Takeaways from the Devils' 5-2 Loss in Game Four

The Devils needed a victory at home to even the series, but poor play outside of the second period largely neutered their hopes of doing so.

The New Jersey Devils fell to the Carolina Hurricanes by a score of 5-2 yesterday afternoon, resulting in a 3-1 series deficit against a tough Hurricanes squad.

Let’s quickly go through a few of my takeaways from the loss:

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1. Poor Start, Slow Ending

If they wanted to win, the Devils needed to come out of the gate with the same feistiness they did in the first period of Game Three.

Yet, the opposite held true. The Hurricanes dominated the flow of play in the first frame, with the Devils registering just one more shot (3) than the Hurricanes had goals (2). At 5v5, shot attempts were 27-8 in favor of Carolina, as were shots (8-3), scoring chances (10-5), high-danger chances (3-1), and expected goals (0.8-0.18). Add into account that the Devils’ power play in the first period generated just two shot attempts (one on goal) and 0.07 xG, and it shouldn’t be considered anything more than a disaster.

The Devils then entered the third period down by a score of 3-2, having clawed their way back from their abysmal start by virtue of an excellent second period that, if they had played the entire game like it, they would have won handily.

The third period, though, considering the score, was just not good enough. If you’re a team in desperation, with the playoff series and season on the line, you simply have to play with some urgency. It felt as though they were just operating under the assumption that Canes’ backup Pyotr Kochetkov would let in a soft goal because he was coming in cold and didn’t look very good in the previous period.

They “outplayed” the Hurricanes in the final frame, to be clear — at 5v5, they kept the Hurricanes to 13 shot attempts, six shots on goal, four scoring chances (one of them high-danger), and just 0.2 expected goals (xG) at 5v5. The problem there is that the Devils didn’t generate a whole lot more than that. They logged 17 attempts, seven shots on goal, six scoring chances (three of which were high-danger), and just 0.47 xG.

Not good enough from a team in that position.

In all honesty, it may have been the most disappointing period of hockey the Devils have played this season, considering the circumstances around the play. Again, for a team with its back up against the wall, riding the momentum of a strong second period, in a game in which they’re down by a goal, to produce just 0.47 xG is disheartening to say the least.

2. Markstrom’s Lone Bad Game

Jacob Markstrom has been excellent this series for the Devils and has kept them in (largely) close games for the first three matchups.

Yesterday, though, was a stinker.

It happens; I’m not mad about it, considering just how good he has been in the first three games of the series, but it definitely cost the Devils yesterday. The first goal against was a spin-around shot from Andrei Svechnikov, which, even though it was through traffic, Markstrom should have been in a position to save.

The second goal against — the savvy move by Jaccob Slavin to pickpocket Stefan Noesen — has no excuse. The reason it looked like a sick shot was that it was from such a low-danger area of the ice that it never should have been considered anything close to a chance. Markstrom simply needs to hug the post there and not allow a single slit of daylight. There is never an excuse for an NHL level goaltender to let an unscreened puck from that angle into the back of the net.

The third goal was a reasonable one to give up. The Devils’ defensive coverage was sloppy on the power play and the shot-pass from Seth Jarvis to Svechnikov was a brilliant play on top of it.

The fourth goal was the icing on the cake. After he himself turned the puck over from a pass gone awry, Markstrom was unable to corral a muffin shot from the point, leaving room for Jordan Martinook to poke an unnecessarily available puck through to the back of the net. It was a godawful play from Markstrom from start to finish, and neutered any momentum the Devils were building in the second half of the third period.

3. On Keefe’s Quote

After the game, head coach Sheldon Keefe threw out this quote:

“Offense has been a challenge for our team most of the season, so to expect (depth guys) to come out and dominate (offensively) is probably not realistic.”

I, for one, agree with the notion. GM Tom Fitzgerald was quoted as saying that the Devils have “enough offense” last off-season, insinuating that they were going to shift mentalities to being a more “difficult” team to play against.

Flash forward to today, and the opposite is absolutely true. The Devils are difficult to play against — they suppress shots, are more active on the forecheck than they have been in recent memory, lay the body more, push play more to the perimeter — but have lacked scoring from their depth options for much of the season, on top of the unexpectedly steep dropoffs of veteran players in Ondrej Palat, Curtis Lazar, and Erik Haula.¹

Some were upset at the notion of Keefe calling his GM out for poor roster construction, but he’s unquestionably correct in the ideology itself.

Stefan Noesen, despite his hot start and utility on the power play, has been a quasi-useless player at 5v5 since the calendar flipped to 2025. He didn’t score a single goal on 60 5v5 shots post-holiday break.

Nate Bastian is a superb defensive player, but to expect him to provide anything offensively is unrealistic. He was fine offensively for a fourth liner when the Devils had Michael McLeod as their playdriving bottom-line center, but without that talent replaced, Bastian has been relegated back to his role of being a zero-event player.

Justin Dowling is simply not an NHL-caliber forward. As with most injury call-ups, he’s a fine player from a defensive standpoint and a complete black hole offensively — he scored just twice in 52 games this season and had zero since the holiday break.

Cody Glass, Paul Cotter, and Tomas Tatar have been useful players in the bottom six, but two of them — Glass and Tatar — are certainly more defense-oriented than offensively apt at this point in their careers. Cotter’s lack of success in the postseason is probably because of the fact that he doesn’t have any help around him, more than anything else.

On top of that, of course the Devils are scoring less when Ondrej Palat is a member of the top line instead of someone who can meaningfully contribute offensively. Of course they’re scoring less when Erik Haula, who went three months without a single point at one point this season, is a member of the second line (he has been playing better since moving to wing). For Keefe to indirectly challenge the GM’s roster construction is absolutely within reason here. He isn’t waving the white flag or giving up on his squad, he’s simply telling the truth.

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It was a disappointing Game Four, especially considering the Devils were one win away from controlling the momentum of the series — they outplayed the Hurricanes in Game Two despite the loss, followed it up with a superb, well-earned victory in Game Three, and had the looks of making a comeback in the second period of Game Four before blowing it by seemingly giving up or tiring out.

Game Five is tomorrow at 7:30 PM EST. Let’s go, Devils.

1. By this, I mean that the dropoffs were expected by virtue of aging, but I don’t think anybody would have expected said dropoffs to be quite this severe.