Devils need better production from power play
NEWARK — The Devils certainly never wanted the time off.
A pause in their season that kept them out of game action for the first 15 days of February after nearly the entire team ended up on the National Hockey League’s strict COVID-19 protocol list seemed, at first, to actually provide a spark to a team that had already gotten off to a surprisingly good start to their season.
Wins in their first two games back — a dominant showing in a 5-2 win against the Rangers on Feb. 16, followed by an impressive 3-2 victory over the Boston Bruins two days later, with both games coming on the road — had some who follow the team closely thinking that the Devils might be able to put together a run that would get them back in contention for one of the East Division’s four postseason berths.
That spark, however, fizzled out. Quickly.
In their last six contests, which have taken place in just nine days thanks to a now-condensed slate of games following some rescheduling thanks to the time missed, the Devils have claimed just two out of a possible 12 points. But, after a 4-3, overtime win in Buffalo on Thursday night, any momentum they’d gained was seemingly squashed by back-toback losses this weekend at home against the Washington Capitals.
The power play, which is converting at just a 16% rate this season, was a particular point of frustration in those weekend games; a 1-for-3 performance in Saturday’s 5-2 loss was followed by an 0-for-3 showing on Sunday, a one-goal loss where the man advantage could have made the difference.
“We could have got a lot of energy from our power play,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff told reporters in a post-game Zoom session after Sunday’s loss. “As you saw, both teams were a little low on energy, and both teams power play struggled. It’s a game that was right there…there was a lot of good, but (while) our penalty killing has done a lot of good things these last two games, our power play let us down.”
This most recent rough stretch for the Devils makes a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday slate back at the Prudential Center all the more critical; they’ll host the Islanders in the opener before consecutive games against a Rangers team that’s just one point ahead of them in the standings.
They’ll need their power play — one that might be without Nico Hischier, who scored their lone tally on the man advantage on Saturday before being struck up high by a deflected P.K. Subban slapshot, which forced him to leave the ice holding a towel to his face and ultimately miss Sunday’s gam entirely — to be clicking far better than it has in order to start climbing back up the standings.
“You want to go out there, and even if you’re not scoring, you want (the power play) to be a momentum boost for your team,” said forward Kyle Palmieri. “As a power play, you’re not going to score on all of your opportunities, that’s unrealistic . ... But, you want to be a momentum shift. Sometimes, you’ll get a power play and whether it’s you spend the full two minutes in the zone or you just
get some good looks that don’t happen to go, it gives your team energy and it gives the guys on the bench and the guys that are part of the power play the energy to know that it’s there. You find some momentum out of that, and right now, I don’t think that’s a consistent
thing in our game. We have power plays that look great where we get set up and get some looks, and then others that, frankly, look quite (bad). We have to a better job of creating momentum for our team, and it’s something that, as a team, we’ve looked at a lot.”
TAMPA, FLA. » They don’t call him Hard Hittin’ Chris Gittens for nothing.
Gittens clobbered a grand slam in the fifth inning to lead the Yankees to a 5-4 spring training victory over the Detroit Tigers on Monday afternoon at George M. Steinbrenner Field.
The former Eastern League MVP launched a 3-2 fastball from Zack Hess deep over the fence in left-center.
Gittens, 27, was the Eastern League MVP during the Thunder’s 2019 championship season. He hit 23 homers and drove in 77, while slashing .281/.393/.500.
Gary Sanchez also hit a solo home run for the Yankees.
Gerrit Cole started and allowed one run on three hits. He struck out one and walked one, needing 28 pitches to get through the inning.