Changes were made at practice today as head coach Sheldon Keefe and his staff look for ways to spark the offense in the lineup. New Jersey's offensive game has recently slipped, having score three goals or less in 11 straight games and just six goals in their last four games.
“Just looking to change it up and see if we can create some new chemistry that has some things fall into place,” Keefe said. “We’ve been very patient with the group that we’ve gone with and only subtle changes most of the season (…) there are some pretty dramatic shifts in there, but I look at it as a little more subtle. You still have pairs. You’ve split up some pairs but you maintain some."
And while it can be easy to zero in solely on the lack of scoring, Jesper Bratt spoke about embracing the journey that is a full season, one where a team will undoubtedly face any number of dips in their collective game.
“We kind of excited for the journey to battle through this,” Bratt said. “We’re all committed. We’re having a great group that no one is calling eachother, everyone is taking responsibility for their own work."
And while the team is working through finding their offensive touch again, it's important to note that their defensive game hasn't slipped in the process.
“It’s important to keep perspective here, we haven’t played great, but we’ve been in every single game and that is because we’ve built a good foundation here. Early on our California road trip, defensively we were not strong, giving up too much, but we’ve really tightened that up again. And done a good job defensively. Now we’ve got to find a way to balance that with the offensive side. You can’t slip offensively because of it, just like you can’t slip defensively while you search for offense, it’s really that balance. The teams that do it best with that balance are the elite teams and that’s what we’re trying to get to.”
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