2. James Reimer Couldn’t Shake Off the Rust
Now for the not so great stories from last night. James Reimer did not look good. At all. Now granted, he is playing behind a depleted tired defensive core which left it all on the ice the previous night. But the thing is, the opposing team was also out on a separate piece of ice all the way up in the Rock last night. So that excuse goes out the window.
I hate trying to put losses all on goalies, especially when the offense simply isn’t clicking or isn’t in the game. We did see some of that last night (more on that later) but three of the four goals that Reimer allowed were completely avoidable.
Rookie Jack Hughes scored his first power play goal of his young career to tie the game at two goals a piece before the end of the first. Honestly that goal was the game shifter. Had Carolina gone into the Locker room at any point in the game with the lead they would have been rejuvenated and came back out with some energy.
What makes that goal hard to look at and mostly on Reimer was that he had the puck, for a split second, but he didn’t close in on it hard enough and it slid past him ever so softly. So softly in fact that it wouldn’t have crossed the goal line on its own. In fact the only person to see the puck, Hughes, had to almost lay out to confirm the kill.
Just a little bit more effort could have changed the course of the game. Well the Devils were the one who came out of the second with a renewed energy and quickly found the lead for the first time in the game on Nico Hischier’s inside outside dangle around Jaccob Slavin:
While the move was filthy and completely undressed Slavin who ended up wondering what was going on and why he was on the same side of the puck as Fogele, James Reimer should have been able to stop this. Not only was he perfectly positioned against Nico Hischier, he had a good look at both the player and the puck for over a second before he took that shot.
Unfortunately Reimer went low while Hischier went high, which he was allowed to do because Reimer was deep in his own net. Had he come out just a little bit to meet the him, he would have cut off any and all shooting lanes and the game would have remained tied at three and perhaps Haula’s game tying goal later would have instead given them the lead.
That is twice in this game that a Reimer miscue led to a goal that changed the tone of the game and forced Carolina to go into the locker room with a tie instead of a lead. Now it’s not all on him of course, but the question becomes, what if it was Petr Mrazek in net instead?