Devils Practice, Travel to Buffalo | NOTEBOOK

It's off to Buffalo for the Devils this afternoon, fresh off a practice session at the RWJ Barnabas Health Hockey House. The team is preparing to play the Sabres on Friday before returning home to host the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.
The team, for the first time in several weeks, had a two-day break without games, having last played on Tuesday against the Minnesota Wild. But with the stretch run of the final 11 games on the horizon and practice sessions few and far between, the team is using their down time wisely to prepare for what is set to come next in the post-season.
"Just do the little things, it's really important down the stretch what you do off the ice," captain Nico Hischier shared today, "You've got to get the extra rest, sleep well, eat well, just treat your body well. It's a long season, we're on a good track and we obviously want to go down the stretch here have a good feeling about ourselves."
On the ice today a couple of changes were made at the forward lines as well as on the power play units and you can read about it all here in the Devils Notebook!

Missing But Traveling

Tomas Tatar was the lone player missing from today's practice, other than the injured Nathan Bastian and Curtis Lazar. Tatar took a maintenance day and will travel with the club to Buffalo.
In his absence, there was some movement on the Devils forward lines with Miles Wood drawing in with Michael McLeod and Yegor Sharangovich, bumping Nolan Foote up with Ondrej Palat and Jesper Boqvist.

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New Look PP's

In recent media availabilities, Lindy Ruff has alluded to needing to make some changes on the power play. The man advantage has struggled of late, and today we saw a first change with Dawson Mercer joining the first unit swapping with Jesper Bratt. The change puts a right-hand shot in Mercer, on a first unit where the remaining forwards are left-hand shots.
For Lindy Ruff, he says it's time to give it a try. On swapping Mercer and Bratt, he shares: "it just gives you a couple of different options and it gives the second unit another weapon too. You're looking at kind of a split a little bit, but we might as well try it now."
It's all about putting in the work and a new addition won't necessarily be seamless, it is a work in progress, but making changes can help breath a different life into a setup.
"He's a righty obviously, so we could have some new looks there and working on that for a bit we'll see how it comes out," Hischier said.

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A Big Step

The Nolan Foote that is currently with the big club looks far different than the one that joined the team earlier in the year on a call-up from Utica. Foote scored in his first game back with New Jersey, but that's not the only thing that stands out to the coaching staff. He's becoming more effective because he's moving around the ice better.
"It first starts with skating, he's skating better," Ruff said, "His play around the puck, he seems stronger on the puck. Any young player needs to understand there's always a higher level you need to get to, sometimes they get that in a year, maybe two, he's been working really hard at his game and it's really starting to show."
Foote has earned his call-up, Ruff shared. When a player from Utica is in need at the NHL level, the player chosen is often part of a discussion between Ruff and his head coach counterpart Kevin Dineen with the Comets.
"Kevin and I always talk" Ruff shared, We talk about who's going good, what's been going good, any surprises. It fluctuates during the year. There's times where he'll mention one player and I'll ask about another and he'll say, no he isn't getting much done. And I think that's part of the growing for a lot of young players. They know and they understand, usually it's who is going east and Kevin recommends. We don't say bring us this guy, we saw who is our best left winger at this point and time, or our best right-hand shot forward and that's their reward for putting in the work down there."

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