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Recap: Devils Bounce Back From Wednesday's Loss with 3-1 Win Over Sabres

Date: November 27, 2022

By: Ryan Henry

The Devils bounced back from Wednesday's loss with a nice win over the Sabres.

Timothy T. Ludwig/USA TODAY Sports

The New Jersey Devils (17-4-0) got back in the win column last night, winning 3-1 on the road against the Buffalo Sabres (9-12-0).

It was the ninth-straight road win for New Jersey, matching the second-longest in team history which was set back in 2009.

Backup goalie Akira Schmid got the starting nod for the Devils and he put on another superb performance, saving 33 of a possible 34 shots with 2.29 goals saved above expected.

Schmid has been the perfect complement to Vitek Vanecek this season, going 4-0-0 on the season with .953 save percentage. According to Money Puck, his 4.7 goals saved above expected ranks 14th in the entire league. This season has been a drastic improvement from his rookie campaign.

Despite the score being knotted at zero, the Devils looked like the better team to start the first. They were controlling puck possession and had multiple chances to convert but couldn’t capitalize. Still, they out-shot the Sabres 16-7.

Jesper Bratt, the team’s leading point scorer, commented on the team’s improvement in the first period.

“The other day we got away from getting pucks on net and getting net-front press, so I think that was an improvement even if we didn’t get any goals,” Bratt said. “We created some chaos and got rewarded for that later on.”

New Jersey’s dominance has come from the second and tonight was no exception. Two minutes into the second period, Dougie Hamilton set up Jack Hughes for a beautiful one-timer. A few minutes later, Yegor Sharangovich stole the puck from Buffalo’s Mattias Samuelsson which led to Jesper Boqvist goal. The Sabres were able to cut the deficit to one, but Tomas Tatar scored to make it 3-1 going into the third.

Through 21 games, the Devils have outscored opponents 30-20 in the second period alone.

On the Tomas Tatar goal, Nico Hischier was credited with an assist. When the captain records a point, good things follow for the Devils, who are 15-0-0 in games where Hischier either scores a goal or records an assist. For comparison, they are 2-4-0 when Hischier doesn’t record a point.

The 3-1 score would hold until the buzzer sounded. New Jersey now improves to 11-1-0 in the month of November, the most wins in that month in franchise history.

For head coach Lindy Ruff, the message heading into tonight was not to lose two in a row and the team responded well.

The Devils will look to start another win streak as the Washington Capitals come into town on Saturday. Vanecek will get the starting nod in what will be an emotional game for him, as he started 79 games in Washington over the past two seasons.

Check back to WSOU.net for coverage of all things Devils all season long.

Ryan Henry is the Staff Representative at WSOU and can be reached at ryan.henry@student.shu.edu.

Posted in: Sports, NHL, New Jersey Devils

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