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Devils Drop Shootout in First Trip to Seattle

It was the second-ever Battle of the Cryptids as the East Coast’s New Jersey Devils traveled to the West Coast to face the Seattle Kraken.

Round one went to the Beasts of the (Pine) Barrens in their home rink way back in October while round two was awarded to the (Puget) Sound Slammers via skills competition, 4-3 in front of a raucous Seattle crowd, 4-3.

The Devils fell in their first trip to the Pacific Northwest (I still maintain that Vancouver, being in British Columbia, is actually a part of the Canadian Pacific Southwest) as their power play outage continued.

The game began, once again, with a special guest. Turner Stevenson – a right winger on two Devils Stanley Cup-winning teams in 2000 and 2003 joined Bryce Salvador and Erika Wachter on the MSG+ pregame show.

He never played with Bryce at any point in either men’s NHL career (although they did scrap when Sal was a member of the St. Louis Blues), so there was not a lot that could be exchanged between them, but was able see some of his former Devils teammates from those Stanley Cup years.

This included having dinner with Martin Brodeur the night before the game and getting to chat with Ken Daneyko prior to going on the air. Stevenson, who, like Daneyko, played junior in Seattle, later retired to the city after his hockey career was over. He coached his sons in youth hockey there and all three of his sons are playing college hockey currently.

Stevenson mentioned that he has not been able to see the Devils play live in years and was definitely looking forward to getting to see Jack Hughes when New Jersey came to Climate Pledge Arena, but could not due to Hughes’ injury.

He mentioned how great the fans have been all season in Seattle rooting for the Kraken who have had a season that was, rather unfairly, projected against the early success of the Vegas Golden Knights. He said that the Kraken are an expansion team and the rules of their Expansion Draft were different from what Vegas was working with, therefore it was almost apples to oranges and Seattle was not guaranteed any success.

But the fans have been there and they have been excited.

This is something that Daneyko knew from his days of playing with the Seattle Breakers of the Western Hockey League from 1981 to 1983. Salvador echoed that as he played in the WHL against the Seattle Thunderbirds a little more than a decade later.

Breakers fans from back then remembered Dano and Sal mentioned his fond memories of Thunderbird fans packing their rink when he played.

This is all an elaborate way of explaining just how loud and involved the crowd was tonight. It most certainly lent a bit of a playoff atmosphere to a game between two teams on the outside looking in.

But, on to the business at hand as we begin with Devils roster moves for the game.

Ryan Graves missed the game as he was out recovering from the stitches he took to the chin following being cut by a skate in the loss in Colorado. Colton White slotted in for him on the backend.

AJ Greer was a healthy scratch along with Mason Geertsen and Jon Gillies. Andreas Johnsson slotted back in as the left wing on the fourth line in place of Greer.

In goal was Nico Daws, who currently stands at ten wins. One more would put him even with Alain Chevrier on the list for Devils goalie rookie season wins. Martin Brodeur tops the list with 27 while Mackenzie Blackwood and Sean Burke are tied next with 22 in their respective rookie years then Chevrier with 11.

Daws did not record the victory tonight but did make 23 saves on 26 total Kraken shots for an .885 save percentage. He stopped six of Seattle’s seven power play shots (they went 1-for-3 on the night) and made 17 stops on 19 even strength shots.

The Kraken had Philipp Grubauer between the pipes and he had basically the exact same game. He stopped 23 of 28 total Devils shot attempts for the same save percentage of .885. The Devils had five power play shots and Grubauer was equal to them (New Jersey was 0-for-3 on the man advantage) while at five-on-five, he stopped 18 of 21 shots.

Of note on this fourth game of the Devils’ five-game road trip was Nathan Bastian making his return to Seattle, where he began the 2021-22 season. He was selected from the Devils roster by the Kraken in the Expansion Draft last summer but was put on waivers around American Thanksgiving and was claimed by the Devils, thus returning him to Newark.

Also, Seattle’s first-ever draft pick, Matty Beniers, the second overall pick in the 2021 NHL Draft, who had just signed with the Kraken out of the University of Michigan, was playing in his second-ever NHL game and first in front of the home fans in Seattle. This would become very important later on.

