Devils look to continue strong defensive play in Game 5

The last two games between the Devils and Rangers have been a stark difference from the first two games of the series as the festivities shift back to Newark with things all tied up at two. The Devils have gotten the chance to play their fast-paced style in Game 3 and Game 4, but paired it with a sound defensive effort in their own zone and through the neutral zone.

That has been part of the shift in how things have played out after the Devils were outscored 10-2 in the first two games. They’ve since held the Rangers to a combined two goals since and the Devils have found the back of the net four times.

“I think what we took out of it is we knew we, especially from Game 2, we had to play a lot better defensively,” Devils coach Lindy Ruff said during a virtual availability on Tuesday. “That our structure and what we set out to do at the start of the year, we got away from it in Game 2. Some of it was a little bit when you get down by a couple of goals you start to press. It was a 2-1 game, you know, late in the second period that we showed a lot of patients throughout the year to be able to bounce back and tie the game up and win it. I thought we lost a little patience in that game and got away from our game.”

The Devils will try to mimic what they did well in the last two games in order to be successful in Game 5 back at Prudential Center. One noticeable change had been their play in the neutral zone where New Jersey shut New York down and caused some confusion.

Ruff credited the Devils with keeping their forwards tighter to take away the lanes that had been there for the Rangers to exploit and get into the attacking end with some ease.

“I thought we had real good sticks. Just detail stuff where your sticks are good, your angles are good, you’re getting above and if it looks like they got somebody beat we had the next guy coming in took their time and space away. Tough task because they’ve got some good speed with (Mika Zibanejad) and (Chris Kreider) and you know, (Filip Chytil) is a great skater too. So you know, you don’t want to get caught flat-footed. So I thought our guys did a lot better job and it was probably probably a reason that we were able to limit a lot of the opportunities.”

And that’s part of what Ruff wants his team to maintain in Game 5 along with making sure New Jersey can play its game well.

“I think we we we came really close to playing our game,” Ruff said. “Our speed was good. We created some odd number of rushes. We had guys in alone, the transition game was good. You know, I thought it was a pretty even gam, Game 3. I thought we got more to our Game and Game 4 where we really stayed on top of the puck.”