The New Jersey Devils entered Thursday night’s game with a tall task against the surging Montreal Canadiens. With their backs against the wall, Jesper shut down Bratt a ferocious comeback won 4-3 in overtime, handing Montreal netminder Jakub Dobes his first loss of the season.
Related: Devils beat Canadiens in 4-3 overtime win
Exciting match… and the home crowd loved it.
By evening, these two teams were the top two teams in the Eastern Conference. In just one single period, it was easy to understand why.
The margin for error was extremely small as both have a large number of players who possess top speed, phenomenal edge work and silky finesse. In early November it was as close to a playoff pace as you can get.
Plus, the crowd was dueling all evening with “Go Habs Go” and “Let’s Go Devils” chants. When the Devils had the last laugh with Bratt’s goal, the crowd erupted as the Devils improved to 6-0-0 at The Rock.
“You’re clearly feeding the crowd, and [as a team] you want to engage them and feel the energy. That certainly helps,” said Devils forward Timo Meier. “We want to be a team where when you walk into this building you know it’s going to be a tough night.”
Roller coaster for Markstrom
Coming into the night, no one was probably more frustrated with Jacob Markstrom’s .875 save percentage (SV%) than himself. It only added to the frustration when you scored the smoothest goal ever see happened on the Canadiens’ very first shot. Just look at this. When it rains, it pours:
Exactly as we calculated
Textbook, and completely intentional#GoHabs pic.twitter.com/dDyVKFYVYa
— Montreal Canadiens (@CanadiensMTL) November 7, 2025
But Markstrom initially bounced back very nicely and made a few key high-danger stops, including a breakaway from Cole Caufield. After two, the Devils led 2-1 after Markstrom stopped 0.97 goals above expectations. according to Moneypuck.
But just 59 seconds into the third period, a quick shot from Jake Evans found its way past Markstrom, who was clearly fooled. Moneypuck says the shot only had a 2.4% chance of being a goal.
“The first one… I don’t even know how it went in. The second one obviously can’t go in,” head coach Sheldon Keefe said.
The rough goal against had announcer Bryan Mudryk on the Canadiens’ TSN broadcast imploring the Habs to “shoot it all on Markstrom at this point.” And they did: About nine and a half minutes later, Markstrom dropped a juicy rebound on an Alex Newhook snap and Oliver Kapanen buried it.
But later in the third, Markstrom came up with a pair of key stops to keep the deficit at one, allowing them to spark a comeback. In the end he only stopped 16 of 19 (0.842%)… but if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt for the terribly coincidental first goal, his figures would be 16 out of 18 (0.889%) with +0.45 goals above expectations. That is certainly something to build on.
Some defensive improvement
When head coach Sheldon Keefe came in, he had been quite tough on the Devils’ defense, often punishing their recent efforts and consistency. Over their previous five they averaged 13.2 big danger chances against and 29.2 general scoring opportunities. (via Natural statistical trick)
Tonight, even after losing Dougie Hamilton to injury (more about that below), they continued to work hard and it showed in the results. They allowed seven high-danger chances – a 47% drop from their previous rough stretch. Their 16 overall scoring opportunities against were also a decrease of 45%. While they still could have been better: it’s a step in the right direction.
“We did a lot of good things that put us in a position to win the game [but] A few mistakes on goals two and three opened the door for the opponent. I don’t like how we made those mistakes, but it’s clear that getting the points is very important.”
Dougie Hamilton injury
As Ryan Novozinsky reported after the gameit’s a lower-body injury for Dougie Hamilton, who didn’t play most of the second and all of the third. Keefe said he will be evaluated tomorrow.
Come on
The Devils will remain undefeated at home Saturday afternoon (12:30 p.m. EDT) when they take on the Pittsburgh Penguins.
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