Devils struck by Lightning-Lose Game One

The New Jersey Devils return to the postseason was not a smooth one as the Devils dropped game one of their series to the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-2 in Tampa.
New Jersey fell behind 3-0 before goals by Taylor Hall and Travis Zajac cut the lead to just a goal before Tampa pulled away to the 5-2 win.

Game two sees the teams stay in Tampa Bay Saturday as the series continues.

Hell Raisers

1) Taylor Hall finished with a goal and an assist, but the goal came on an accident when Tampa's Ondrej Palat made a brain-dead play when instead of sending the puck around the boards, Palat couldn't have given Hall a better pass unless he skated over and laid the puck on his stick.
Hall had an occasional lapse defensively, but once again did his part on offense.

2) I thought Keith Kinkaid played reasonably well in his first playoff game and considering he allowed four goals.
It's tough to blame Kinkaid for any of the four goals that he gave up and though the scoreboard doesn't indicate it, he was far from the worst offender in this defeat.

3) The Devils did allow one goal to Tampa Bay on the power play (like those rhymes, do you?), but I thought (especially in the first few chances) that they did very well with clears and they did it in a fairly physical fashion.
Tampa's power play is one of the stronger in the league, so this wasn't a total failure at least,.

4) If the Devils want to be a true contender, the team is going to have to address the defense and add another good defender.
Ben Lovejoy is terribly slow, Mirco Mueller made mistakes that directly led to two Lightning goals and John Moore seems to be always around everything but the puck.
You cannot fix everything overnight and Ray Shero has done an excellent job in shoring up a leaking ship, but the Devils still have some holes-most of them behind the blue line.

5) What the hell was the deal with the thundersticks in Tampa?
I hate crap like that (mainly because they were supposed to give them out once at a football game, they didn't and I've heard about it ever since from Cherie!).
Artificial noise is really ridiculous and shows just how hard it is to summon real excitement in sports anymore!!

Back later, if time permits with the final day of my trip...