The Devils' struggles continued as they were handed their second straight loss going into the All-Star Break and fell to 3-6-1 in their last 10 games.
The Devils' struggles continued as they were handed their second straight loss going into the All-Star Break and fell to 3-6-1 in their last 10 games.
Disappointing. Embarrassing. Frustrating.
Those words were used to describe the New Jersey Devils' 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday night at Amalie Arena.
And it was ugly; there is no denying it.
The Lightning outworked and outperformed the Devils from puck drop. Even though New Jersey managed to put three past Tampa's netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy, make no mistake, the home team dominated.
After the game, captain Nico Hischier met with attending media members to handle his postgame availability.
The frustration on his face was evident.
"Disappointing, I'm embarrassed a bit, to be honest," he said of his team's loss. "We got outworked, outplayed in such a big game. The way we performed is embarrassing."
He continued to speak about his team needing more emotion and stated they were too soft in the defensive zone around their goaltender's crease.
The All-Star Break is now upon us, and it could not come at a better time for New Jersey.
It gives those injured like Jack Hughes and Brendan Smith some time to get healthy and gives the healthy players time to mentally reset and find clarity on questions they currently can't answer.
The Devils enter their break six points back on the second wild-card spot with a couple of games at hand.
The good news for New Jersey is that besides the Carolina Hurricanes, most of the teams in the Metropolitan Division have faced recent struggles. The Philadelphia Flyers have lost five in a row, The New York Islanders are 2-6-2 in their last ten games, and the New York Rangers were 5-7-2 in January.
The Devils can only focus on what they can control, and Hischier knows the first step is for every player who wears the Devils' crest to look at themselves in the mirror.
"If we want to be a playoff team, we have to figure something out," he said. "It starts with the compete like all the things we have talked about. Everybody has to start looking in the mirror, including me."
"That's how you get out of it. (It) starts with yourself, and then we come out of this as a group."
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