A second trip to the playoffs in three seasons means the New Jersey Devils safely can declare their extended rebuild is complete.
For the Detroit Red Wings, such sentiments must once again wait until next year.
The Devils will continue preparing for the playoffs while the Red Wings keep playing out the string Wednesday night when the teams meet in Newark, N.J.
The Devils are completing a back-to-back set after edging the host Boston Bruins 5-4 in overtime on Tuesday. The Red Wings were off Tuesday, one day after beating the visiting Dallas Stars 6-4.
With their playoff seed set and a three-game losing streak snapped Tuesday, the Devils (42-32-7, 91 points) only have one objective on Wednesday: to exit their regular-season finale as close to full health as possible.
New Jersey will finish in third place in the Metropolitan Division and face the second-place Carolina Hurricanes in a first-round postseason series.
The Devils dodged an injury scare Tuesday, when left winger Ondrej Palat exited after blocking a pair of shots in the first period. Coach Sheldon Keefe said X-rays were negative but that Palat would sit out Wednesday, when New Jersey also may rest several other players.
The Devils scratched seven players Tuesday, when they were also without forward Paul Cotter, who served the first contest of a two-game suspension for delivering an illegal check to the head of the New York Islanders’ Adam Pelech on Sunday.
“Our whole group, we’ll have to look at,” Keefe said. “We’ve got a number of guys here today — a combination of guys who are on our injured list nursing some things and just having some conversations with how guys are feeling to make the right decisions (Wednesday) and make sure we’re not putting anyone in harm’s way unnecessarily.”
The Devils, who reached the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2023, last made the playoffs twice in a three-year span from 2010 through 2012. They reached the postseason just once in the subsequent 10 years.
The Red Wings (38-35-7, 83 points) will miss the playoffs for the ninth year in a row — a franchise-record drought that began immediately after Detroit set a team record by reaching the postseason 25 straight times.
The Red Wings appeared as if they might snap the streak when they went 9-1-1 from Jan. 23 through Feb. 25 to move into the East’s first wild-card spot, four points clear of ninth place. However, Detroit has subsequently gone 8-13-1 and was eliminated from contention on Saturday when the Montreal Canadiens earned a point in a 1-0 overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Detroit will miss the playoffs by a larger margin and finish with fewer points this season than last season, when the Red Wings tied the Washington Capitals for the second wild-card spot at 91 points but lost the regulation-wins tiebreaker.
“We had a clear goal coming into this season, how close we were last year,” said left winger Lucas Raymond, who was credited with the winning goal Monday after scoring the third of the Red Wings’ four third-period tallies. “The only next step we could take was to make the playoffs, and we were very determined to get there.
“We weren’t able to do it and we know that, and it’s about looking at ourselves and figuring out what we need to do as a team to take that next step.”
–Field Level Media