The Devils gained the early advantage just 3:12 into the game when Jesper Bratt scored off of the rush.

Michael McLeod pushed the puck to Johnsson, who got into the Seattle zone and found a seam off the rush to Bratt on the far side. Bratt finished for the goal, which gave the Devils the 1-0 lead and was his 200th NHL point.

The Kraken tied things with 10:49 gone by when Karson Kuhlman got it to Victor Rask down low, he skated it down towards the near Devils corner then passed back to Will Borgen in the middle of the ice. Borgen then ripped a shot that beat Daws to knot the game at one apiece.

The “other” Jesper gave the Devils back the lead about 5:30 later when Jesper Boqvist played give-and-go with Pavel Zacha near the Kraken net. Boqvist had received the puck from Janne Kuokkanen and skated into the Seattle end.

Zacha initially bobbled the pass from Boqvist, but was able to recover and spin around to make to make a blind pass back to Boqvist – who was now camped in the high slot. Boqvist then scored on the pass, roofing it over Grubauer to make it 2-1 Devils.

The second period saw the Seattle pull ahead with two goals.

It began at the 15:20 mark when Yanni Gourde fed Jared McCann, who held onto the puck at the near wall. It was here that the Devils got caught puck watching and overloaded to the near side.

That allowed McCann the time to make a pass through a seam to Carson Soucy, who by now was all alone on the far side and just simply shot the puck into the empty side of Daws’ cage as he was left alone with all the time in the world.

That tied things at two and it only took the Kraken a little over a minute to take the 3-2 lead.

At the 16:57 mark of the second, it was none other than the highly touted Matty Beniers who scored on the power play to do that.

The Devils Kevin Bahl was called for hooking Jordan Eberle at 16:17 and Seattle had the extra attacker.

This included the rookie playing in his second NHL game.

The Kraken won a faceoff deep in the Devils zone and support jumped in to get the puck to Vince Dunn at the point. He fired a very quick wrist shot towards Daws. McCann was able to then redirect that shot over to Beniers at the far post and he tapped it in to make it 3-2 on the power play.

And that 3-2 score would take us into the third period.

This one was seeming to shape up to be pretty much a coast for the Kraken towards two points until 4:55 gone by in the third when former Kraken Bastian won a puck battle behind the Seattle net. He pushed it towards the near corner where McLeod retrieved it. He passed to a pinching Damon Severson who was cutting in backdoor.

Severson got the pass and finished, making it 3-3.

The game then settled into a back-and-forth contest until the horn finally sounded and things had not been decided. It was off to overtime.

The Devils have been pretty good throughout the season in the extra period, going 5-2 this year in OT while the Kraken have accumulated a record of 1-5 in their first season of existence.

The Devils seemed to be pushing a good pace in OT until the 3:45 gone by mark when Zacha was called for a cross-check on Beniers as Beniers was cutting in sharply on Daws’ crease.

Beniers went tumbling into the Devils goaltender, but replays did show Zacha clearly knocking him into Daws with the cross-check.

This put the Devils on the penalty kill for the rest of OT, about 75 seconds of New Jersey being behind the eight-ball essentially.

But enter Kevin Bahl.

The Devils rookie defenseman made a fantastic defensive showing through the kill, repelling Seattle attacks and clearing the puck.

Head coach Lindy Ruff would burn the Devils’ timeout with 21.3 seconds to go in the OT in order to give the Devils penalty killers a breather. And he left Bahl on out of the timeout, just to show the faith he had gained in the young d-man.

When those last 21.3 seconds expired without Seattle converting, we would need a shootout to settle things.

Round one saw the only goal of the skills competition when Ryan Donato, Seattle’s first shooter and the first man up, deked around Daws and went to his backhand, scoring on him.

Tomas Tatar then tried to go five-hole on Grubauer but was stopped to round out that inning.

The second round saw Beniers hit the post on his very first NHL shootout attempt and Bratt get stopped by Grubauer as the Seattle goalie stayed with him all the way and closed the pads on him.

