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The New Jersey Devils played a pretty solid game against Boston prior to the Thanksgiving break but came out on the wrong end of the coin flip that is the shootout.
Tonight they'll be looking to rebound when they host the Vancouver Canucks, who remain one of the biggest early-season surprises.
There have been a couple rocky stretches along the way, but the Canucks own a respectable 11-8-3 record and sit just two points(!) behind Vegas(!!) for top spot in the Pacific Division.
While their underlying numbers are mostly mediocre, they have been very stout defensively and that's perhaps the main reason they are where they are.
They're 10th in shot suppression, 6th in Expected Goals Against/60, and have a positive penalty differential so it's not like they'll spoonfeed teams power plays and offset their strong defense at full-strength.
The Canucks aren't anything special, but they're not the pushovers they've been in year's past. They're not going to hand the Devils two points – they'll need to play well and earn them.
Here are the projected lineups:
New Jersey
Taylor Hall - Nico Hischier - Jesper Bratt
Adam Henrique - Travis Zajac - Drew Stafford
Pavel Zacha - Brian Boyle - Miles Wood
Brian Gibbons - Blake Coleman - Stefan Noesen
Andy Greene - Steven Santini
John Moore - Damon Severson
Will Butcher - Ben Lovejoy
Cory Schneider
Vancouver (via DailyFaceoff.com)
Sven Baertschi - Bo Horvat - Brock Boeser
Daniel Sedin - Henrik Sedin - Jake Virtanen
Loui Eriksson - Markus Granlund - Thomas Vanek
Brendan Gaunce - Brandon Sutter - Sam Gagner
Alex Edler - Derrick Pouliot
Michael Del Zotto - Alex Biega
Ben Hutton - Erik Gudbranson
Jacob Markstrom
Five things to watch:
1) Brock Boeser. This kid is *really* good. At 5v5, he is tied for 5th in goals, ranks 3rd in goals/60, and has generated more individual chances/60 than the likes of Connor McDavid, Joe Pavelski, Steven Stamkos, and Brandon Saad thus far. He is an elite talent/shooter and will make the Devils pay if they gave him any space to work with.
2) After a quiet spell, Jesper Bratt showed signs of life last time out as he snapped his goalless drought and looked good on the top line with Taylor Hall and Nico Hischier. Can he build on that performance and hold a spot in the top-6? Without Kyle Palmieri, they need him to.
3) Hall hasn't scored in his last four games despite generating 23 chances in that time. I'm thinking he'll find the back of the net again sooner than later.
4) Speaking of Hall, John Hynes should get him on the ice against the Del Zotto - Biega pairing every chance he gets. The Canucks are controlling just 44% of the attempts with that duo on the ice and they have an expected goals against/60 of 3.14, which is horrible. For perspective, the Devils are one of the worst defensive teams in the league and have an xGA/60 of 2.63.
5) The Canucks rank 26th in xGF/60 and don't generate a lot of quality looks at 5v5 (beyond the top line, anyway) so the Devils need to make sure they're disciplined and don't give them easy opportunities to create offense.
Puck drop is just after 7:00 p.m. Eastern and can be seen on MSG+ and SNP.
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