Brian Dumoulin Lifts New Jersey Devils To 5-4 Overtime Win Over Boston Bruins

It was a back and forth affair, and Dumoulin’s first goal as a Devil was the difference in overtime

It’s the final week of the regular season. Tonight served as the New Jersey Devils’ penultimate regular season game, a skate in Boston against the Bruins. For Boston, this was their regular season finale, and since they failed to qualify for the postseason for the first time in nine years, it served as their final game overall until October. With the Devils locked into a first round matchup with the Carolina Hurricanes and the Bruins playing the final contest of their campaign, you’d be forgiven if you thought this was going to be a sleepy one with both teams just going through the motions. Instead we got a pretty compelling, back and forth game, which ended with Brian Dumoulin sniping home the game-winner in overtime to propel New Jersey to a 5-4 win.

If you told me before the game that the Devils would win in overtime, and then asked me to guess the player who scored the game-winner, I would’ve named just about the entire roster before I got to Dumoulin. While he has registered a handful of assists since coming over at the trade deadline from the Anaheim Ducks, Dumoulin had not found the back of the net in red and black. That changed tonight, and it came at the perfect time for his new team. Aside from his goal, I thought Dumoulin played a solid game, once again teaming with Johnny Kovacevic to provide strong defense against Boston’s big guns.

Elsewhere, Timo Meier, Stefan Noesen, Simon Nemec, and Dawson Mercer also tallied for New Jersey tonight. They all came on pretty distinct plays as well. Meier walked in off the wing and lasered home a great shot to open the scoring. Noesen swept home a loose puck off a mad scramble in front of the Bruins’ net on the power play. Nemec received a clean faceoff win and whistled a shot off Jeremy Swayman’s blocker and into the net on a shot Swayman really needed to have. And Mercer planted his foot in the ground and made a strong redirection off a Nico Hischier pass on another power play. For a team that has been starved for offense since roughly the calendar flipped to 2025, tonight’s goal-scoring attack was diverse and impressive. Even if it came against a bad Bruins team with nothing to play for.

And New Jersey needed all of those goals as well, because Jake Allen was quite poor tonight. According to Natural Stat Trick, Allen let up his four goals on 2.31 Expected Goals. The first two goals he allowed, a one-time blast by Morgan Geekie off a sweet cross-ice feed, and a David Pastrnak partial breakaway, weren’t the worst goals in the world to give up, but he could have had both of them. But the truly bad ones were the final pair he allowed. John Farinacci made his NHL debut tonight, and he made it a memorable one by whipping home a loose puck while his momentum carried him away from the net to cut the lead to 4-3. Then in the third period, Marat Khusnutdinov fired a one-timer home after Fabian Lysell made Brenden Dillon look foolish on the forecheck. I didn’t think it was a particularly difficult shot for Allen to save, but he let it get past him, and the game was tied at four.

But after a choppy last few minutes of regulation, Dumoulin played the hero for New Jersey in overtime. Tonight’s win snaps a three-game losing streak for the Devils, and gives them a little momentum heading into their regular season finale tomorrow night. After losing in embarrassing fashion to these Bruins one week ago, tonight served as some sweet revenge. Even though nothing tangible is gained from that, it’s nice to feel good about yourself heading into the postseason.

The Game Stats: The NHL.com Game Summary | The NHL.com Event Summary | The NHL.com Play by Play Log | The NHL.com Shot Summary | The Natural Stat Trick Game Stats

The Game Highlights: Courtesy of the NHL’s website

Not Unscathed

During Sunday’s 1-0 loss to the New York Islanders, the Devils played like a team whose number one priority was avoiding injury. Heck, even head coach Sheldon Keefe expressed as much in his in-game interview on the TNT broadcast, stating that getting to the playoffs in one piece was his team’s primary concern right now. Well mission accomplished on Sunday, but not so much tonight.

In the first period, Ondrej Palat blocked a shot off his leg and immediately went down in a heap. He finished his shift but left shortly after and did not return, playing just under three minutes tonight. It was the second consecutive game in which New Jersey had to finish down a forward, as Paul Cotter was ejected (and later suspended for the rest of the regular season) for his hit to the head of Adam Pelech on Sunday.

We got this update from Keefe on Palat after the game:

It’s not a whole lot to go off of, as negative x-rays doesn’t necessarily mean a major injury was avoided. But it appears the worst-case scenario was, in fact, avoided. I know Palat has been a popular whipping boy among a lot of Devils fans this season, and I can’t say I entirely disagree with the sentiment. But to me, Palat is clearly one of the 12 best forwards on the roster. If he has to miss playoff games, the Devils’ task of upsetting the Hurricanes in round one gets that much harder.

McLaughlin’s Devils Debut

With Cotter suspended, the Devils decided to call up Marc McLaughlin, who actually came over at the trade deadline from this very Bruins team. In 12 games with Boston this season, McLaughlin registered two goals. It didn’t take long for him to find the scoresheet with his new team, as it was his clean faceoff win that set up Simon Nemec’s goal in the second period. That was actually his first career assist, by the way.

Aside from his assist, how did McLaughlin do? Well he played 8:50, recorded three hits, didn’t register a shot on goal, and according to Natural Stat Trick he posted a 5-on-5 Expected Goals For% of 34.22%, second-worst on the team in front of only Nolan Foote, who he shared a line with. So overall, it was a forgettable night for McLaughlin. But the assist on Nemec’s goal went a long way toward making up for those underwhelming numbers.

In any case, with Cotter suspended for one more game and Palat now out for tomorrow as well, I expected McLaughlin to play once more in the regular season finale. Congrats on averaging a point per game as a Devil, Marc.

Trending Up?

Speaking of Nemec and his goal, I thought the young blueliner played fairly well tonight. He didn’t exactly drape himself in glory on the Khusnutdinov goal, but if you can look past that, Nemec was solid. Per NST, Nemec posted an xGF% of 68.81%, fourth-best on the team (though really it was third-best considering one of the players in front of him was Ondrej Palat). Meanwhile, Hockey Stat Cards thought highly of Nemec tonight as well:

Fifth-highest game score on the team, first among defensemen, and most importantly in my eyes, a positive defensive impact. We all know this has been a lost season for Nemec. He was injured in the offseason playing for the Slovakian national team, and he hasn’t looked the same since. Not to mention getting used to a brand new system can be challenging for a young defenseman. But I really think Nemec has started to play much better over the past few weeks. Maybe not where we want him to be, but I’d take any progress at all. Nemec remains a key part of this team’s future, and if he can finish the season strong and carry that over into 2025-26, that would be huge for the Devils’ overall ceiling as a Stanley Cup contender.

They Did It

They actually “clinched” this a couple games ago, but I feel the urge to write about it here one last time:

The New Jersey Devils failed to win more than three consecutive games this season. It is the second season in a row in which the Devils failed to achieve a winning streak of four or more games.

The last time they won four or more in a row was January of 2023. You’d think at the very least this team would’ve lucked their way into four straight wins at some point over the past couple seasons. But no, they couldn’t even do that. Maybe, just maybe, 2025-26 is the season this absurd streak comes to an end. We can only hope.

Next Time Out

The regular season concludes tomorrow! It’s the second half of a back-to-back in game 82, as the Devils return New Jersey to host the Red Wings. Puck drop is slated for 7:30pm.

Your Take

What did you make of tonight’s game? Who impressed you the most? How concerned are you about Ondrej Palat? What do you expect in the regular season finale tomorrow? As always, thanks for reading!