A spate of injuries is largely to blame for the New Jersey Devils remaining on the outside of the Eastern Conference playoff picture shortly beyond the midway point of the regular season.
But the inconsistency displayed over the last five games might be the Devils’ biggest hurdle to climbing into a postseason spot.
The Devils will look to bounce back from another narrow defeat when they visit the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday in a battle of Metropolitan Division rivals.
The Devils were off Thursday after a 3-2 loss to the visiting Montreal Canadiens Wednesday night. The Blue Jackets, who are completing a three-game homestand, haven’t played since Monday, when they edged the Vancouver Canucks 4-3 in a shootout.
The loss was the fourth in the last five games for the Devils (1-3-1), who have fallen into a multi-goal hole in all four setbacks. New Jersey allowed the first three goals of a 6-4 loss to the Canucks on Jan. 6, gave up three unanswered goals in an 18-minute span bridging the first and second periods of a 4-3 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Jan. 11 and fell to the Boston Bruins 3-0 last Saturday.
The Devils mounted another comeback attempt Wednesday when Luke Hughes and Alexander Holtz scored power-play goals 51 seconds apart early in the third period. But New Jersey suffered an ill-timed lapse in judgement with 5:31 left, when Sean Monahan weaved around Simon Nemec to put back the rebound of a shot by Jordan Harris, then Cole Caufield got behind John Marino in the crease and tapped the puck past goalie Nico Daws.
“It really stings,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said. “It stings even worse when there’s five minutes left.”
The Devils, who won a playoff round last season for the first time since the spring of 2012, entered Thursday 12th in the Eastern Conference and two points behind the Lightning in the race for the final wild-card spot. New Jersey’s current skid coincides with the five-game absence of captain Jack Hughes, who is week-to-week with an upper body injury suffered Jan. 5. Defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler suffered a broken foot the next night.
Hughes, Nico Hischier and Dougie Hamilton, the Devils’ three leading scorers last season, have missed a combined 43 games this season.
“Lot of injuries right now,” Ruff said.
The Blue Jackets, who are last the Metropolitan and appear likely to miss the playoffs for a fourth straight season, will look to play spoilers again Friday. Columbus has lost nine of 14 (5-5-4) since Dec. 10 but four of its wins were one-goal overtime or shootout victories against teams that entered Thursday in a playoff spot.
The Blue Jackets earned a pair of 6-5 overtime wins over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Dec. 14 and Dec. 29 and beat the Philadelphia Flyers 3-2 in the shootout on Jan. 4. On Monday, the Pacific Division-leading Canucks took a trio of one-goal leads before Dmitri Voronkov forced overtime by scoring at 10:57 of the third.
Kirill Marchenko then scored the only goal of the shootout for the Blue Jackets, who improved to 5-9 in games decided after regulation. Goalie Elvis Merzlikins, making his first appearance since Dec. 29 and days after he requested a trade, made 27 saves before stopping four more shots in the shootout.
“Thank you, Elvis — thank you everybody in this room, because we worked hard,” Marchenko said.
The Blue Jackets will likely get a key player back Friday, when captain Boone Jenner is expected to return after missing 15 games due to a broken jaw suffered Dec. 8.
–Field Level Media
