The Lightning have escaped meeting the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the playoffs, and they should be grateful they get to avoid Austin Matthews’s dynamic squad. But make no mistake: the New Jersey Devils won’t be an easy out. After all, three of the Lightning’s 28 losses this year came against the Devils. The Devils are such a strategic nuisance for the Lightning that they are at risk of a humiliating first-round exit. So how do the Lightning avoid playing into the Devils’ hands?

It would be a mistake to size up the Devils’ defensive group and think they will be outclassed by the Lightning’s offensive firepower. If the Lightning believe the series will be won by hemming the Devils in their own zone, causing them to spew out the puck into a scoring area, they are mistaken. When the Devils are in their defensive posture, they are extremely difficult to perforate. They have mobile defensemen and their forwards are fast. This allows them to pack the middle, stick-check tenaciously, and get into shooting and passing lanes when they sprint out to the perimeter and the point.

On April 5th, The Devils clinched a playoff spot while playing the Maple Leafs, a game in which Mike Babcock’s squad initially hoped to get the puck deep, and grind the Devils down with the cycle. But the Devils move the puck quickly on breakouts, and when the cycle was achieved by Toronto, it dissolved after the Devils pushed them to the outside and then snatched away possession. The Maple Leafs did generate a few opportunities by sealing the passing lanes along the wall and forcing the Devils to go through the middle of the ice, but the Maple Leafs were much more effective in another capacity. And that method of attack is of great relevance for the Lightning.

And that is creating off entries. When the Lightning lost to the Devils in their final meeting during the second-to-last weekend in March, the Lightning also were much more impactful when the Devils were unable to slip into their defensive posture. This makes sense. Complementing the structure on the Devils’ breakout, John Hynes’s squad also wants to play north-south hockey. So even if the passing lanes are closed on their zone exit the Devils can flip the puck out and create a race, which functions as an effective breakout. The Devils have multiple avenues for thwarting the forecheck.

But on the rush, there is more space, and accountability is individualized. The Lightning have the puck-carriers to make the Devils uncomfortable. Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Tyler Johnson, Steven Stamkos, J.T. Miller, Victor Hedman, and Yanni Gourde should be gaining the zone and trying to beat their man one-on-one or finding a pocket along the half-wall and trying to create a play for a cutting forward or trailing defenseman.

The Devils don’t have a Dan Girardi or Braydon Coburn in their defensive group, so there are no yawning gaps to be exploited. However, the Devils defensemen are focused on keeping the player in front of them and trying to buy time for the transition defense to come back and suffocate the rush. That means Lightning skaters fording the blue line have the separation to shoot off the rush. Obviously, the Lightning will not have the chance to carry the puck in on every entry. But on neutral-zone regroups and own-zone resets, letting the best puck transporters run curls and try to blast through the middle and extemporize off entries is the best tool the Lightning have for punishing a well-coached Devils team. The best weapon against structure is imagination. The Lightning have a band of talented creators, and they have good shooters who can challenge Devils goaltender Keith Kinkaid from a distance. If the Lightning willingly make it a series won or lost from puck battles in the corners, they will be ceding a major advantage.

But there is an element of wishful thinking in the prospect of the Lightning endlessly attacking off the rush. A consistent rush is afforded by a healthy breakout. For Tampa Bay, that is a worry. The Devils will be keeping it simple and chucking it deep before pouncing on their own forecheck, forcing a very vulnerable Lightning defensive group to make clean plays on its zone exits.

The options aren’t great for the Lightning regarding how to solve their breakout woes. Of late, when the Lightning try to move the puck out methodically, they get swallowed by a hungry forecheck. Too often, the puck gets funneled to the middle. Even when the Lightning’s forwards sink low and support, the passes, direct and indirect, have not been connecting, and opponents have been preying on what morphs into a scrambling, clunky zone exit. (Remember the Hurricanes’ Jordan Staal’s goal just seconds into the game against the Lightning? Ondrej Palat had a chance to move the puck out of the zone, but he took a terrible angle on it and his failure to move the puck quickly led to it caroming off his skate seconds later.)

But moving the puck out of the zone with more pace also has had its issues. It seems to always end with the man along the half-wall chucking a blind pass into the middle -- probably because that window was open a second before he received it -- and the puck being intercepted and redirected by an opposing forward for a strike on Andrei Vasilevskiy.

With the Devils’ speed in pursuit, and how quickly the Devils can force a turnover and generate an offensive chance, the best move may be flinging the puck out and trying to create a race. Try to stretch the Devils out; that inevitably pushes back their defensemen.

Of course, leaving the zone without control of the puck plays right into a scenario of an overactive dump-and-chase offense, the exact offensive tactic I was pleading for the Lightning to avoid overusing earlier in this piece. This is a conundrum that could fell the Lightning.

In the playoffs, space is even harder to come by than in the regular season. Which is to say: The Lightning can’t win this series by strictly attacking off the rush. They need the forecheck to be impactful to a degree, and closing off the boards and forcing the play through the middle is the best card in the Lightning’s deck.

Another thing the Lightning need to be careful of is when their defensemen inevitably pinch, and engage in the cycle by sliding into the weak-side off-slot or jump below the goal line to assist in the forecheck. This makes them vulnerable to the Devils’ harnessing the mismatch over-the-top and a Blake Coleman, Michael Grabner, or Taylor Hall leaking out and leading a counterattack the opposite way. The Devils are proficient at exposing hyper-aggressiveness in their own territory, and the Lightning’s transition defense needs to be vigilant and persistent in this series.

In that same contest against the Devils in late March, Kyle Palmieri scored the eventual game-winner, which was precipitated by a Ryan McDonagh indirect pass to Alex Killorn along the half-wall. McDonagh had clean possession of the puck and a few feet of space, but he decided to move it to the half-wall, hoping Killorn would be able to retrieve the area pass. Instead Palmieri won the race there, and it resulted in the Lightning chasing for twenty more seconds as the Devils moved the puck around the offensive zone.

It’s a single mistake that became a disaster, and it highlights the major dilemma for the Lightning. If they are the slower team in their own zone, then there is no margin for error on breakouts. But if they can dominate the races to the corners, and win the individual battles, a mistake can be mitigated. The faster team opens up passing and skating lanes. The antidote to a wobbly breakout is using speed to attenuate second-chance opportunities.

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