Pregame Skate Familiar territory for the Devils entering Game 2

NEWARK, N.J. — If there is a positive for the New Jersey Devils following their Game 1 lo s on Wednesday night it’s that they’ve been slow starters in every postseason series they’ve played Carlos Martinez Jersey this year. So far, it hasn’t caught up to them. They lost the opening game to both Philadelphia and New York, and dropped two of their first three against Florida in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. Every time they’ve been able to come back and win the series. “We know we’ve been here before,” said Devils coach Pete DeBoer on Thursday.”I think also after looking at the tape, we think we know what we have to fix. I think there’s a comfort level there that we can get that done. The Los Angeles Kings are going to be their biggest test yet. Especially with the way the two teams are playing right now. Both teams are pretty similar when it comes to their overall style of play, a point that DeBoer very much agreed with.”They’re in front of you,” said DeBoer. “There’s not a lot of room and you have St. Louis Cardinals Jersey to work for your space. I think we did a good job of that through the playoffs. This team the Kings is as good as any I’ve seen this year at that.”Along with that, they both want to have an aggre sive forecheck, they both want to play in the offensive zone as much as po sible, and they both want to get a lot of shots at the net. There is nothing pa sive about these teams. They’re not going to be content to sit back, collapse around their net and wait for a mistake. They’re going to get on you and force you to make a mistake, and then keep you pinned deep in your end of the ice. (In theory, this should probably be the objective of team, but as we’ve seen the playoffs not every team is as committed to it, or as capable of actually pulling it off.) So far this postseason they’ve been two of the best teams in the NHL at accomplishing this, which has gone a long way toward both teams getting to where they are. Right now the Kings are the team that has Jose Martinez Jersey been able to get to their game the best. Let’s go to the chartsThe Kings are in purple, the Devils are in red. What we’re looking at here is the percentage of attempted shots that have gone to each team on a game-by-game basis throughout the postseason. At this point it’s two teams clearly going in two very different directions, a problem that the Devils must correct if they have any hope of winning this series. More often than not each team has been in a position where they’ve been taking well over 50 percent of the attempted shots in a game throughout the postseason, which is a very good thing. They’ve both Harrison Bader Jersey been controlling the puck, dictating the game, and putting the pre sure on their opponents. It’s been very rare for either one of these teams to face more shots than they’ve attempted. Unfortunately for the Devils, this current stretch has been perhaps their worst of the playoffs when it comes to controlling the puck and pushing the play. Of course, they were still able to go 3-1 over that stretch, mainly because goaltending is always the great equalizer. Even though the Devils didn’t play their best hockey as a team over the final three games of the Eastern Conference finals, Martin Brodeur was able to outplay Henrik Lundqvist, who happened to play one of his worst games of the postseason in that series. With the way Jonathan Quick is going right now in net for the Kings, the Devils Marcell Ozuna Jersey shouldn’t be counting on that to happen here. Especially if they’re only going to get 17 shots on goal like they did in Game 1. “We’ve got to do more,” said DeBoer. “I think we made it too easy on him. We had some opportunities. But we didn’t do enough to make it tough on him.”How easy was it for him at times on Wednesday? There were multiple stretches of more than five minutes at a time (including a 10-minute stretch to open the second period) where the Devils didn’t even attempt a shot. If they don’t start making things tougher for him beginning with Game 2, this could be another short series.