G22 New Jersey Devils @ Winnipeg Jets: Stop the bleeding

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Five things to watch for when the New Jersey Devils take on the Winnipeg Jets:

1. Start on time

I know I’m beating a dead horse here but I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a good start.

The Devils are consistently coming out completely flat and falling behind the 8-ball. While they’ve made a habit of making games interesting, the reality is that’s all they have done.

It feels like they’re a good team when coming from behind. Fun fact: they’re not! They are actually one of the worst.

New Jersey has trailed after a period 33 times since the beginning of last season. Anyone want to guess how many of those games they won?

Go on, I’ll give you a minute.

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Four! The answer is four. They’ve won just 12% of the games they’ve trailed after the opening 20 minutes.

The train wreck Ottawa Senators, and the expansion Seattle Kraken (who’ve dealt with a ton of injury problems thus far), are the only sides with a worse win percentage when behind after 20.

Sure, the Devils have turned plenty of 4-1-type games into 4-3 games where their opponent had to sweat. But they very rarely actually complete comebacks and get two points.

A road back-to-back against a hungry Jets team, coming off an embarrassing loss to the Arizona Coyotes, is probably not the spot for the Devils to get on track in that regard.

The guys better chug a couple Red Bulls prior to puck drop and come out ready to play. If they fall behind early, we’re almost certainly looking at another loss.