They Keep on Going | 10 TAKEAWAYS

One thing, no matter the ups and downs this season, you cannot deny, is that this group will never count themselves out. They won't hang their heads, they won't stop working, they're going to chug along until the very end.

The month of March has seen the stars shine for the Devils, coming up with enormous games, stabilizing forces and a no-quit attitude.

There may just be nine games left on the regular-season schedule (how did that happen!?) but the Devils are doing everything in their power to make each of those games count for something and make sure no one else counts them out either.

That has become as much a part of their close-knit identity as a group as anything.

Winners of their last four of five games, they're just going to keep plugging away.

It's been fun to watch and provided us with some great storylines down the stretch. So let's delve into some of them in this week's 10 Takeaways presented by Ticketmaster!

1.

I'm thinking of proposing a Buddy Cop movie to be filmed over the summer with Curtis Lazar and me. Any chance he gets, he loves to get in a good chirp, as we have seen these past few weeks. His easy target has been Luke Hughes, which we've seen on multiple occasions this week.

He got me pretty good in our pre-game scrum on Tuesday. For the life of me, I could not remember Nico Hischier's name for a second... one of those brain cramps where everything is just blank. So of course, in that moment of me looking off into the wilderness searching my brain, Lazar struck while the iron was hot.

But what's also funny about that interview was just before it started, I had just finished talking with throngs of Toronto media members to Luke, who was playing in Toronto for the first time. It was obviously a big deal, with Luke having grown up in the Greater Toronto Area, just as it was the first time Jack played there.

Curtis could see all the commotion, so when I walked over to him the first thing he said, with that famous grin of his, was 'Don't make me say something nice about Luke!'.

All in good fun, of course. But it was hilarious, nonetheless.

2.

Lazar, just hours after roasting me, had only the second three-point game of his career. He contributed three assists in the 6-3 win over the Maple Leafs. His only other three-point game came over two years ago on Jan. 12, 2022, when he was playing with Boston against Montreal. That night he had two goals and an assist.

3.

Better late than never, but the Devils were the final team in the NHL this season to post a shutout victory this year. And they did it on the back of Kaapo Kahkonen on Long Island in a thoroughly enjoyable game - save for that nasty knee-on-knee hit from Anders Lee on Nico Hischier.

No surprise to see Timo Meier do what he did, jumping the defense of his defenseless teammates. While Hischier was keeled over, Meier threw his gloves off and went right after Anders Lee.

"Pretty clear," Meier said post-game when asked about what he thought of the hit. "Didn't like the hit. Dirty hit. So I stepped in and kind of let him know."

Meier let him know and received an instigator penalty, a fighting major and a 10-minute instigator misconduct for his actions. He would then return to play and was handed a roughing penalty as the game clock was winding down, Meier taking the penalty with 13 seconds left to play in the game. His grand total of 19 penalty minutes set a new career-high for the 27-year-old.

Not to mention, he also had a goal and an assist in the game.

4.

So, if Meier isn't named one of the Three Stars of the Month for March, something has gone terribly wrong. He leads the NHL in goals with 13 since the start of the month and has a grand total of 19 points (with one more game to go this month).

He also tied Stephane Richer from the 1993-94 season for the most goals scored in the month of March for the Devils in franchise history.

5.

Let’s talk about Jake Allen.

When Tom Fitzgerald brought him in as an important veteran piece to the puzzle building there are so many layers to that. There’s on-ice play, of course, there’s age and experience, of course, but there’s also the very little things that maybe the camera doesn’t always catch.

Like, during TV timeouts, Jake is always skating over to the bench no matter the situation in a game. If things are going well, if the team is in a tough spot, he’s there. Goalies do all kinds of different things of course, there’s goalies like Ilya Sorokin and Devon Levi who like to be in their own moment during TV timeouts, they're stetching or meditating, each to their own. A lot of the time you see the goalie head over to chat with their backup and have a chat, maybe getting advice on what they’re seeing from the bench.

But what is noticeable about Jake Allen is how much he goes to the bench to talk to his defensemen - his young defensemen no less. He is constantly communicating with them, during play and during breaks, building up that strong relationship, that reliability and helping to stabalize what is a very young defensive core. That's the veteran presence that Fitzgerald has been looking for and Allen seems the perfect fit to embrace that role. 

“You’ve got to make decisions in your career," Allen said on Tuesday when asked about his transition over to New Jersey from Montreal. "Sometimes obviously you’ve got to be a little bit selfish and look yourself in the mirror and wonder what’s best for you and your family. I thought this was a good opportunity to come in the rest of this year, play some games, I didn’t play very much this season and get my game back in order."

I also go back to what he said in his first media availability. He wants to embrace this opportunity with New Jersey, all-in and rejuvinate, reinvigorate his career. This could be the perfect landing spot.

6.

And by the way, when I say young defensive core, it's no exageration.

The only defensemen on the current active roster who have more than 140 games of experience are Brendan Smith with 685 games played and John Marino's 321 games.

Altogehter, Nick DeSimone, Santeri Hatakka, Luke Hughes, Simon Nemec and Kevin Bahl have a combined 321 games of NHL experience and that gets a big bump from Bahl's 139 games.

7.

We talked about Meier and his 19 points (13g-6a) in the 14 games in March, well there’s also Jack Hughes who has 16 points in the 14 games (7g-9a), and Nico Hischier with 15 points (4g-11a). Not to be left behind, there’s Luke Hughes and Jesper Bratt who both have 11 points with a goal and 10 assists each over the month of March.

That’s the Big-5 or whatever you want to call them.

Let’s do the math (pulls up calculator app on phone):

That’s 72 points combined by the five players in the 14 games played and three players (Meier, J. Hughes and Hischier) who are averaging more than a point per game.

8.

Did you catch a glimpse of Jake Allen's new New Jersey mask?

It's pretty sweet.

The artists are Sylvie Marsolais and Alexandre Mathys who specialize in goalie mask artwork.

If you look really closely in the black portion, painted on the sides, there’s sihlouettes of the Devils logo. The style of so simple and classic. I love it.

9.

Martin Brodeur shared some really interesting thoughts in The Athletic with Pierre LeBrun this week. And if you're a subscriber, it's really worth your time to get into the mind of the greatest goaltender of all-time and see how he sees the goalie position having evolved over the years, how it's directly impacted the Devils and what can be done about it. He talks about how different the position is now than when he played and having to work around those sometimes self-inflicted constraints.

A little snippet:

"The average goalie is better than when I played," he said, "They're unbelievable (athletes). But you get to the games - it's such a wide-open game that if you're a young goalie... we see it now, because we moved our young goalies down and put two older goalies in. We see how experience counts.

"They freeze the puck at the right time. They control the game. All the little things. Not saying they're going to win every game, but they play a certain way that really helps your team settle down."

"It's kind of a mind-twister," he said, "What's the balance of how you play them? When you play them? Who you get? So much is different than it used to be."

10.

Jesper Bratt is on the verge of a career year.

He’s already cracked his record for assists. He has 49 this season, topping his 47 from 2021-22, and he’s sitting at 72 points overall.

The past two seasons he’s had 73 points. Safe to say he’ll break his career numbers by the time the regular season wraps up.

Just unbelievable from a player who, and yes this narrative will follow him around, was a sixth-round pick and just constantly bet on himself.