Once again, the Flyers have the opportunity to end a teams season tonight, This time it is the rival Devils. After staging one of the greatest turnarounds in NHL history, the Devils appear to have run out of steam. The Devils hit the mid season mark with an abysmal record of 10-29-2 (22 points), but started the second half of the season on a mission and have gone 25-6-3 (53 points). What is even more remarkable is that five of their nine loses have come in the last seven games.
The Devils have lost three of their last four games, and were lucky to win their last game after blowing a two goal lead to the Islanders in the third period. After putting on such a great run, it looks like reality has set in and the Devils energy level has fallen through the floor. Their game against the Pens last week was one probably the most unexciting game of hockey ever played. It took 10 minutes for a team to register a shot on goal, and then they only managed three more for the rest of the period.
You can expect a nice boring defensive game out of the Devil's tonight. They will sit back and trap in the neutral zone and wait for the Flyers to make mistakes. If the sloppy and lazy Flyers show up tonight, their could be a lot of mistakes for the Devils to take advantage of, and Ilya Kovalchuk will be the most likely player to put the puck in the net. Since the all-star break he has 25 points in 27 games, by far the best on the team.
I haven't been able to watch last night's game yet, so I don't know which Flyer's team showed up. Tonight's game is a tough one to call. The Devils are a tired team that has burned a lot of energy trying to dig themselves out of deep whole, only to fail in the last week. If the sloppy low energy Flyers' team shows up tonight, then the Devils won't have to expend to much energy to find scoring chances. But if the Flyers come into tonight's game with a purpose, they should be able to get out of tonight's game with the two points.
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