NHL Playoffs 2012: New Jersey Devils Must Be More Physical in Game 2

For the first time in 13 total outings over the New Jersey Devils’ 2012 playoff run, David Clarkson went without a hit and without a shot on goal in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.

There’s a development that calls for one of those Lewis Black “I will repeat that” moments.

In the opener of a rivalry series that will determine the recipient of the Prince of Wales Trophy, New Jersey’s most physical forward failed to check a single Ranger. And after scoring a pair of game-winning goals in the conference semifinals, a five-game elimination of Philadelphia, he could not muster a single stab at goaltender Henrik Lundqvist.

Clarkson’s uneventful night on Monday proved to exemplify his team’s performance in a 3-0 loss at Madison Square Garden. The shooting gallery and the final hit count both read like football scores in favor of the Rangers, who outshot the Devils 28-to-21 and outhit them 35-to-21.

No individual Devil threw more than three hits in Game 1. By contrast, among the Rangers, Brian Boyle, Ryan Callahan, Michael Del Zotto and Mike Rupp each landed four or five.

New Jersey’s biggest failure Monday night may have been its inability to revamp its intensity once Dan Girardi broke the ice for the Rangers 53 seconds into the third period. After charging up seven body checks in the opening frame and 10 in the second, the Devils mustered only four in the third along with a mere four shots at Lundqvist.

The Rangers, on the other hand, took another eight stabs at Martin Brodeur, plus one at an open net, two of which tuned the mesh.

Was it the six-day layoff from extramural game action? Quite possibly, but the Devils’ minds and legs ought to have thawed out by now in the wake of Monday night’s drawback.

Clarkson, along with four New Jersey defensemen in Mark Fayne, Andy Greene, Bryce Salvador and Marek Zidlicky, has nowhere to go but up in this matchup’s hitting department. Some of them may not have bumped and bruised the Flyers very much either, but they now need to step up to match or exceed New York’s physicality.

Because there’s certainly no reason to expect the Rangers to voluntarily cut down on their hitting habit. In their 15 playoff games so far, they have broken 30 in the hit column 12 times. Two of those exceptions saw them finish with a team total of 29 checks.

As New Jersey team captain Zach Parise told the Globe and Mail after Game 1 in reference to the Rangers: “They make you work for everything. You have to be prepared to be hit and to create scoring chances the hard way because they don’t give you anything easy.”

One solution, even if it does not always show up in the hit column, is to induce more turnovers of the forecheck. Over their four consecutive victories over Philadelphia, the Devils logged 19 takeaways while forcing 45 giveaways out of the Flyers.

Regardless, their best bet to reverse the course of this series is to take their adversaries’ aggression and force-feed it back to them. This means applying better pressure, showing better prowess and delivering better punch with the puck.

In other words, more of what the likes of Clarkson gave them in the previous round.