Surprising Devils Host Penguins In NHL East Battle

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Surprising Devils Host Penguins In NHL East Battle

This Eastern Conference matchup between the New Jersey Devils and Pittsburgh Penguins sure didn’t look like it offered much potential back in December. At that time the Devils were one of the biggest embarrassments in the league, while the Penguins were near the top of the standings with captain Sidney Crosby having an excellent year. Things have changed dramatically since then—Crosby is out with a concussion and the Devils are playing at an almost absurdly high level under interim coach Jacques Lemaire. The reversal of fortune with these teams is so complete that you can expect the Devils to be a decent sized home favorite here.

The Penguins’ problems are fairly simple—they’ve unexpectedly lost their best player and have since added one of their better offensive producers to the injury list. Crosby was sidelined with a concussion after the first of the year and to their credit the Penguins haven’t tried to rush him back. While that’s the right thing to do it’s not necessarily helping their team in the short term and there’s a good chance that Crosby is out for the season. Evgeni Malkin is also gone for the year due to a knee injury and with so much offense gone from the lineup Pittsburgh as tried to rely on defense and the goaltending of the erratic Marc Andre Fleury.

The transformation of the New Jersey Devils from league doormat to a team that seldom loses has been downright amazing. On December 23, the Devils had a record of 9-22-2 and were the worst team in the league both offensively and defensively. That’s when Jacques Lemaire took over as interim coach and somehow changed the same roster into the nastiest defensive team in the league. The team didn’t start winning immediately, but since a January 9th win over Tampa Bay they’ve won 17 of their last 21 games with only 2 losses in regulation. The Devils still aren't scoring a lot of goals, but have been playing stifling defense and generally out working their opponents night after night. They've only allowed more than 3 goals once in their last 21 games and have allowed a total of 34 in that stretch--that's a 1.61 goals against average over nearly a quarter season of NHL hockey. Devils’ player Brian Rolston summed up his team's mindset: "At this point, every game is a playoff game for us." They're sure playing that way.

This presents a problem for Pittsburgh since they try to win with defense and goaltending, only the surging Devils are better at it. The absence of so much offensive firepower for the Penguins plays into the Devils’ recent defensive strength and makes this a very bad tactical matchup for the visitor. We’ll look for the Devils’ freight train to keep steaming along with a home ice win over the Penguins in a low scoring game that plays UNDER the total.