G5 New Jersey Devils @ Carolina Hurricanes: Win or go home

The Devils have been blown out in three of four games this series. They'll need a much better effort in Game 5 if their season is going to continue.

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A few notes to get you set for tonight’s do or die game in Carolina:

The Devils need a quality start

This can be taken in two ways. The Hurricanes are an extremely difficult team to generate offense against – especially when they can sit back and feast on the counter attack – so falling behind a goal or two early is essentially a death wish, as we’ve seen all series.

That’s not what I’m talking about, though. The Devils need a quality start from (likely) Akira Schmid.

I’m not going to tell you the Devils have played great this series. I’m not even going to tell you they’ve played good. But bad goaltending has essentially prevented them any chance of winning in three of four games; and Vitek Vanecek wasn’t even average in the lone victory.

Let me put it this way. The Devils have played the Hurricanes surprisingly tight at 5v5, with the xG battle sitting at 51% for the Hurricanes and 49% for the Devils. It has not been tight on the scoreboard; the Hurricanes have outscored the Devils by 1.5 per game at 5v5.

That might be a little flattering and the Devils have absolutely shot themselves in the foot forcing things after falling behind. By and large, though, they’ve played better than the average scoreline would indicate. It hasn’t mattered because the goaltending.

That’s not all on Vanecek, though. Schmid has conceded eight goals on 48 shots, stopping only 83% of Carolina’s shots. That’s nowhere close to good enough, either.

If the Devils are to have a fighting chance in this game, they need a solid goaltending performance from Schmid. He’ll need to stop 27 to 28 of the ~30 the Hurricanes are averaging.

30 minutes