NHL Pause an Opportunity for Devils to Reset | BLOG

The Devils had lost six straight games heading into the NHL mandated extended holiday pause. Coming out of it, the club looked like a new team in a 4-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres where for much of the night they looked like the better team.
"For us to get a few days to refresh and come back to the rink excited, it's a big deal," said Jack Hughes, who had three points on the night. "I think we were all excited coming back and to start it off with a win, that was huge for us."
Important to the reset, noted Devils head coach Lindy Ruff, was getting players back as key players Nico Hischier, P.K. Subban and Ryan Graves all returned from COVID protocol. Ruff said that the patchwork December has been difficult in terms of how to assess the squad he has on the ice.
"It's hard to evaluate when you have so many missing pieces. We didn't have either one of our goaltenders, a couple of our Top 4 D were out of the lineup, our captain was out. Every team is dealing with it. The reset for us is the fact that we got those people back," Ruff began.
"You kind of have a sense of where you think your team should be. When they're all there. When they're not there, we were at one point the youngest team on any given night. With young teams comes inexperience and mistakes that you have to grow and feel pain with.
"Can't wait to get better, can't wait to get healthy. We've just got to win hockey games."
Two players who came out of the break unable to play due to COVID protocol were Jimmy Vesey and Tomas Tatar. Ruff talked about having to make adjustments, particularly a player like Vesey who is a strong shutdown forward and penalty killer.
"Lines are constantly changing. With COVID protocol and contact (tracing), you make a decision and things change around, someone has to miss practice. It's just an awareness that things are going to have to change," Ruff noted, saying that he was happy with how the less familiar penalty killers stepped up in Buffalo.
"When we want to use a Sharangovich or a Zacha, Studenic, they practice (the penalty kill). The D is practicing it. The whole team is familiar with the killing part of it."