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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 String Second Together Second Road Win in Arizona

For the majority of the 2021-22 season, the Devils have had the hardest of times getting wins outside of Newark. Road wins were few and far between.

Suddenly, they are two-for-two on their five-game trip out west. Following a 3-1 downing of the Dallas Stars on Saturday, they continued on to Glendale, Arizona where they won their second straight game 6-2 over the Arizona Coyotes.

The Coyotes are the only team below the Devils in the overall NHL standings at the moment and the Devils were actually avenging a loss earlier in the season in New Jersey where the Yotes won 4-1.

The Devils this season achieved having four 20-goal scorers on their roster. Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier and Yegor Sharangovich have each notched at least 20 in 2021-22. This is the first time since 2011-12 that the team has had at least four. Back then, it was Zach Parise, Ilya Kovalchuk, Patrik Elias, David Clarkson and Petr Sykora as the five who topped that number. That certainly points the Devils in the right direction.

But back enough about the future or the past. Back to tonight. The Devils roster tonight saw Colton White, Mason Geertsen and Andreas Johnsson out as healthy scratches while Andrew Hammond was sitting while Jon Gillies was the backup on the bench.

Nathan Bastian was back in the lineup as he returned from his hip injury that was suffered last week against the New York Islanders.

In goal, the Devils were going with Nico Daws who made 19 saves on 21 total Arizona shots for a .905 save percentage. He stopped four of the Coyotes’ five power play shots and 15 of their 16 at even strength. The Yotes finished the night at 1-for-4 on the power play as a team.

The Coyotes went with their own rookie in Karel Vejmelka, who made 32 saves on 38 total Devils shots for a nightly save percentage of .842. He stopped New Jersey’s only shorthanded chance and all ten of their power play shots. At five-versus-five play, he made 21 saves on 27 shots. The Devils as a team went 0-for-5 on the power play.

Some random notes from the night include referee Cody Beach working his first NHL game tonight as per Devils play-by-play man Steve Cangialosi. The Coyotes also had two players making their NHL debuts tonight – including Nathan Smith – who this past weekend was playing in the NCAA Frozen Four for Minnesota State.

Arizona also have a rookie defenseman in Cam Dineen, who is a native of Toms River, New Jersey.

And finally, this might very well be the Devils final visit to Glendale as the Coyotes are scheduled to make their move to the new arena being built on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona next season.

That arena will only seat about 5,000 for hockey which the team and the NHL generously terms as “intimate.” They are going to play there until at least the 2024-25 season as they attempt to get a new building erected in Tempe.

The Coyotes were, strangely, in their (alternate?) maroon “howling coyote” uniforms. I note this one mainly because I had thought that the Coyotes wee back to their “Kachina” logo uniforms full-time, so this one threw me for a loop initially.

It looked like those uniforms would be a good choice in terms of luck for the night initially, though.

Just 1:13 into the game, the Yotes took an early 1-0 lead. This goal saw the Devils unable to clear the puck from their zone and Nick Ritchie eventually got it behind the Devils net. He moved it to Nick Schmaltz, who got it to Travis Boyd in front, who scored from the slot to make it 1-0.

The Devils would equalize by the middle of the first period, though, and it was a big one.

At the 10:51 gone by mark, Nico Hischier skated through the neutral zone and into the Arizona end and used amazing hand-eye coordination to calmly settle a bouncing puck down. He then breezed past Phil Kessel and passed to Fabian Zetterlund, who finished for his first NHL goal.

Sharangovich had the secondary assist and the game was now tied as it would be heading into the second period.

From there, the Coyotes had a streak of bad luck as they just started to hit posts left and right. It began late in the period when Kessel hit the pipe while driving up the left side and would see Arizona hit another one even later on.

Early in the second period, with 16:40 to play, Dawson Mercer and Bratt poked away at puck in front of the Coyotes net and Vejmelka stopped Mercer on a nice glove save. Mercer and Bratt celebrated as if the puck had gone in, but the officials waved the goal off immediately on ice. There was a brief review done of the play – which seemed to show the Arizona goaltender actually catch the puck behind the goal line – but the call remained no goal and we played on.

The Devils, however, would get that 2-1 lead. With 5:24 gone by in the second, AJ Greer won a puck battle behind the Arizona net. It jarred loose to Bastian, who then banked it off the boards to Kevin Bahl at the point. It was put on a tee for him and he drove it by Vejmelka for his first NHL goal.

