The New Jersey Devils are in deep trouble and their head coach, Lindy Ruff, is skeptical about their recent performances, particularly Tuesday’s fourth game against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Like many teams that compete in the National Hockey League playoffs, the Devils had their good sides and bad sides. All hopes were high after they cut their rivals’ lead with an 8-4 win on Sunday. But in the second half of the next game everything collapsed, Carolina scored five goals in 12:10 and lost 1:6. And Ruff was clearly unimpressed.
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“Never in a game this year have we run and controlled the puck so poorly,” he lamented, as reported by the New York Post. I look at how we played after Game 7 against the New York Rangers [dans les deux premiers duels face aux Hurricanes] and there are similarities with it. I wonder if we have trouble with management tracking our successes. The boys had a great game before coming back with such a performance. The playoffs are tough and we didn’t play high enough to win.
“We weren’t skating, we weren’t there to support each other. Our defense didn’t move their skates to get out of their zone. All the stuff that used to work in the frontend is gone.”
The Vanecek case
Admittedly, there’s the case of goaltender Vitek Vanecek, who is having a tough time in the 2023 playoffs. After missing four of the last six shots in his direction, he was replaced by Akira Schmid. Since the start of the postseason, he has posted a 4.64 goal average against average and a terrible .825 save average. Many also expect that Schmid will start the next duel, but Ruff refuses to throw the first stone to Vanecek.
“If you look at how we played and what we forgave, I don’t think you should point the finger at the goalkeeper. There are many other factors that need to be considered,” he said.
The fifth game of the series takes place in Raleigh on Thursday at 7 p.m. and will be televised on TVA Sports.