Canadiens 5, Devils 2: A quality issue

New Jersey generated a ton of shots against Montreal. Unfortunately, many of them came from the outside; or with the wrong players taking them.

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A few notes following New Jersey’s loss to the Montreal Canadiens:

Quantity over quality

That’s what we saw from the Devils’ offense on Tuesday night and, in my estimation, that’s the biggest reason they dropped two points against a putrid Canadiens team.

On the surface the Devils played a pretty strong game. They generated plenty of shots, their xG numbers were excellent, and they had the puck in the offensive zone a lot.

But they lacked quality in the abundance of shots they generated; in more ways than one.

The Devils were often held to the perimeter. There were a ton of point shots and a ton of long range shots from the half wall. The Canadiens did a great job of getting in the lane and blocking those shots time after time. Hats off to them for that but Sam Montembeault wasn’t going to have much trouble even if they all got through. That was the first quality issue.

The more important one: New Jersey’s best players weren't the ones piling up the good shots. Quite the contrary.

At 5v5 the Devils had six players attempt five shots or more. Those players were Dougie Hamilton, Damon Severson, Brendan Smith, Miles Wood, Ondrej Palat, and Yegor Sharangovich. That’s three defensemen and two of the three forwards skated in the bottom-6.

I don’t see Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, or Dawson Mercer on that list. The same can be said if you’re looking in the chance department.

At 5v5, those four forwards combined for four scoring chances and two high-danger opportunities. Those are minuscule numbers considering the Devils, as a team, generated 39 chances and 23 high-danger looks in that gamestate.

This is all a long way of saying the Canadiens largely did a good job of keeping the Devils to the outside. When they did get inside looks, it was very rare their good players were the ones taking them.

Did the Devils deserve better? Sure. But when defensemen and Miles Wood account for a large portion of your shots, you leave the door open for an underwhelming finishing night. That’s what happened.

Take Smith off the top pairing