Resurgent Devils Take On Batterd Penguins In NHL East Action

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Resurgent Devils Take On Batterd Penguins In NHL East Action

The improbable late season run of the New Jersey Devils looks to continue on Friday night as they travel to the Consol Energy Center to take on the Pittsburgh Penguins. New Jersey's in-season turnaround based on fierce defense has been downright astounding though they’re running out of time to try and make the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Devils are 9 points out of the #8 position with only 9 games remaining. That makes a postseason berth a tough, though not impossible, challenge. The Penguins are trying to hold their ground in the Eastern Conference despite an array of injuries—most notably to captain Sidney Crosby and offensive catalyst Evgeni Malkin. To their credit, they’ve continued to play hard and will enter this game having won six of their last 10 games.

The Devils have lost three of their last four games, most recently losing to Boston 4-1. That's hardly a reason to get off of the New Jersey gravy train--New Jersey has been winning with defense and hard work and they're going to come up short now and then. By now every hockey fan knows the basic story of the New Jersey Devils--they've been playing the nastiest defense in the NHL since Jacques Lemaire took over and have won 21 of their last 29 games. The 'interim' title in front of his name may take Lemaire out of 'coach of the year' consideration but he’s taken a team that was an embarrassment on both ends of the ice and transformed them into the fiercest defensive competitors in the NHL. In the last 29 games they're allowing a ridiculous 1.85 goals per game. They're up to #9 in scoring defense--an amazing accomplishment considering they were right at the bottom of the team defense for most of the first half of the season. The Devils need to play good defense to win, however, since they're dead last in scoring offense (2.08 goals per game).

As a result, one of the strongest ways to play on the Devils has been to go UNDER the total. New Jersey has gone OVER in only 3 of their last 27 games (16 UN, 8 push). The Penguins have been solid recently despite their injuries—they’ve shown a remarkable ability to play and win against different styles and tempos. They can play wide open and score goals, but they’ve done better when they take care of the defensive end of the ice. Against the Devils, obviously the tempo will be a close checking defensively oriented affair. We’ll take New Jersey as road underdogs and look for this game to go UNDER the total.