Ruff to Devils: ‘Win 1 game and we turn this series around’
The meeting went longer than anticipated.
The Devils were scheduled to hit their practice rink for a training session at 1 p.m. Friday and didn’t emerge from their locker room until 1:45.
In the wake of the 2-0 deficit the Devils face against their cross-Hudson rival Rangers entering Saturday’s Game 3 of the Stanley Cup playoffs at the Garden, there was strategy spoken in that meeting with coach Lindy Ruff, but some psychology, too.
“Just to embrace this opportunity still, to realize you’re one of 16 teams that have this opportunity,” Ruff said, referring to his message to the players. “The fact that we haven’t gotten the results we wanted we still have the ability to do something special. Enjoy this process. We win one game and we turn the series around.”
When you look back at the first two games of the series, played on Devils home ice at the Prudential Center, it’s difficult to ignore the two identical final scores — 5-1 Rangers victories. But Ruff and his players insisted on Friday that the Devils aren’t dead yet.
“I don’t think the Rangers have seen our best,” Devils winger Erik Haula, the lone New Jersey goal scorer in Thursday night’s Game 2, said. “I don’t think that we’ve played our best game. We’re down 2-0 and we haven’t played our best, but we’ve been a good road team all year.’’
Indeed, this is the latest Devils hope they’re hanging onto for dear life in this moment crisis. They were 28-9-4 on the road in the regular season. Only the Bruins (with 31) and Avalanche (29) won more road games this season than the Devils did away from the Rock.
“We have to take something from the fact that we’ve played well on the road,” Ruff said. “You’ve got to give our team a lot of credit for the amount of road games we’ve won this year.”
This was among the many topics
Ruff went through with his players before they practiced for about an hour Friday afternoon, spending a lot of the session working on special teams — power play and penalty kill.
“Everyone came in here today wanting to get better,” Haula said. “[The meeting] was all about how we can be better. We went through a lot of stuff and it’s all on us to be better. Every time you lose, you want to be better. You’re not happy. All you can do is try to correct things and move forward.”
The Devils showed frustration in the third period Thursday as the Rangers poured it on.
“We knew how good a team Rangers are,’’ Haula said. “But it’s very important that we don’t get frustrated. We’ve scored two goals. It’s very easy to get frustrated and start forcing things a little bit. But it has to be just the opposite of that. Stay patient and just do the right things.’’
Ruff didn’t sound like he’s ready to bench starting goalie Vitek Vanecek for Game 3, though he also left open the possibility of turning to Akira Schmid.
Vanecek’s goals against average in the two games is 4.52 and his save percentage is just 82.7. Conversely, the Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin leads all postseason goalies with a 1.00 goals against and has a 96.1 save percentage.