Okay Ranger fans, don’t kick a guy when he’s down. I get it, your team has been owning my team. After two games and a pair of New Jersey Devils 5-1 losses at the Prudential Center, my hope in even making this series competitive is fleeting. I’ve been a fan of this team for literally 40 years, dating back to my 7 year old self way back in 1982 (Showing proof via the commercial below). From the early Mickey Mouse days, to the golden era of 3 Stanley Cups in under a decade & 20+ years of playoff appearances to the brutal string of cellar dweller seasons, save for one playoff appearance in 2018 which showed the Devils were outmatched by a far superior Lightning team.
Going into this series, I was 100% nervous. Devils/Ranger series are volatile to say the least and playing against a team that’s seasoned in the playoffs like the Rangers makes for an uphill battle. But still, how do you not root for a team that set an NHL record in points vs the previous year? This scrappy young squad led by 21 year old/99 point scorer Jack Hughes & 24 year old Captain Nico Hischier showed their resilience during the season as they proved the pundits wrong. The same pundits who bravely predicted this team would, at best, scrape into a post season birth via the wild card. Instead, they racked up a team record 112 points on route to the 3rd best record in the NHL. But oh what a difference just one point can make.
Had the New Jersey Devils gotten just ONE more point, just one, this post season would have been massively different. The first place Carolina Hurricanes would have swapped with the Devs and had to deal with the Rangers while the Devils would have seen the Islanders. Yes, it’s a team they lost 2 of 3 two, but a far safer first round battle for an inexperienced team to cut their playoff teeth on. If they faced the Rangers round two, so be it, but would have faced them having learned what playoff hockey would have been like. Instead they’re showing their inexperience by taking stupid penalties, playing out of position, missing passes and just showing a battle tested team windows that a team like the Rangers would take advantage of. The Rangers have had 10 power plays in the last two games, including a whopping 7 yesterday, and scoring two goals in each game and giving Devils netminder Vitek Vanecek a brutal 82.6% save percentage. I turned the game off when it hit 3-1, going out for medicinal ice cream and trying to shake off the pain of the upcoming loss by watching old episodes of Archer. I hate turning off a losing game, but what was becoming a second straight loss got to be too painful.
Do they Devils shake up the roster game three? I think you have to, what do you have to lose at this point? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Something has to be done as this series shifts to Madison Square Garden. Something has to be done to show you can play at this level. Tomorrow night is undoubtedly must win, if only to have the team get the feeling of winning a playoff game. We’ll see if it happens, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t.
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