NEW YORK — Michael Cammalleri will be a healthy scratch for the second straight game when the Devils play the New York Islanders on Sunday at the Barclays Center.
Cammalleri was displeased when he was a healthy scratch for the first time in his career for Saturday’s 3-2 Devils win over the Islanders, but coach John Hynes made the difficult decision to roll with the same lineup.
“It’s not an easy decision to do that. We have a tremendous amount of respect for him as a person and as a player,” Hynes said. “But ultimately we decided to go with this lineup tonight.”
What Devils need to do again Isles
The lone lineup change will come in goal, where Keith Kinkaid will play for Cory Schneider, who started the previous seven games. Hynes expected Kinkaid to play Sunday or Tuesday with the Devils playing five games in eight days.
As for Cammalleri, his situation appears similar to forward P.A. Parenteau’s scratch in December, when the Devils sat him for back-to-back games.
“There’s always reasons why guys come out of the lineup, and you have to work through those as players and coaches,” Hynes said. “In P.A.’s case, he understood some of the things we were talking about, and he came in and came back, did a good job, and we haven’t considered taking him out since.”
Another reason for Cammalleri’s scratch is the lineup’s performance in Saturday’s win. Devante Smith-Pelly, who played his first game since Jan. 31, scored a goal and recorded a team-high four hits. Now Hynes is looking for that effort to be replicated.
“We think (Smith-Pelly’s) handled it well when he was scratched. He didn’t like it, but he had no choice but to work through it,” Hynes said. “He had a very good game, now tonight’s another test for him. Can there be another repeatable performance?”
Why Devils are entering most important stretch of season
Chris Ryan may be reached at cryan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisRyan_NJ. Find NJ.com Devils on Facebook.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
