Devils Takeaways: New Jersey Wastes Quality Vanecek Performance in 6-3 Loss to Lightning

The All-Star break couldn’t come any sooner for the New Jersey Devils.

The Devils need to get healthy, and fast. They’ll now have the next 10 days to hopefully get their All-Star forward, Jack Hughes, back, potentially Jonas Siegenthlaer, and even role players such as Brendan Smith and Tomas Nosek.

Anyway, about Saturday night.

The Devils dropped their second game in a row and second this month to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Devils did themselves no favors through the first 40 minutes of play. However, Vitek Vanecek gave his team a fighting chance. We haven’t been able to say that often this season.

Let’s dive into the Devils’ 6-3 loss to the Lightning.

Devils Recap

The Devils managed to make it out of the first period unscathed. However, the Lightning wasted no time in the second period to open the scoring. 1:09 into the middle frame, Nick Paul redirected Victor Hedman’s shot from the blue line and into the Devils’ net for the 1-0 lead. At the halfway mark of the middle frame, Brandon Hagel netted a rebound to double Tampa Bay’s lead. The Devils tried cut the Lightning’s momentum in the third period getting on the board early. A turnover in Tampa’s end wound up in the back of the net by Ondrej Palat. The Lightning and the Devils then traded goals between Steven Stamkos, Jesper Bratt, Brayden Point, and Tyler Toffoli. Regardless, Point and Hagel each hit the empty net which sealed the deal for the Lightning.

Vanecek played well despite allowing four goals. He made 36 saves on 40 shots.

Takeaways

Perimeter Play

One of the best parts of New Jersey’s game in the 2022-23 season was their ability to limit their opponent to low-danger chances. As a result, the Devils’ average goaltending was good enough to get the job done, resulting in their 112-point season.

Against a strong Lightning offense, that’s exactly what the Devils did in the opening frame.

At first glance, it might look like the Devils got off to a slow start. The Lightning outshot the Devils 5-0 through the first 10-plus minutes of the first period. New Jersey didn’t get their first shot on net until the 9:42 mark of the opening frame.

However, the Devils did quite well in their own end. By the end of the opening 20 minutes, the Lightning put nine pucks on net. Only one of those shots came from a high-danger area, a shot by Michael Eyssimont in the slot at the 12:21 mark of the first period.

The Lightning’s remaining eight shots in the period came from above the dots, outside the hash marks, and one from below the goal line.

That’s the kind of defensive structure the Devils need to get back to if they want to get their season back on track.

Clear the Crease!

That defensive structure in the first? Yeah, well… the system broke down in the second.

The Lightning scored two goals on the sticks of Paul and Hagel, both similar in the sense that the Devils were physically disengaged.

The concept should be simple. Clear the crease for your goaltender so he can track pucks. Unfortunately, the Devils’ injury-hampered blue line was unable to do that in the second period.

On the Lightning’s first goal, both Paul and Anthony Cirelli manned the top of the Devils’ crease with Simon Nemec and Kevin Bahl defending. The Devils’ defensemen were caught puck-watching instead of clearing bodies from the crease and Paul redirected a shot from the point and scored.