As we previously reported, the Devils decided to mix things up for Sunday’s practice. Ilya Kovalchuk skated on the second line while Dainius Zubrus joined Travis Zajac and Zach Parise on the top line. Adam Henrique and Patrik Elias made up the other two-thirds of the second line.
Those are some pretty significant changes, but they’re not unwarranted given that the New York Rangers have already shut out the New Jersey Devils twice in the Eastern Conference finals. Still, Patrik Elias insists that these moves aren’t a sign that the team is panicking.
“There is no panic,” Elias said. “We’ll play the same way. We’re not going to make any drastic changes to our game at all. We feel like our game plan is the right one and we’ll stick to it.”
Devils coach Peter DeBoer added that he thought the team “generated a lot of quality chances” even if they didn’t score.
“I think the easy thing would be to stick with it and just hope you can come out the next game do the same thing and score, but we’ve decided to shuffle some things around and I think we’ll get some results from that,” DeBoer added.
We’ll find out on Monday.