Devils season ends in Tampa

A disjointed offense and five second period penalties wasted an excellent performance in net by Cory Schneider as the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the New Jersey Devils 3-1 in game five of their Eastern Conference series and ended the season for the Devils.
The Devils were held scoreless throughout the game before a Kyle Palmieri goal with Cory Schneider pulled from the game for an extra skater moved the Devils to within a goal with three minutes remaining before an empty net goal ended the contest.
The Devils are back in action in October.

Hell Raisers

1) Cory Schneider singlehandedly kept the Devils in a game that they had no business being in.
Schneider made some incredible saves and in the second period alone was amazing against five Tampa power plays.
The best part of the series was the return of Cory Schneider to form and that could go a long way to the Devils making the next step in 2018-19.

2) Give the penalty killers some credit as well for standing tall in that second period.
It took a ton out of the legs of those killers and likely had something to do with the lack of offensive chances as the game moved on.

3) The Devils would have only one power play and it was unsuccessful.
I'm not going to say there was a disparity in penalties, but it did turn out that way.

4) Let's move on to the end of the season.
I didn't expect to see playoff hockey, I didn't watch much hockey at all really.
I didn't think that the trade of Adam Henrique to Anaheim to affect me that much and even though that trade is part of the game, I didn't expect that I wouldn't watch as much without Rachel.
Rachel seemed to watch the playoffs, so I have hopes of watching more next season.

5) The Devils made a huge leap in simply making the postseason, but they have some ways to go before being true contenders.
They still need to improve scoring on the second and third lines, which I think will improve with Nico Hischier moving into his second year alone, the defense still needs to add scoring and more speed.
The big issue will be whether the Devils want to reward Keith Kinkaid for his play during the season or return Cory Schneider to the starting job.
Could the team decide to have an open competition between the two?
All of these need to be answered in training camp.

6) Wrapping up, the Devils are a year ahead of schedule in making the playoffs.
Most thought that it would be next year that the Devils challenged for the playoffs and many times in sports when a team makes a huge leap forward, they settle back a bit the following season.
This could happen to the Devils so I would assume Ray Shero has some ideas on how to shore things up to avoid that problem.