Over their last five games, the Devils have played through a gauntlet of tough and talented teams including the Florida Panthers, Carolina Hurricanes, and Boston Bruins.
Unfortunately for this young team, they’ve won just one of those games heading into their final matchup of 2022 against Sidney Crobsy and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Behind Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes, New Jersey capped off the year with an impressive 4-2 win on the road.
“We earned it. We worked our butts off,” Damon Severson said after the game. “They are a really good team and we were able to score at the right times, which we haven’t been able to do recently. That’s a huge win for us.”
As Severson said, the Devils had to work for the win Friday night. The Penguins took a 1-0 lead into the second period, but New Jersey tied the game at one on a Dougie Hamilton goal — or so they thought.
The referees called the goal off for interference, which could have taken all the momentum away from the Devils, but the team fought back and eventually tied the game on a Hughes power-play goal later in the second.
“The shift after goal matters. We can’t let our heads sink and feel sorry about ourselves,” Hischier said of his team’s ability to bounce back after being down. “There’s a lot of hockey left. They tried their best too. You can see with the first goal, the line that went out there they were going hard and they brought back the momentum to us.”
New Jersey was just 1-of-6 on the power play Friday night, but Pittsburgh was worse. The Penguins went 0-for-9 with the man advantage including not scoring on a four-minute power play after Erik Haula was given a double-minor for high-sticking.
As Severson put it, winning the special teams battle was the difference maker.
“We can’t control what happens in the game, referees make calls for or against us. We have to prepare for any moment that happens in the game,” he said. “Overall we were prepared for those situations and ultimately we won that special teams battle.”
An actual Hamilton goal, a Hischier short-handed goal and an empty netter later and the Devils left Pittsburgh with the win.
“It was definitely a relief when we scored that empty-net goal. It would have been a tough one if we lost that game. We battled as hard as we can and we came back twice. It’s definitely a character win,” Hischier said. “We got the bounces this time and we have to keep going with that. Obviously it’s a hectic game. We have to clean up some penalties. If we do that every night it’s going to be tough to win. But it’s a good win for us.”
Coach Lindy Ruff, while not pleased with the amount of penalties, was happy to see his team pull out this win against a tough opponent.
“It was a hard-fought game, pretty even five-on-five. We saw them score, came right back but we didn’t panic,” he said. “There’s a lot of different ways to win. You go through the year you need to win games like this.”
The Devils will look to win more games when they host the Carolina Hurricanes, the hottest team in the NHL — winners of 10 straight — on New Year’s Day in an attempt to close the gap in the standings.
