Approaching the Finish Line | 10 TAKEAWAYS

Six games left. That's what is left on the Devils' 2021-22 season schedule, four at home, two on the road. And then it's a wrap.
The team has spent the last two weeks hopping from city to city out West, on the longest road trip of the year. The road has been a difficult place for the Devils this season but on this road trip the team went 3-1-1 and with just a few games left there is still plenty of work to be done to finish this season on a high note.
From the last week on the road, here are this weeks 10 Takeaways, presented by Ticketmaster.

2.

I couldn't even finish my sentence post-game against the Vegas Golden Knights before Lindy Ruff chimed in with his answer.
"Awesome."
I was asking about the performance of goaltender Andrew Hammond, who was a key factor in the win against Vegas and helped seal a 3-1-1 road trip. Every game he has played, he's looked more comfortable, which would be expected, given he was recovering from a lower-body injury when he was acquired at the deadline. The groove that he's in also serves as a good trickle-down effect, what with having had four goaltenders on the roster during the long trip. I think Hammond's play, coupled with Mackenzie Blackwood having made the trip out West, made the next moves the right one for the group.

3.

It has been a remarkable and unexpected season for Devils goaltender Nico Daws. No one could have imagined at the beginning of the season that he would lead the club in wins at the National Hockey League level, but out of necessity, he ended up the defacto-starter for much of the 2022 portion of the Devils schedule. He played in the 22 of the club's last 27 games, a major workload for even the most veteran of goaltenders.
In the last few games, Daws did not dress, earning some valuable time off, considering just how heavily relied on he was, including a stretch of nine-straight starts. On Wednesday, he was returned to the Utica Comets, where the team hopes to go on a run in the Calder Cup playoffs. Akira Schmid has been carrying the load while Daws has been in New Jersey, and Schmid helped the team clinch the North Division championship. Having Daws back will give Kevin Dineen and his team a terrific one-two punch in goal.
Taking a look at Daws' American Hockey League stats, Daws has just five losses in his 17 games, and his .918 save percentage continues to rank in the top ten in the AHL.

4.

I was sitting outside the Devils locker room in Seattle and the music was blasting from the room, as it normally does. Sandstorm, a personal favorite, has been a go-to these days. I rather enjoyed the Seattle Kraken employee who walked by the locker room door and looked at me and goes 'that's the loudest locker room music I've heard, yet!'.
I told him I think that's what happens when you are the youngest team in the league. I'm just happy they play good music, because we all end up humming it out loud for the rest of the day or night, no matter how hard you try not to. It just gets stuck in your head.

5.

It feels like he's gone about it quite quietly, but Jesper Boqvist has really found himself in a good spot we enter the final week of the season. In his first few years, there was a consistency level and a comfort level that was clearly missing from Boqvist's game, whether through experience or strength. He had often bounced in and out of the lineup, sat as a healthy scratch for four straight in January, and then back in the lineup again, he worked his way to grab the 3C spot and stick with it. Lindy Ruff says the move to the center and Boqvist's improved skating,
led to trust between player and coach. 
The best example of that confidence?
This ridiculous goal.

"I feel like I'm coming into more of myself every day," he said. "Confidence-wise, I feel like I belong, and I can do stuff. That's the biggest part."

6.

The best quote of the five-game trip came from Nico Hischier when I asked him what he thought of Boqvist's goal:

7.

When I first joined the Devils, I truly had no idea what really goes on behind the scenes to get a team up and running for any given game. Particularly on the road. It was a real eye-opener to me my first season when I started traveling with the team. When you hear players say that the support staff, like trainers and equipment managers, are the unsung heroes of a season, trust them. They really are.
Here's something I didn't know before I started working for a team. When a team touches down in a city for a road game, the rest of us head to the hotel, where we have our evenings to do what we please, or depending on the time we land, we happily go right to sleep. But not the equipment managers. When the plane lands, their work is just beginning, while the rest of us are bussing to the hotel, they're heading to the arena to make sure the room is ready for the morning. Even if we land at one or two in the morning, depending on the flight, they're right off to the rink.
They work incredibly hard to make sure your team is ready.
And that's why I am so happy to see Devils' head equipment manager, Chris 'Frosty' Scoppetto get the nod to
join Team USA for the World Championship
in May. You'll recall too that the Devils' equipment team helped represent the Metropolitan Division at the 2021 All-Star Game.

8.

Speaking of equipment managers, they've had plenty of additional work this year trying to design and test attachments to players' helmets to protect jaws and chins. First, it was Dougie, who said he went through about six different options before settling, and next up was Ryan Graves. It's hard to wrap your mind around how lucky Graves was when Nathan MacKinnon's skate caught him in the face in Colorado. Inches away from his throat, inches from his eyes, all things considered, he was lucky the skate caught him where it did. It took 19 stitches, 17 on the outside, and two on the inside, to stitch up his chin.

9.

Going 3-1-1 on the most recent road trip not only helped improve the Devils' road record, which has been a point of contention all season but the three wins pushed Lindy Ruff into a tie for fifth place in the NHL's all-time wins list with Al Arbour, picking up his 782nd win.

10.

A few weeks ago I did an entire 10 Takeaways on career-highs and suggested that several players weren't quite done yet. Well, that's certainly the case for Damon Severson who scored his 11th goal of the season against Seattle for a new career-high in goals. It also moved him into fourth place on the Devils defenseman all-time scoring list, with his 51st career goal. He has a ways to go to reach third all-time, which is Bruce Driver's 83 goals.
"It's awesome to have any personal success you can. But personal success should follow team success," Severson said. "It's always fun to put your name with some of the groups among the Devils defensemen list, but hopefully I have a long way to go."