Devils’ Power Play Struggles Cost Them in Loss to the Rangers

The New Jersey Devils entered Thursday night’s contest against the first-place New York Rangers reeling after losing two of three and falling further out of a playoff position. The game began with the Devils earning a five-minute power play, resulting in several perimeter shots on goal but little danger. The Rangers countered quickly with a power-play goal in five seconds, and the Devils never recovered.

Devils’ Power Outage

The Rangers were called for a major, a double minor, and three separate minor penalties throughout the first two periods. Gifted with 11:52 of 5v4 advantage, the Devils mustered 12 shots and zero goals. Their opponents needed only five seconds of power play time to take the 1-0 lead and never looked back.

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The Devils’ penalty killers mostly did their job. After allowing a fluke goal five seconds into the first power play, they held the vaunted Rangers’ special teams, now ranked sixth in the NHL, to two shots over 6:52 the rest of the game. The team, however, could not take advantage of any of the momentum generated from the kills, largely due to the inability to convert on the power play.

After the game, Nico Hischier expressed frustration with the inability to take advantage of their power-play chances. “(We) gotta score with so many opportunities on the power play. We weren’t sharp enough the first power plays. Later, it was better, but I just couldn’t find the back of the net.” He praised Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin but felt, in the end, it came down to “execution and that sometimes we need to take more shots. More traffic in front of the net.”

Head coach Lindy Ruff agreed with Hischier, citing execution and giving up slot area shots to shots on the flank. “I thought there were times, especially in our power play, we’re in a great position to shoot and deferred to outside.” The veteran coach cited a play where Luke Hughes passed up a direct shot to pass the puck to Jack Hughes on the outside for a lower-percentage shot.

“Luke was in high danger and passed to his brother, who had a low-danger shot. So, I mean, I’ll reference one play here. I think we did that a couple of times.” He also lamented that, without Dougie Hamilton, he has to rely so much on his rookie defensemen to run the power play, “with no Doug Hamilton, our best choice right now probably is still Luke and Simon on…