Five keys to success for the Devils against the Hurricanes

If the Devils are to pull off an upset, they'll need these factors to go their way.

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The New Jersey Devils looked like possible Stanley Cup contenders just a few months ago.

Now, given key injuries and how they finished the season, they enter the playoffs as the biggest underdog in the opening round.

They play the games for a reason, though, and the Devils can still be competitive – and perhaps even pull off the upset – if most of these factors go their way.

Power play production

New Jersey was a force on the power play this season. A force. They ranked 1st in shot generation, 1st in expected goals, and 3rd in scoring rate throughout the year. And they haven’t skipped a beat without superstar Jack Hughes in the lineup.

The Devils have scored 10.89 goals per 60 since Hughes went down. That is actually more than their season-long average – and it’s not a fluke.

The Devils rank 3rd in expected goals per 60 in that span, being outpaced by only the Toronto Maple Leafs and Pittsburgh Penguins. They’ve continued to pick teams apart with their passing and pile up the chances in high-danger areas, scoring plenty of goals as a result.

We know the Devils are not a great offensive team at 5v5. Heck, they aren’t even a good one. They’re likely to struggle generating against a Hurricanes team that is about as good as it gets defensively.

Despite the perception that refs put the whistle away in the playoffs, that only holds true in elimination games. They tend to be more trigger-happy over the first few games of the series than in the regular season.

The Devils will get power plays. They need to convert on them at a healthy clip to hang around.

Goaltending

The Devils don’t have a lot of edges in this series but goaltending should be one of them. It needs to be.

Despite a dip in performance down the stretch, the Devils managed to rank 11th in team save percentage on the season while the Hurricanes finished 21st.

Jacob Markstrom gave the Devils quality starts in 59% of their games while Pyotr Kochetkov did so 52% of the time.

Markstrom also had seven ‘really bad starts’ across 49 appearances while Kochetkov put forth 11 in 46 games.

Frederik Andersen posted better numbers than Kochetkov but only played 22 games and was unavailable plenty due to injury.

Who knows what the Hurricanes can get out of Andersen if and when they choose to go to him?

But back to Markstrom. The Hurricanes generate an extraordinary amount of shot volume on a nightly basis. Regardless of how frequently they get inside, they always make the opposing goaltender work.

Markstrom will have to be on his game for the Devils to have a chance.

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