Maple Leafs 4, Devils 3: Deja vu

The Devils came up on the wrong end of things in OT for the third time in four games.

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The New Jersey Devils were once again unable to get a win for Sheldon Keefe against his former team, falling to the Toronto Maple Leafs in extra time.

Here are a few observations from the game:

The Devils lacked juice at 5v5

From the day Luke Hughes and Brett Pesce stepped into the lineup until the holiday break, the Devils were largely an elite 5v5 team with fantastic metrics at both ends of the ice. That simply hasn’t been the case of late.

Generating offense, in particular, has been a struggle.

The Devils have piled up just 81 high-danger chances at 5v5 over the past 10 games, which sandwiches them between the rebuilding Blackhawks and a Red Wings team that was so lifeless for much of the year that they decided to make a coaching change. Not great.

While the Devils scored three times against the Maple Leafs, only one came at 5v5. Their dip in that gamestate was evident again.

The Devils struggled mightily to get out of their own zone with possession and didn’t have much juice through the neutral zone.

Very rarely were they able to exit with speed and threaten the Maple Leafs off the rush.

Even when they were able to successfully transport the puck into the offensive zone, generating sustained pressure and opportunities out of the cycle game proved difficult.

The Devils generated just 14 shots and 1.01 expected goals in 53 minutes of 5v5 play. They didn’t threaten with quantity, nor quality.

They also spent a ton of time absorbing pressure in the defensive zone, giving up a ton of shots and putting far too much on the plate of Jacob Markstrom.

It was a struggle at both ends of the ice. If not for some key plays from their stars, the Devils leave that game empty-handed.

New Jersey’s 1-2 punch almost stole the game