Sticking With It
The Devils have struggled since returning from the holiday break but the team is focused on learning and improving instead of placing blame on individuals. Staying united as a team is critical during this stretch. Although they aren't winning, this is an opportunity to come back stronger.
“Everybody cares, everybody wants to be winning,” Brenden Dillon explained. “We want to do the right thing. Sometimes it goes the other way where if you’re not scoring or things aren’t going your way, you force it and it almost doubles down on the negative stuff.
“Everybody is so dialed in and wanting to have success,” Dillon also shared. “That’s not individual success, we want to win. For 37 games or whatever it was before Christmas, things were going really well … as you play in the league and see, there’s ups and downs for the season. Usually when (it's) the down, and you’re going through a losing streak like we’ve gone over five of the last six, you can kind of see the true colors. You can go one of two ways: you can start yelling at each other, causing rifts, and the sky is falling, or you can try to at least learn why are we not having success? What parts of our game? Is it certain 5-on-5 instances, is it certain shifts we can do better on, where are things lacking? That’s what we got to really hone in on until we can get things back going the right way.”
Devils forward Stefan Noesen also shared how the team needs to remain loose throughout this stretch.
“It’s better to go through things earlier rather than later,” Noesen said about the challenging stretch of games back from the holiday break. “You do learn a lot. You learn how guys face adversity, you understand how guys dig in and prepare themselves maybe differently than they would if things were going good.
“You still got to have fun while doing this,” Noesen continued. “Truth is, if you’re way too uptight you’re just going to be think about it too much and then it’s never good for anybody.”
Facing the Bolts
Saturday night is the third and final meeting between the Devils and the Lightning, and New Jersey is still looking for it's first win over Tampa Bay this season. Something players and coaches alike have said about the Lightning's success is their work ethic.
“Tampa, they have been the standard in the Eastern Conference for quite some time,” Keefe said about the Devils opponent. “They make it hard on you every night with their combination of skill and speed and tenacity. It’s a team that you give the puck to too much, they’ll make you look bad and they defend real hard, block shots, and such things, and then they’re backed up by elite goaltending. Lots of things to contend with there.”
“Stanley Cup pedigree,” Dillon said about the Lightning. “When you watch the clips of them and where they get their success from, it’s just old fashioned hard work. Their top end guys - Point, Hagel, Kucherov - they’re some of the hardest working guys and most competitive guys. When you go into a corner with a guy, you go into the net front, and you win that battle - whether it’s on the offensive or defensive end - you’re going to have success.”
Powering Up
As the Devils look for their power play to find success against tough pressure, which Tampa Bay brings, Stefan Noesen discussed what New Jersey is focusing on:
“It’s supporting each other. It’s getting open, it’s trusting each other. It’s finding sticks underneath, it’s just attacking. You need five guys on the same page. (When you) get all five guys on the same page usually you have some pretty good success.”