Bahl’s first NHL goal came against the team that drafted him and traded him to the Devils in the Taylor Hall trade back in 2019.

The Yotes would find another post midway through the second, but the floodgates were about to open on goals late in the frame.

It began when the Coyotes tied things on the power play at the 18:38 mark. This was set up by Ty Smith being sent off for slashing Barrett Hayton at 18:01 to set things up.

From here, Matias Maccelli got the puck to Shayne Gostisbehere at the near point. Gostisbehere then sent the puck to Schmaltz at the top of the far faceoff circle where the Devils had overloaded to the other side of the rink.

This gave Schmaltz all the time in the world to walk in, set and shoot the puck by Daws to tie the game at two.

This was an extremely short-lived tie, however.

At 19:14 gone by, Tomas Tatar dumped the puck into the Arizona zone and Vejmelka went behind his goal to play it. He tried to reverse it around the wall way from the oncoming Tatar and instead it was intercepted by Jesper Bratt at the far wall.

Bratt then threw the puck towards the near side of the net where Tatar collected the pass with his skate and shot into Vejmelka’s now-vacated net all in one motion to give the Devils back the lead.

And that would be the game-winner.

Jesper Boqvist would add an insurance goal 22 seconds later when PK Subban got he puck on net. Janne Kuokkanen got a shot on Vejmelka that bounced up and Boqvist was able to put in behind the Coyotes netminder. That made it 4-2 Devils.

The Devils added two more in the third period with both coming off of the stick of Sharangovich.

The first one came at 15:36 gone by in the third when Hischier took an outlet pass, broke into the Yotes’ zone and dropped a pass to Zetterlund just inside the Arizona blue line.

Zetterlund then passed up ahead to Sharangovich cutting towards Vejmelka’s goal cage and he finished the pass to make it 5-2 Devils.

Sharangovich notched his second goal of the night a the 17:05 mark when Bahl pinched in behind the Coyotes net and put a pass in front. The puck bounced off of an Arizona player’s skate and right to Sharangovich who promptly scored to make it 6-2. Hischier had the secondary assist on the goal that was Sharangovich’s 22nd of the year.

That second Sharangovich goal came at 4-on-4 play as the Coyotes Michael Carcone (tripping) and Ty Smith (embellishment) were off for coincidental minors at 16:03.

The Devils would actually finish the game on the power play as Ritchie was called for roughing Greer at 18:55. They would not convert, but when the final horn sounded, Daws became the first of the seven goalies used by the Devils this season to record ten wins – an amazing feat for a rookie who was not expected to play many, if any, NHL minutes this season.

The Devils finished with 38 shots to the Yotes’ 21. The faceoffs were nearly split in half with the Devils winning 49-percent of the game’s draws.

Michael McLeod led the centers in faceoff win percentage with 71-percent – although he only played 8:17 on the night.

Arizona finished the game with a dozen penalty minutes accumulated as a team while the Devils had ten. The Devils landed 30 hits to the Coyotes’ 23. Blocked shots saw the Devils with 14 and the Coyotes with 12. Team giveaways had New Jersey with just eight to Arizona’s whopping 20 on the night.

Dougie Hamilton led all Devils skaters with 21:23 of total ice time. This included 5:45 of power play time and 10 seconds of time on the penalty kill. That was by far the most time a Devils defenseman spent on the man advantage, but on the PK, Ryan Graves played 4:55 out of his total of 20:46 to lead there.

Up front, Hischier led in total ice time with 21:03 (which included 5:34 on the PP and 2:49 on the pK). On special teams, only Bratt (5:39 out of his 16:20 total TOI) had more power play time and only Sharangovich (3:40 out of his 19:34 of total TOI) had more shorthanded time entrusted to him. Sharangovich also logged 2:44 on the power play.

In terms of points, the Devils flexed their guns tonight. Hischier had three assists for three points, Sharangovich had two goals and an assist for three points, Zetterlund had a goal and an assist for two points and Bahl had a goal and an assist for two points as they all recorded multi- point nights.

In terms of shots on goal, Greer led with five. Hits saw Bastian, Greer and Bahl each lead with four. Blocks were led by Graves with six. Personal giveaways were led by Sharangovich and Mercer with two each while personal turnover recoveries saw Hischier and McLeod lead with two as well.

The Devils next stop is a little steeper of a climb. They travel to Denver to take on the Western Conference-leading Colorado Avalanche. That game will be at 9 PM on MSG and we will have coverage for you at the conclusion of action.

Until then, enjoy your week everyone!