Round three had Daniel Sprong stopped by Daws when Daws closed down everything along the ice and then poke checked the puck away from him.

That left things up to Yegor Sharangovich to keep things going for the Devils. He cut in and beat Grubauer, only to clang the shot off of the crossbar and the Seattle Kraken had the full two points in what was a pretty exciting game to watch in the end.

While taking the point and forcing overtime, the Devils at least staved off another one to their team record 46 regulation losses on the season. That surpassed the previous Devils record of 45 set in 1986-87 as MSG+ play-by-play man Steve Cangialosi pointed out.

Both teams ended the game with 26 shtos on goal. The Devils won 45-percent of the game’s faceoffs. Boqvist led the Devils centers in faceoff percentage overall with 67-percent of his personal draws ending in wins over 16:42 of ice time. Although Hischier had 48-percent while continuing to play in all situations.

Both teams had six PIMs. The Kraken had 27 hits to the Devils’ 16. Blocked shots saw Seattle end with 18 and New Jersey with 14. Team giveaways were relatively low between the teams, with the Devils finishing with six and the Kraken with five.

Ice time saw Severson lead with 24:37 of total time (which included 1:51 on the power play and 2:41 on the penalty kill). Dougie Hamilton led the blue liners in power play time with 3:59 accumulated out of his 22:04 of total TOI.

Up front, Hischier led in total time with 24:15 – included in that were special teams times of 4:14 on the PP and 2:55 on the PK – both of which led the forwards in those categories.

The only Devil with more than one point was McLeod, who notched two assists for two points in the contest.

Zacha led in shots on goal with four. White and Bahl each had three hits to lead there. Bratt, White, Hamilton and PK Subban each led in blocks with two each. Giveaways were led by Subban, Ty Smith, Zacha, Sharangovich, Bastian and Hischier with one apiece while Sharangovich, Bratt and Fabian Zetterlund led in takeaways with one each.

Next up, we’ll do one more late-night start time at 10 PM ET on Monday in Las Vegas as the Devils finish up their road trip against the Golden Knights.

That game should be broadcast on MSG+ and we will have a recap for you once the game is complete.

This should be another good one as the Knights are, much like the Dallas Stars at the beginning of the trip, are fighting for their playoff lives. We will find out if the Devils can impact the Western Conference playoff race in any way then.

In the meantime, have a great Easter Sunday if you are celebrating!

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Devils Become Latest Victims of Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche keep continue to pile up the wins. Tonight was a franchise record 54th of the year for them as they downed the Devils 3-1.

The Avs are just rolling right towards the Stanley Cup Playoffs and can do it anyway they seem to want to at will.

Case in point: this was the backend of a back-to-back. On Wednesday, they defeated the Los Angeles Kings 9-3 with Nathan MacKinnon pouring in a hat trick and gaining five points total.

Tonight, it was an Eastern Conference team visiting Ball Arena. The only Eastern team that has even won a game this season in Denver has been the Columbus Blue Jackets (November 3, 2021) and they needed overtime to do so.

The Avs needed only three to take care of the Devils and got just that.

One of the main highlights of watching the broadcast of the game on MSG was getting to see former Devil David Clarkson on the pregame show with Bryce Salvador and Erika Wachter.

Clarkson has retired to Colorado where he now coaches youth hockey. He had tried his hand at scouting but felt that he was not up to the job and deciding that teaching the future generations is something that really intrigued him.

He ended up in Colorado due to training that he would do in the offseason, with a select few other NHL players when he was active, in Vail. He later had surgery on the back injury that had ultimately ended his NHL career in Vail as well.

This led to permanent residence in the Rocky Mountain State, where he has been for the last four or five years or so.

Right now, he is basically living in the center of the hockey universe. With the Avs gearing up for a run at the Stanley Cup and the University of Denver Pioneers winning the NCAA Men’s Hockey Championship last week, things are looking good for the sport there.

