick remained out of the lineup as a healthy scratch.

To replace Bratt, the Devils recalled Ben Street from AHL Binghamton. Street made his New Jersey Devils debut tonight and wore number 36. He was recently named an AHL All-Star and will represent Binghamton in the American League’s All-Star Classic. He played primarily on the third line with Wayne Simmonds and Miles Wood as his wingers.

Between the pipes, the Devils saw Philipp Grubauer for Colorado. He stopped 28 of the 30 shots the Devils fired at him for a .933 save percentage on the night. Mackenzie Blackwood went for the Devils again and made 29 saves on the 33 shots he faced. He had a .879 save percentage. The Avalanche finished the game with 34 shots on net due to an empty net goal.

The Devils were playing their first home game of the year/decade and it was Pride Night at the Rock as the Devils participated in a league-wide initiative to reach out to the LGBTQ community.

In addition, today was Nico Hischier’s 21st birthday. Nico has taken a big step in regards to his leadership role on the team since Taylor Hall was traded, at the behest of the coaching staff. He is also wearing an A on his jersey (alternating with Kyle Palmieri) as an assistant captain. Just proof of the extended role the team wants him in.

The Devils have gone 6-2-1 since the last meeting between these teams last month in Denver.

The first period was all back-and-forth. Colorado had a 2-on-0 early in the frame and Andy Greene made a nice backcheck to dive in and take away the pass. Rantanen had to shoot and shot over the Devils’ net all due to Greene’s hustle. Following this, midway through the first, Blake Coleman was stopped on a breakaway. All-in-all, the teams both racked up 17 scoring chances between them in the first period combined.

One scoring chance that did go in, but did not count came with 1:11 left to go in the first period. It saw the Avs’ Joonas Donskoi bat the puck out of midair and in behind Blackwood. It was called a no goal on the ice due to being played with a high stick. It would not be the first controversial goal of the evening, but it would be the easiest to call of them.

The Avalanche finally broke through in the second period. Rantanen scored 11:23 in when Nathan MacKinnon used his speed, got in behind the Devils’ defense, went to the near corner and made a perfect tape-to-tape, no-look pass to Rantanen, who buried the chance. Samuel Girard had the secondary assist.

Ian Cole made it 2-0 less than five minutes later at 15:34 when Pierre-Edouard Bellemare won a faceoff deep in the Devils’ zone to Vladislav Kamenev. Kamenev shot and it was blocked, but the rebound came right back to him. He gave it back to Cole at the point and he slapped one by Blackwood to put Colorado up by two.

If the ice began to tilt in the second, it was about get very wobbly come the third.

The period began with Rantanen scoring his second of the game just eight seconds in. It came when Cale Makar, whom the Devils did not see the first game against the Avs due to injury, cut through the Devils’ defense. He made a pretty pass to Rantanen who danced around the Devils and went around Blackwood to make it 3-0 Avs. MacKinnon had the secondary assist by virtue of winning the opening faceoff at center ice.

From there, things began to get very weird.

It began at 5:04 when Wood was called for a hold against Cole. This put the Avs on the power play, but Blake Coleman had other ideas at 6:36. He grabbed the puck in the Devils’ zone and burst up the ice. Travis Zajac eventually caught up with him to make it a 2-on-1, but Coleman goes all the way by snapping the puck by Grubauer to make it 3-1. It was Coleman’s seventh shorthanded goal of his career and the Devils’ third shorty of the season.

Then the ultimate in strange goals. It began innocently enough, on a clear by the Avs while Tyson Jost was in the box for interference on Kyle Palmieri. The Avalanche dumped the puck in and Blackwood went around to play it. He did, but was tripped up by Matt Calvert on the play and Blackwood inadvertently coughed the puck right up to Bellemare, who shot into the empty net and scored.

After some deliberation, the Devils decided to use their challenge on it, asking for goalie interference. Unfortunately, Blackwood was behind the net, out of his crease and he kind of backed up into Calvert’s skating lane. The referees deemed this incidental contact and upheld the call on the ice of a goal.

So not only did the goal count, but because the Devils lost the challenge, they were going to have to kill a delay of game penalty. Plus, Wayne Simmonds was given a game misconduct due to arguing with the officials on the play and was tossed.

On one play, the Devils had three or four things go wrong, which is pretty impressive. Especially that it had not happened before due to how bad the last few years have been for them.

So that officially counted as a shorthanded goal for Bellemare. More was to come.

With about 3:19 left in regulation, Calvert was finally nabbed for tripping, this time Pavel Zacha, and he went off. The Devils pulled Blackwood, making it 6-on-4 for the next two or so minutes.

During this power play, Sami Vatanen shot from the point and Jesper Boqvist tipped it by Grubauer at 18:37. Zacha had the secondary assist.

On the evening on special teams, the Devils were 1-for-3 with six shots on the power play, plus scored on one of their two shorthanded shots. The Avs were held 0-for-3 with three shots and also scored on one of their two shorthanded shots.

Following this goal, the Devils pulled Blackwood again and Rantanen completed his hat trick by throwing one into the empty net. Girard and Cole had the assists. It was the second straight year that a Colorado Avalanche player had scored a hat trick on Prudential Center ice, as Gabriel Landeskog did it last year in the team’s only meeting in the building. The empty netter gave us our final of 5-2.

The Devils won 56-percent of the game’s faceoffs, outhit the Avs, 14-10, had more blocked shots at 13-10, but also had more giveaways at ten to Colorado’s two.

Vatanen led the Devils’ skaters with an amazing 30:40 of ice time (4:48 on the power play and 1:52 on the penalty kill) while birthday boy Hischier led the forwards with a considerably less 21:51 (3:49 on the power play and 14 seconds of killing penalties).

Stats-wise, shots were led by Coleman with seven (Coleman was also the third star of the night in a losing effort for the Devils. Grubauer was second and Rantanen, with the hatty, the first). He also led in hits with four. Blocked shots were led by PK Subban with three and takeaways by Coleman and Palmieri with two apiece.

Next up, the Devils take on the Islanders again on Tuesday, this time at home, in a heritage night at Prudential Center. Puck drop is 7 PM and the Devils will wear their red, green and white uniforms. Enjoy your weekend everyone!