Preseason Game Preview #5: New Jersey Devils vs. New York Rangers

The Devils play the front end of a home-and-home against their bitter Hudson river rivals tonight in Newark

The Matchup: New Jersey Devils vs. New York Rangers

The Time: 7:00pm ET

The Broadcast: MSG, MSGSN, NHLN

Last Devils Game

A 5-1 loss on Long Island to the Islanders on Friday. Timo Meier had the lone goal for the Devils, while Jake Allen got the start and fell flat. As Chris says right in his headline, it was a dud of a game.

Last Rangers Game

A 5-2 win over the Boston Bruins at MSG last Thursday. Chris Kreider and Brennan Othmann led the way, each collecting a goal and an assist in the victory.

Learning From Past Mistakes?

It’s been a running gag this preseason that the Devils are determined to course-correct from last year’s exhibition season. New Jersey famously went 7-0, only to put together one of their most disappointing campaigns in franchise history. Thanks to Friday’s loss, the Devils now sit at 0-4 in the preseason, clearly signaling they are ready to dominate the regular season!

There has been some handwringing over the performances of individual Devils players and the team as a whole. I suppose it’s to be expected that this team wouldn’t exactly gel that quickly with a new coach, several new players, and a couple key injuries. As we saw a year ago, preseason performance is not necessarily indicative of regular season performance, but it still would be nice to see some crisper performances. Unfortunately Friday was more or less the last time the regulars would be able to get some game reps, as they hopped on the plane to Prague this weekend. We’ll see how the best of the rest do against New York tonight.

Lineup Updates

Here’s how the Devils looked in practice yesterday. As Amanda Stein alludes to, this is mostly the group that travelled to Prague for the season opening two-game set against the Buffalo Sabres, so we won’t be seeing them. But it’s still worth pointing out:

The most notable things to me are…

1. It really does look like Keefe is going to reunite the Tomas Tatar-Nico Hischier-Dawson Mercer line that dominated during the 2022-23 season. We can only hope they rekindle some of that chemistry.
2. Likewise, it appears that Jack Hughes will get to line up with Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt to start the season. A lot of digital ink has been spilled both on this site and elsewhere about if Meier and Hughes can really coexist on a line given their skillsets. But for now, Keefe is banking on the two stars finding chemistry together along with Bratt.
3. The longstanding Jonas Siegenthaler-Dougie Hamilton pairing really does seem dead, for now anyway. Whenever Brenden Dillon has appeared in a game with Hamilton this preseason, they have been paired together. Meanwhile Siegenthaler has been paired with Johnathan Kovacevic a lot during the exhibition slate. This seems like a pretty clearcut indication on what Keefe will do with the blueline.

And the most surprising development from that above lineup deserves its own section…

Crashing The Party

I have to admit, I am surprised Seamus Casey has pushed his way into the plans for the big club this preseason. And yet, here he is.

Injuries to Luke Hughes and Brett Pesce have opened the door, but Casey walked through it with his performance in the preseason. We still have to wait and see if he’ll actually make his way into game action, but if yesterday’s practice is any indication, we should expect to see him. A third pairing of Casey and Simon Nemec would be a wildly entertaining one. Lots and lots of offensive skill and puck possession, but also the potential for some dramatic mistakes.

Either way, congratulations to Casey. Injuries or not, it’s impressive that he fought his way into a trip to Prague.

Bad Blood

We all know what happened between these two teams a season ago. The Rangers’ success as far as the on-ice results over the Devils in 2023-24 seemed like a secondary headline compared to the Matt Rempe show. New York’s resident thug managed to concuss both Nathan Bastian and Jonas Siegenthaler, duck a fight against Kurtis MacDermid, then eventually did fight MacDermid in a game that saw the entire starting lineup for both teams fight each other, leading to 8 total ejections at opening faceoff. That Rempe managed to do all this in about 3 milliseconds worth of ice time spread across multiple games makes it even more remarkable.

I don’t know if Rempe is going to play tonight (or tomorrow), we’ll have to wait until morning skate or maybe even warmups to determine that. I sure hope he won’t, as the only purpose his presence would serve would be to start violent trouble. That’s the only “skill” he has after all, despite Rangers fan delusionally trying to argue that he’s actually a secret depth crusher. And in a preseason game, that’s the last thing any team should want.

Potential Rangers Lineup

This is how New York lined up in their game against Boston last Thursday:

The Rangers did practice yesterday, but none of the beat reporters I could find had actual line combos from that session. It appeared they were working on their power play for a lot of that practice:

As far as goalies go, Jonathan Quick and Louis Domingue split the game against the Bruins, so I would expect to see a different combo tonight.

Your Take

What do you expect out of tonight’s game? What are your thoughts on Casey making the trip to Prague? What will you be watching for out of the Rangers tonight? As always, thanks for reading!