The Devils tonight went with the same lineup that largely brought them victories on their first two games of this five-game Western trip. That meant no Andreas Johnsson again up front.

In goal, the Devils did make a change where they gave Andrew Hammond a rare start (soon to possibly be even rarer as Mackenzie Blackwood remains on the comeback trail). Hammond made 27 stops on 30 total Colorado shots for a .900 save percentage on the night. He stopped two of the three power play shots the Avalanche had (they were 1-for-2 on the man advantage as a team). At five-on-five play, Hammond turned aside 25 of the Avs’ 27 shots.

Colorado countered with Pavel Francouz, who made 26 saves on 27 total New Jersey for a .963 save percentage. He stopped the long Devils shorthanded shot and both of their power play shots. As a team, the Devils were 0-for-2 on the power play. At even strength, he got 23 of the Devils’ 24 shots.

The Devils were making their first trip to Denver since December of 2019 and their first trip to the Ball Arena. The last time they were here the arena was still under its original name of the Pepsi Center.

Although the Devils were up against it in the thin Mile High altitude, they did have an earlier season win over the Avs under their belt from this year at Prudential Center and were, thus, looking to sweep the season series.

As mentioned, the Denver Pioneers won the NCAA Men’s Hockey Championship this past weekend in Boston. They were being honored as a team by the Avalanche in the pregame with each member of the squad gathered at center ice with the NCAA trophy and their captain dropped the puck for the ceremonial faceoff.

What followed was a first period where the Avs played well but the Devils were largely able to skate with them and keep their big guns in check. The Devils actually outshot the Avs in the first by a 13-12 margin.

About the only thing of note was former Colorado defenseman turned Devil Ryan Graves getting a video tribute and a round of applause from the fans.

Graves was traded to the Devils last summer and, although he has had a fantastic first season in New Jersey, his night in Denver would not end so well.

The second period was where the Avs took over the game.

It began 3:07 into the proceedings when Colorado’s Josh Manson took the puck through the neutral zone. In the Devils zone, he passed it over to Darren Helm, who threw the puck to Logan O’Connor at the bottom of the far faceoff circle. O’Connor quickly spun around and shot as he was doing so.

Ty Smith was defending in front and, as both color analyst Ken Danekyo and studio analyst Bryce Salvador (both former elite NHL defensive defensemen, mind you) noted, his stick blade was at an angle that allowed O’Connor’s shot to redirect into the empty side of the Devils goal cage.

A very minor mistake by Ty, but a costly one against a team with the offensive skills of the Colorado Avalanche.

The Avs would double their lead at the 7:45 mark of the second when their point man, Valeri Nichushkin, passed down low to Artturi Lehkonen. Lehkonen skated the puck behind the Devils net and wheeled to the near side and centered to Andre Burakovsky in the slot. Burakovsky’s shot went in before the net literally caved in on Hammond.

The goal had come off of its moorings and fell on top of him, but a review from Toronto found that the puck had already crossed the goal line prior to the net getting toppled and the call on the ice of good goal was the correct one.

Colorado would cap off their second period scoring spree with a power play goal scored at 14:35 gone by.

New Jersey took the only penalty of the frame when Michael McLeod was called for a hook against O’Connor and the Avs had the extra attacker.

They capitalized to make it 3-0 when their man at the point made a slap pass to Cale Makar at the near half wall. He quickly found a seam to Mikko Rantanen and it was down to Artturi Lehkonen at the far post and he tapped the puck in to triple up the Avalanche scoring.

That score took us into the final period but it would not be the final.

The Devils played possibly their finest sequence of hockey midway through the third period. They would get on the board shortly following a big save made by Hammond at their end.

Following that save by Hammond, Nico Hischier would skate the puck into the Colorado zone and took it down to the far corner. He lost it briefly but was able to regain possession and tap it to Pavel Zacha along the far wall.

Zacha then skated it back down to the far corner and made a no-look pass to Jesper Bratt in the slot, who finished and made the score 3-1 Avs.

This had followed a few minutes of back-and-forth, end-to-end action from both teams but also saw a potentially bad injury to Graves in the Devils zone.

