Devils Fall Short to Lighting in Overtime Loss

New Jersey Devils, Ice Hockey, Professional

January 12, 2024

Thursday night, the New Jersey Devils took on the Tampa Bay Lightning who just came off a win over the LA Kings. The Devils are ridden with injuries as they are without center Jack Hughes, right wing Timo Meier and other key players that are essential to the team. They would hope to come off a high note this game after losing to the Vancouver Canucks

The first period would start and the Devils would show signs of sloppy play once again, the lifeless play would seem to continue till a spark of life would show and Dawson Mercer would score from Erik Haula and Colin Miller to give them the lead. The Devils would seem to play more alive, until the Lightning would make an appearance on the board after dominating in their zone.

Luke Glendening would score off Nick Perbix and Austin Watson. The Devils would show signs of tiredness as they tried to make it to the end of the period, the Lightning would use this as an opportunity to dominate and Luke Glendening would make another appearance as he scored an unassisted goal.

The first period would end with the Devils down a goal. Both teams would file back into the locker rooms with very different feelings on the period before. The second period would start out strong for the Devils as they would seem to have good control of the puck and the passes were tight, but a mistake would cause the lighting to pick up the puck and score once again. Brayden Point would make the score 3-1 off of Nikita Kucherov and Perbix. This would seem to light a fire in the Devils as Jesper Bratt would strike six minutes later from John Marino and Tyler Toffoli.

The Devils would soon end the second period with once again only down by only one goal, but with more hope to turn the game around. They would come out for the third period with a look of life, they would tally up many shots on net with hopes of one hitting the back of the net. A mistake on the Lightning’s end would cause a breakaway for Devils Nathan Bastian, who was also playing his 200th career NHL game.

Nathan Bastian would take this opportunity and score on the breakaway to tie the game for the Devils. They would continue to fight hoping to take the lead late in the game, but would inevitably be taken to overtime by the lighting. Even with the advantage of having one of the best power plays in the league, the Devils would be shut down by the Lightning as Darren Raddysh would score the winning goal from Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy.

The Devils would leave the ice in disappointment, they would go on to do postgame interviews.

Devils Postgame

Nathan Bastian would speak about how he believes “there's always a weird amount of confidence in the group when there's guys missing” which would refer to the many absent players. Jesper Bratt would stay positive and emphasize that he thought it was "a solid game" and that the whole team "felt energy" throughout the game. Lindy Ruff would be questioned next as he spoke about the defense and breakaway problems during the first period.

Even though the Devils would lose this game, they would still leave Tampa with a point and a sense of hope for the next game against the Florida Panthers