Brown's Status Questionable vs. Kings | NOTEBOOK

The New Jersey Devils practiced in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon.

Check out the notebook for all your comprehensive coverage from the practice session!

Possible Changes

Connor Brown was the lone player missing from Devils practice today, with head coach Sheldon Keefe noting that Brown required the day off today and his status for Saturday remains questionable.

Brown's status will also dictate what the lineup will look like against the L.A. Kings, Keefe adding not to look too far into the forward lines from practice, given the uncertainty of Brown's availability.

From Left to Right

Where there is more of a certainty is on the blueline and how that will look against the Kings with Brenden Dillon teaming up with Luke Hughes, while Seamus Casey will be given the night off against the Kings. Dennis Cholowski will draw in.

"Cholowski has worked extremely hard, so we’ll get him involved,” Keefe said.

As for the Dillon and Luke Hughes pairing, Hughes will be asked to play his offside, moving to the right. It's a challenge that, with the absence of Brett Pesce, will ask a lot of the young defensemen. It's also exactly why Dillon has been moved to play alongside Hughes.

“You don’t have the lefty/righty balance as much, so someone has to play the right side," Keefe explained. "We decided to give Luke a go there, we think there are some good offensive things he can provide there. We think just giving him a veteran guy is proving to be important, Luke’s still a young guy here, he needs a foundation, someone to settle him down, talk to him when he’s on the bench and we need him to step up in lots of ways so we’ve got to support him appropriately, especially now when we’re asking him to go onto his off side.”

Change the Recipe

After giving up five goals to the San Jose Sharks and another seven to the Colorado Avalanche, the message is clear.

It's a recipe for disaster and simply cannot continue to happen. It requires a complete buy-in on ever shift to put defensive structure first, which will inevitably lead the scoring chances and opportunities of their own.

“It’s just taking pride in defending first and foremost,” Stefan Noesen said. “Just giving up that many goals in general is not a recipe to win in this league. We are obviously a very high skilled, dynamic offensive team but you give up five, six, seven goals it doesn’t matter. It’s hard to score in this league to begin with, but you give up those that easily, it’s a recipe for failure.”

Leaning into that committment is what it will take, Keefe added. They have seen it in stretches over the two-game losing streak, but it will be required each and every shift to work their way out of it.

“We’ve got to be harder, we’ve got to lean in and compete harder and that be the foundation to find our way out,” Keefe said. And when we do that in the second and third periods (against San Jose) we’re fine. We need to score, we need some offense to come through at 5-on-5, that’s the next step but the work ethic that we put forth in periods two and three, that’s allowed us to carry the play. That’s the model and if something doesn’t go your way early, brush it off and get to work. It’s early on in the season here, things have gone really well for us so we haven’t faced this type of thing,

Juho Through Two

Juho Lammikko was finally about to make his season debut when the Devils began their road trip in Colorado. He had been out since th epreseason with an injury and had been working his way back. He's been centering the third line the past two games and head coach Sheldon Keefe was asked about how Lammikko has fit in. It's not always easy, Keefe said, to get the right evaluation given the type of game Lammikko plays and the way the team has played overall over the two-game stretch he's been in the lineup.

"It’s been tricking because if I look at his overall game, I think he’s done a good job," Keefe said. "He’s been solid in the faceoff dot, he’s given us good shifts, he hasn’t made many mistakes. The challenge has been, the way he plays and type of game he plays, he would have fit in really well when we were rolling and controlling games and playing with the lead. We’ve been down 1-0 in the first minute of both games he’s played in. He’s not going to drive a lot of offense. If we can get our team game today, he’s going to look a lot better.”