When Hammond made the save just prior to the Bratt goal being scored, Graves had his face cut by an errant Colorado skate blade. He left the game with about 8:36 remaining and did not return.

In his postgame presser, head coach Lindy Ruff mentioned that Graves’ cut was to the chin and it could have been much worse than it was. Hopefully he is okay and no damage or long-term injury was suffered. It always has the potential to end up really horrific in those situations, but hopefully all is good for him.

Following the Bratt goal, Hammond made another big save (with a little help from the inside of the post) to keep the Devils in things.

Nichushkin hit the inside of the inside of the far post on him on a shot in front that was waved off by the referee on the ice and was shown to not have gone in anyway, so it was the correct call in the moment.

Following that play, the Devils regained possession and were able to get Hammond off of the ice for the extra attacker with a little over two minutes to go in the game.

The Devils would keep the play largely in the Colorado end with Nathan MacKinnon finally scoring into the empty net just a split second after the final buzzer so that the fourth goal did not count.

But the Avs did get the 3-1 victory and that was all they needed: the two full points for their 54th win of the season – a Colorado Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques franchise record. It was also their eighth straight victory on their current winning streak.

In the end the Devils were outshot 30 to 27 and won a paltry 36-percent of the game’s faceoffs. McLeod again did his job as the Devils personal faceoff percentage leader with 89-percent won over 10:02 played largely at even strength with 45 seconds of that on the penalty kill.

Each team accumulated four penalty minutes per team. The Avs outhit the Devils 24-23 while the Devils had more blocked shots at 16 to Colorado’s dozen. Each team had seven turnovers as a team.

When it came to ice time, Damon Severson led all Devils skaters with 23:12 logged (including 1:23 on the power play and 2:11 on the penalty kill). Dougie Hamilton led in power play time for the d-men with 2:37 out of his 21:52 of total time. He also had 39 seconds of shorthanded time.

Nico Hischier led the forwards in total ice time with 19:27. He also tied Zacha in PP time with 2:35 and played 50 seconds on the PK. Zacha led the forwards in shorthanded time with 1:05 which was part of his 18:21 of total TOI logged.

Hamilton led in shots on goal with four. Nathan Bastian, AJ Greer, Hamilton and Kevin Bahl all led in hits with three. Smith and Graves led in blocked shots with three each. Personal giveaways were led by Dawson Mercer with two while personal takeaways were led by Yegor Sharangovich, Jesper Boqvist, Tomas Tatar, Hamilton, PK Subban and Bahl with one apiece.

Next up, the Devils’ trek across the west continues as they go to the Pacific Northwest for the first time and visit the Seattle Kraken in a rematch from the second game of the Devils’ season back in October.

Both teams have since been eliminated from playoff contention and that seemed like such a long time ago.

Puck drop for that game is, of course, at 10 PM ET on Saturday night and we will have a recap for you right here following the conclusion of the game on MSG+.

One more thing until then and that is a congratulations to Devils head equipment manager Chris Scoppetto, who Sam Kasan is reporting via the Devils official website will be a part of the Team USA equipment staff at the upcoming 2022 IIHF World Championship.

He was named to the post on Thursday as per Kasan.

Kasan reports that “Scoppetto will be one of three equipment managers for Team USA, which will compete for the 2022 IIHF Men’s World Championship May 13-29 in Tampere and Helsinki, Finland.” He also served in this capacity in 2019 and 2017 at the same tournament.

The US Men’s National Team will be coached by David Quinn next month.

Scoppetto, according to Kasan, won a Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings in 2008 when he was an assistant equipment manager with them. He was with Detroit from 2005 to 2008 and was also an assistant with the Nashville Predators from 1999 to 2005 and the then-Phoenix Coyotes from 1997 to 1999.

Following that, he was the Florida Panthers’ head equipment manager from 2008 to 2016 before joining the Devils’ staff in 2016. He was promoted to head equipment manager of the Devils in 2017.

Once again, congrats to Chris Scoppetto on his honor. the rest of the week everyone, we will see you on Saturday!