“I think you're never going to play a perfect game. There's always going to be mistakes out there," said Jeff Skinner. “ You obviously want to try and limit them as much you can; when you are making mistakes, try and recover as fast as possible. We've got a lot of veterans in here and guys that have played a long time and know when to make plays and when the right time is to try something, because you still have to try and make plays and create stuff.
“Just mostly the guys on the bench being engaged, talking to each other and executing on the ice,” Knoblauch added.” But you can really tell it starts with the the body language, guys communicating on the bench, and then it carries over to playing on the ice.”
Darnell Nurse will skate in his 700th career game on Thursday in the building he was drafted seventh overall by the Oilers in 2013 while becoming just the second defenceman, and 12th player overall, to play in 700 games for the franchise. Nurse's fifth goal of the season against Buffalo put him into a tie with Charlie Huddy on 81 career goals for the second most with the club.
Leon Draisaitl is riding a 15-game point streak of 11 goals and 11 assists and is four goals and three points shy of his fourth career 50-goal and 100-point season, while Connor McDavid has two goals and nine assists over his eight-game run. Evan Bouchard has six points (3G, 3A) during his five-game point streak after scoring his 12th goal of the season against the Sabres.
The Devils were victorious 5-3 over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday evening to keep a gap of six points between them and Columbus in the race for the third spot in the Metropolitan Division, though the Blue Jackets have two games in hand. New Jersey started the season 24-11-3, but they've gone 11-14-3 since then for the fourth worst record in the NHL since Dec. 27.
New Jersey has missed offensive leader Jack Hughes for the last four games and won't have him for the remainder of the regular season after he suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in their 2-0 loss to Vegas back on Mar. 2.