In the span of 26 seconds, the New Jersey Devils completely unraveled at Xfinity Mobile Arena as the red light behind goaltender Jake Allen went off three separate times.
Wearing their road white jerseys, the Devils saw the Philadelphia Flyers score four goals in three minutes to erase any momentum their early power-play goal provided in the first period of Saturday night's game.
"Our power play goes out (and) scores is a big goal to get us on the board," head coach Sheldon Keefe told NJD.TV. " The next two shifts after that really let us down and gets (the Flyers) in the game. Gets the crowd going and then we just kind of unravel from there. A turn over and then we don't take care of each other, and give up a breakaway. Then we miss an assignment on the face-off play we had talked about before the game. It is 3-1. The game is lost in those moments."
"That shouldn't happen," Nico Hischier told NJD.TV. "That was the game. [...] We were sleeping for a couple shifts and they made us pay. It's hard chasing a 4-1 deficit. So that is not it."
Over the next 40 minutes, it didn't get any better for the Devils, who suffered a 6-3 loss to their Metropolitan Division rivals. It marked the club's third consecutive loss to close out their five-game road trip.
Noah Cates, Matvei Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Bobby Brink, and Trevor Zegras scored for Philadelphia. Foerster finished the game with two goals. Entering the game, he had only scored twice against the Devils in seven career games.
Timo Meier and Hischier scored for the Devils, while Allen made 23 saves on 29 shots for a .793 save percentage.
There were some positives that can be carried over to the team's next game. Those included the power play, which connected on their first opportunity after a great individual effort by Paul Cotter led to Cam York taking a hooking penalty. Meier scored his first goal of the team's five-game road trip, while Hischier and Jesper Bratt found their name on the scoresheet, getting credited with the assists.
Hischier scored in the second and third periods for his fourth multi-point game of the season. He earned his second three-point game of the season. Bratt collected three assists and now has a team-leading 21 points.
The Devils continue to be without star forward Jack Hughes, who underwent successful surgery on his finger on Nov. 15 after a fluke accident where he cut his finger on broken glass at a team dinner in Chicago. The 24-year-old is expected to miss eight weeks. In his absence, New Jersey's record is 1-3-0.
The team will return home to Newark to reset and prepare to host the Detroit Red Wings at Prudential Center on Monday. The Devils currently second in the Metropolitan Division behind the Carolina Hurricanes.
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