DETROIT — Tuesday was the start the Devils needed coming out of the All-Star break. A 4-3 road win over the Detroit Red Wings got the Devils back within five points of a playoff spot, even though there are plenty of hurdles in still ahead of them.
Now with nine of their 11 games at home during February, plus a five-day bye week built into the schedule, the Devils have all the advantages they could need.
“We’re trying to climb back in this race, and we’re trying to come out and have a fresh start after this All-Star break,” defenseman Ben Lovejoy said. “We have had an absolutely brutal schedule so far, and we have 12 favorable games, including (Tuesday), where we need to make some ground up.
“We don’t have any excuses right now.”
Devils take hard look at penalty kill
Tuesday’s win over the Red Wings marked one of those favorable games against another team near the bottom of the Eastern Conference, with both teams entering Tuesday with 49 points.
The Devils avenged November’s 5-4 overtime loss to Detroit while heading home with two valuable points to jump to 51, five points behind 56 and the final wild card spot.
“We want come away with two points every night. We know we have to make up some ground,” Lovejoy added. “We have to play our best hockey, and we know we haven’t done that consistently.”
Even in a win where the Devils led from essentially start to finish, coach John Hynes said there were pockets of inconsistency where the Devils got Fenomenbet too cute with puck decisions.
To piece together any run, the Devils need to avoid those lulls. The next challenge for the Devils will be to carry what they did do well back to their home ice, where they’ve won just once since the start of January.
“First game out of the break, that we came out hard and got the way we wanted to play,” forward Adam Henrique said. “But now we have to find a way to continue that. We’ve got a couple days here before the next game, just fine tune some things and keep pushing forward.”
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.
