In the first confrontation of the two most recent No. 1 choices in the NHL draft, the young man in the Devils uniform prevailed.
Behind a three-point performance by Jack Hughes, Devils won the first of eight games against Rangers this season with a 4-3 win at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night. Rangers failed to contain the first overall pick of 2019, which scored two of Devils’ four goals and helped in another, while their # 1 pick, Alexis Lafreniere, continued to find balance in their third NHL game.
Devils coach Lindy Ruff won victory in his first game as a coach against Rangers since leaving his job as assistant coach on Broadway after three seasons in low season.
It was the youngest lineup in the NHL versus the second youngest lineup, but the biggest difference ended up being Hughes’ extra year of experience.
Rangers’ powerful game kept them competitive, with two of their three goals scored by individual advantage. The first goal with balanced strength only came in the third period, when Filip Chytil recovered a rebound after seven minutes of the final game to put Rangers inside one.
Despite drawing two penalties at the end of the third period, Rangers failed to hit one more with the male advantage, as Devils goalkeeper Mackenzie Blackwood ended the night with 47 saves in 50 shots.
Alexandar Georgiev deflected 16 of the 20 shots he faced before David Quinn chose to put Igor Shesterkin on the net to start the third. Shesterkin finished with eight saves.
The Rangers were caught asleep when the puck fell when Travis Zajac buried Miles Wood’s 32-second rebound in the first period to an early Devils lead. All confused, Chris Kreider suffered a penalty for stumbling at 1:02, which counted as the second time in three games that Rangers were penalized in the first two minutes of the game.
While the Devils clogged all the tracks and filled the middle in front of Blackwood, the Rangers were kept on goal kick for the first 11 minutes of the game.
After a scrum broke out in front of the Devils net early in the second period, Michael McLeod was penalized for violence when he placed Jacob Trouba in an armbar. With the man’s advantage, Kreider was trying to drop the puck back to Mika Zibanejad, but ricocheted off Devils defender Ryan Murray’s skateboard and overtook Blackwood to tie the game 1-1 at 2:50 of the second.
Less than two minutes later, Georgiev landed a shot by Ty Smith, but lost sight of the puck behind him and Hughes launched into the two-goal game. Hughes also started the next move, blocking a shot from Trouba and taking it all by himself to a 3-1 lead at 8:38 of the second.
The Rangers reduced their deficit to one in their third strength game of the night, when Adam Fox sent an impromptu pass to Zibanejad for a quick first half. But Trouba took a penalty at 15:38 seconds and Hughes set up Miles Wood to make a 4-2 game with four minutes remaining in the second.
A shot by PK Subban at the point later in the middle of the frame almost made it 5-2, but Quinn challenged the flanks and the goal was removed.