Goals have come fast and furious for the New Jersey Devils in their past two games, and they will look for more when they continue their western Canada road trip on Friday at the Calgary Flames.
The Devils, who sat atop the Metropolitan Division entering Thursday, arrive in Calgary after a dominant 6-0 win over the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday to kick off a three-game road trip.
New Jersey opened the scoring in the first minute and never looked back. The Devils surrendered only 20 shots on goal while goaltender Jacob Markstrom – acquired from Calgary over the summer — posted his first shutout of the season.
“We were full marks for all three periods,” coach Sheldon Keefe said. “All four lines, special teams, goaltending, everything was good. … It’s a low-event hockey game, but the fact our guys were comfortable in that I love as well, especially once we got the lead. … A ton of good things we can bottle up and take with us.”
The Devils snapped a four-game winless skid (0-2-2) when they beat the Anaheim Ducks 6-2 in their previous game before heading west.
Plenty of Devils are holding hot offensive hands. Jesper Bratt is riding a six-game point streak (one goal, six assists) and both Jack Hughes and Dawson Mercer netted one goal and one assist at Vancouver. However, the hottest player is Nico Hischier, who has five goals over a four-game goal streak and led the NHL with 10 tallies entering Thursday.
“Riding a wave right now a bit,” Hischier said. “It’s going in, and in my career, I have had some places where they weren’t going in, so I’ll just keep riding the wave.”
The Flames are on the other end of the spectrum. After a 5-1 road loss to Utah on Wednesday, Calgary has lost four consecutive games and five of six (1-4-1).
“You could say we’re in a pit of doom right now, but we’ve got to climb ourselves out of it,” said captain Mikael Backlund, who played his 1,000th career game in Salt Lake City and will be lauded prior to puck drop on Friday. “It’s up to us, 23 players here. We’ve got to turn this around. It’s been two tough games from us.”
The Flames opened the season 5-0-1, the best start for the team since relocating to Calgary for the 1980-81 campaign, but have lost their swagger. Calgary was outscored 10-1 during a two-game road swing that started in Las Vegas.
“The last two games, for me, there’s a little pushback with how we have to play,” coach Ryan Huska said. “If we’re going to try to do things on our own, or play a fancy, cute game, it doesn’t work for us. It’s something that hopefully the room recognizes, understands that the last two games, the work ethic hasn’t been where it needs to be, and for me, that starts right at the top and it works its way right down.”
Backlund intends to relay that to his teammates.
“We’ve all got to be better, as individuals and as a team. We’ve got to play more for each other,” he said. “Before this road trip we were playing hard and aggressive, that’s what we’ve got to get back to, we got away from that. It starts next game, first 10 minutes, every puck’s got to get in and we’ve got to go to work.”
