Devils Pick Up ‘Special’ Win in Columbus | GAME STORY

COLUMBUS, OH - It was a full-team effort for the Devils against the Blue Jackets.

Jake Allen was superb in the net for the opening two periods, no stranger to facing a barrage of shots in Columbus. He put together 19 saves in the first period and a total of 23 saves on 24 shots through two periods before leaving the game, due to cramping, to start the third.

Jacob Markstrom took over goaltending duties after the Devils had taken a 2-1 lead through two periods and put together a performance of eight saves on nine shots in New Jersey's 3-2 victory.

Along with goaltending, special teams were a difference-maker, with the new look power play going 2-for-2 and the penalty kill holding firm at 5-for-5.

Timo Meier scored his second goal in as many games, giving New Jersey a 1–0 lead late in the first period, not before Allen and the Devils' penalty killers had killed off six minutes of Columbus's power play.

“We’re not making it easy on ourselves,” Brenden Dillon, who played 4:17 shorthanded, said. “We have lots of confidence in our PK. Obviously, we’re trying to pick up from the confidence we had last year. We know we can help the team; we know any time we’re going over the boards for that kill, you’re usually going against the other team's best players. We’re competing for that, we’re making sure we’re doing the job to help us win. We were fortunate tonight that our special teams were huge.”

The Devils and Blue Jackets traded goals in the second; Columbus’s Kirill Marchenko converted on a breakaway before Dawson Mercer, Arseny Gritsyuk, and Ondrej Palat connected on the power play to retake a one-goal lead. The goal was Mercer’s first of the season and Gritsyuk’s third assist in two games.

“Whenever you can get those goals," Mercer said, "it’s obviously a big boost. It’s all momentum when every special team unit doing good. To see us come out there and capitalize on those chances to pretty much get us this win, it was a great thing to see.”

Trailing 2-1 with minutes to play, the Blue Jackets pulled netminder Jet Greaves for an extra attacker, but it was the Devils who capitalized, with Mercer picking up his second goal of the game, the empty-netter for the 3-2 game, which was crutial, as the Jackets scored with 20 seconds remaining to bring the final score to 3-2.

The Devils open their season with a 2-1-0 record on the road.

“To come home with four points is good," head coach Sheldon Keefe said. "You always want six, but we’ll take the four and the lessons learned along the way.”

Here are some observations from the game:

• Allen left the game after two periods with cramping.

“We had to rely on Jake a lot in that first period," head coachc Sheldon Keefe said. "I didn’t think we gave up a ton of quality, I thought the guys did a nice job of protecting the inside, but we were in our end a lot and there was a lot of chasing the puck around which probably got the better of Jake with the cramping he delt with later on because of that workload early in the game.”

• On Monday morning, Sheldon Keefe introduced a new-look power play, with the intention of countering how the Blue Jackets defend on their penalty kill. The first unit had two key adjustments: Dougie Hamilton took over the quarterback role, and Timo Meier was added to the mix.

The changes paid off quickly. On the Devils’ first power play of the night, Meier capitalized with a first-period goal. The unit maintained strong puck possession in the offensive zone before Meier found space and fired a wrist shot past Greaves to open the scoring, 1–0.

“It was kind of a broken power play at the end of a four-on-four there, so it was a little bit different type of circumstance, but I thought we broke the puck out much more efficiently," Keefe said. "Jack and Bratter were a lot smoother today coming through the neutral zone on the entry than they have been in the previous games, so that goes a long way."

To add to the success of the new power play formations, the second unit, also converted on their opportunity with the Mercer goal from Gritsyuk and Palat.

• Keefe also heaped praise on his penalty killers who went 5-for-5.

"Especially the double minor," he said. "It’s back-to-back, it’s early in the game and you don’t necessarily have everybody really going in the game, and now you’re going to have to go kill four minutes, so I tried to kill more killers than I normally do, just to get more guys involved, but it does disrupt the rhythm. That’s a real challenge, but the penalty kill was really up to the task here today and that really kind of fuels your game.”

• Brian Halonen played in place of the injured Zack MacEwen. Halonen was particularly limited in his minutes because of how many minutes the special team units were called on against Columbus. He played 6:54 and was lined up with Paul Cotter and Luke Glendening.

• Former New Jersey Devil Miles Wood was clipped with a high stick in the face early in the first period, resulting in the Devils going on a four-minute penalty kill and Dougie Hamilton going to the penalty box. The Devils killed off the Columbus man-advantage. Wood, however, did not return for the remainder of the game. The Blue Jackets announced Wood was out with an upper-body injury.