#Devils say they wont be fooled into thinking they played well by ending shootout drought As the Devils were going 0-13 last season in the shootout, there were several games in which they played well and were the better team through the 65 minutes of regulation and overtime, but came up empty in the shootout, which made it feel like they played worse than they did. So, when they finally won one Thursday night, beating Winnipeg 2-1 to end their NHL record shootout losing streak at 18, the Devils knew it was important not to let it have the opposite effect. As left wing Ryane Clowe attested afterward, “Our game’s got another level. If we thought we played a good enough game tonight, we’re kidding ourselves.” “A win changes your whole perspective on everything,” Devils coach Pete DeBoer said. “At the same time, I think we’re smart enough to recognize that we have a lot of areas we can improve and we’ve got to keep working at that and that was the message today.” That message was hammered home before the players took the ice for practice today. “After having our meetings this morning and re-watching some of the game, we know we’ve got, Clowie said it yesterday, another level,” center Travis Zajac said. “We’ve got a tough stretch coming up next week, so we know we have to make sure our details are good and our game’s consistently at its best. That’s the only way you can win.” Beginning with Saturday night’s game against Columbus, one of the Metropolitan Division rivals they’ll probably need to beat out to make the playoffs, the Devils face a difficult six-game stretch over the next 11 days that includes a home-and-home with St. Louis, visits to Detroit and Boston and a home game against Zach Parise and the Minnesota Wild. “We talked about that a lot last year when there were a lot of shootouts we lost when we were the better team for 65 minutes and you don’t get rewarded and you feel like you’ve done something wrong when in fact you played a great game,” goaltender Cory Schneider said. “It can go both ways, though. A shootout win can maybe hide some things you maybe aren’t doing so well or it can really magnify things you’re not doing well if you lose. We’ve got to make sure we’re not just feeling good about ourselves because we won a shootout. We have to make sure we play 60 minutes.” Some of the areas that the Devils needed to clean up were obvious Thursday night. “It was a little sloppy at times,” Schneider said. “There were times when we had full possession and we kind of gave them pretty good scoring chances off of our full possession. So, we continue to do some things well, but there’s areas, like puck management and breakouts and things like that, we can definitely be better at and we’re coming up some pretty tough teams in this next stretch here, starting with Columbus, so we have to make sure we’re on top of our details.” Clowe could see today that the full team understood what he was talking about after Thursday’s game. “Sometimes, for us, with the way we want to play, the team that we are, it’s important to be honest with yourself and with the team,” Clowe said. “There’s some games you play well and you lose. That’s how it is. But, for us, we can’t have 12, 13, 14 guys going. It just doesn’t work that way. You don’t feel great every game, but you can’t go from your A game to your F game. You’ve got to at least bring your B game and bring something. Some nights maybe you’re not feeling good and your legs aren’t there. You just keep the game simple.” The Devils haven’t been doing that enough since starting the season 3-0-0. That’s why they’re 2-3-2 since then with no regulation wins. “We’re a team that cares and the effort’s usually there,” Clowe said. “But, for us, we’ve got to take pride in execution because if you look at our team as far as our speed, we’re probably not going to line up and be the fastest team in the league as far as skating, but we are fast when we execute. That’s been off lately – our execution. That’s why we haven’t created a little more offense. That’s part of it. It starts with coming out of our own end clean and it all translates to playing in the O zone. For me, a lot of that comes from your head. Mentally, you’ve got to be ready. “It’s good to find ways to win and stick with it and then there’s other times you’ve got to honest and realize we’ve got a tough stretch coming up. So, we’ve got to be ready.” From talking to several players today, that seemed to be part of the message too. This next six-game stretch is very important. The Devils are just one point out of first place in the division at 5-3-2 and 12 points, but only four points ahead of Columbus, which is dealing with a host of injuries and is 4-5-0 so far. After going just 1-2-1 against the Blue Jackets last season, which contributed to them missing the playoffs, the Devils have a chance now to pick up some points against them while they’re down and missing key players such as Sergei Bobrovsky, Brandon Dubinsky, Nathan Horton, Boone Jenner, Matt Calvert, James Wisniewski, Mark Letestu and Artem Anisimov. “That’s exactly the message to our team today,” DeBoer said. “We have to put as much space between teams as we possibly can at this point in the year because you’re always going to deal with something as the year goes on, whether it’s injuries or slumps. This is another opportunity for us to put some space between somebody that we know at the end of the year is going to be knocking on the door. So, it’s a critical two points.” There’s also other teams in the conference who are struggling to find their way right now, so if the Devils can fix their mistakes quicker than they do, they can gain some ground there, too. “Right now, there’s a lot of teams that are all in the same situation where the team that’s able to really get their game close and really minimize some mistakes is going to get some points,” captain Bryce Salvador said. “Everything is so tight right now. It’s the funny thing. You’re never happy. At the end of the day, we’re above .500 and we’ve just got to continue to keep getting points. That’s what’s important. We have some wins this year. We’ve had a much better start than we did last year in the first 10 games, but we feel like we left some points on the table the first 10 games.” The Devils had just six points in their first 10 games last season (1-5-4) and took until 15 games to reach 12 points. They didn’t register their fifth win until Game 17. That doesn’t mean they’re satisfied, though. “There was a lot of pressure on this group last night: to win a game at home, to win a shootout,” DeBoer said. “I thought they handled those things pretty well. We need to improve quite a few areas of our game, but I think every team in the league is probably sitting there saying the same thing 10 games in. We’ve just got to keep working at it.” *** Almost forgotten after Thursday’s shootout win was that the Devils didn’t allow a power-play goal for only the second time this season, killing off both Jets’ power plays. They did give up a goal on a delayed penalty, but that’s not against the penalty killing unit itself. “It was better last night,” Zajac said of the PK. “I think we were more aggressive in some areas. We cleared some pucks. They had some big shots back there where we were able to take that away. So, I think we did a better job. It’s going to come. We’ve just got to make sure we’re talking. That’s the most important thing. It’s all about communication out there and making sure we back each other up.”
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 22:28:18 +0000
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