It’s becoming clear while the Devils may be one of the best teams in the NHL, their power play remains their Achilles Heel. In Monday night’s loss to the Rangers, the Devils went o-for-3 on the man advantage and squandered away chances that could have changed the course of the game.
The Devils are just 4-for-15 on the power play in their last five games and haven’t been able to convert when its mattered most. On Monday night, the Devils had their third man-advantage late in the second period when Jonny Brodzinski was called for tripping.
New Jersey registered just one shot on goal in the two-minute span.
“We did have some good chances there. We’re not getting much time, to be honest,” Damon Severson said. “It’s hard when you’re not getting much time. You can’t really get into a groove. That first unit sees a lot of time, so when we’re getting two D every once in a while, one D every once in a while, we’re kind of just a little bit mixed up and you can practice and work on it all you want in practice, but when you get into a game situation things are kind of thrown in a little bit of a loop for you.
“We’re not getting much time that’s a key thing, but we did get some good looks there and the latter half of our one power playing in the second. We just like to be able to get one for the group when we’re able to and we’re able to get our chances.”
The power play had been a point of weakness last year for the Devils as well. It had been ranked 28th last season and operated at a 15.6% clip, but had only improved slightly this season.
Entering Monday’s game against the Rangers, the Devils had been 23rd in the league in power play percentage with a 21.2% clip.
“Yeah, the power play wasn’t good enough tonight for sure,” Nico Hischier said.
When Devils coach Lindy Ruff was asked if he was happy with the personnel on his power play units or if he had any plans to make changes, he point out an important factor.
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” If you look at some of the best power plays they have that flank shooting one-timer and that is dangerous,” Ruff explained. “The trouble with trying to go to something like that with us is that means that a Jack (Hughes) or (Jesper Bratt) has to come off the powerplay. And that’s a tough scenario.”
The Devils have dropped two straight games for just the second time going into Tuesday’s meeting with the Dallas Stars at Prudential Center. The last time New Jersey had dropped consecutive games was back in the opening week of the season when they fell to Philadelphia Flyers and Detroit Red Wings.
