Simon Nemec scored his first NHL goal and Akira Schmid made 37 saves as the New Jersey Devils defeated the host Seattle Kraken 2-1 on Thursday night.
Ondrej Palat also tallied for the Devils, who won for the fifth time in their past six games.
Tye Kartye scored for Seattle, which suffered its sixth straight loss (0-5-1), a span in which the Kraken have failed to hold a lead. Philipp Grubauer stopped 15 of 17 shots.
Nemec’s goal snapped a 1-1 tie at 9:08 of the second period. Jesper Bratt skated the puck behind the Seattle net and found the rookie defenseman skating down the slot.
Nemec, the second overall pick in the 2022 NHL draft who made his Devils debut last Friday, beat Grubauer with a one-timer just inside the left post.
The Kraken nearly tied the score on a short-handed, two-on-one rush with 3:04 remaining, but Jared McCann’s shot rang off the crossbar and went out of play.
Palat opened the scoring at 17:14 of the first period. Nico Hischier carried the puck into the offensive zone on the left wing and sent a cross-ice pass to John Marino at the right faceoff dot. Marino immediately centered the puck to Palat, who redirected it past a flat-footed Grubauer. It was just the seventh time this season the Devils scored first. They improved to 6-1-0 in those situations.
The Kraken failed to score a first-period goal for only the third time in 12 home games this season.
The Kraken tied it at 7:12 of the second as Andre Burakovsky forced a turnover behind the Devils’ net. Alex Wennberg picked up the puck and fed Kartye for a one-timer from the slot.
Burakovsky returned after missing six weeks with an upper-body injury. He went to the locker room with an apparent ailment late in the second period but was back on the bench to start the third — though he took just two shifts in the final period.
Seattle defenseman Ryker Evans, a second-round selection in 2021, made his NHL debut.
–Field Level Media
