Devils Need More from the Offensive | BLOG

Since the start of the season, the Devils have seen drastic improvements in individual players and many facets of their overall game.
Whether it's Jack Hughes breaking out as a point-per-game player with 21 (9G-12A) in 21 games. Or Jesper Bratt pacing the team in goals (10), assists (23) and points (33).
From a team standpoint, the club has also shown growth through the first 38 games of the regular season. The Devils have cracked down on the number of odd-man rushes against, an issue that plagued them for much of November. The penalty kill, which ranked dead last a season ago, is 11th-best in the NHL at 81.7-percent success rate. Meanwhile, the power play has scored in six of the past 11 games.
"Our rush defense has been a lot better. We're not giving up the number of rush opportunities that we had given up," Ruff said. "We can go to special teams … our penalty killing has come a longways to get to where it's at. If you take the last six weeks our power play has been doing a lot better job."

And while those markers are commendable, there are certainly many areas of the team's game that need to get better.
"The focus is to be sound defensively," Ruff said. "The chances we've given up has gone down. Now we need to improve by putting more pucks in the back of the net."
The Devils are tied (Ottawa) for 19th in the league with 2.82 goals per game.
"The number of chances that we're getting that are resulting in goals hasn't been high enough," Ruff said. "We spent the last two days, we showed some clips, we talked about the areas of the ice where we can be stronger, we can have bigger attacks, we can fight more for positioning.
"Our biggest success for scoring goals was when we were getting 40-plus shots, a lot of pucks were going to the net. As a team, we're giving up opportunities where we can have that low attack. We're not taking it right now. We're looking for something better."