Devils Alley: Previewing Tonight's Game Against Tampa Bay

New Jersey (9-7-1) will play their third of five straight road games tonight as they travel to Tampa Bay to face the Lightning (9-7-2).

The Devils are coming off a 5-3 win against the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night, where Ilya Kovalchuk scored in his first game back from injury after missing five games. Martin Brodeur made 29 saves and David Clarkson posted his second consecutive game with a goal.

Tampa Bay is also coming off a win, as the Lightning defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-1 at home on Thursday night. Vincent Lecavalier scored two goals and goaltender Dwayne Roloson made 33 saves on 34 shots in the victory.

New Jersey will face a tough task tonight traveling to Tampa Bay, as the Lightning have now won six straight home games. The team is 6-1-0 at home while a mediocre 3-6-2 on the road, while the Devils are slightly above .500 at 5-4 away from Prudential Center.

Danius Zubrus will be in the lineup after taking a hit to the head from Buffalo's Tyler Myers on Wednesday. The NHL did not fine Myers despite a rule that states that hits to the head will be heavily penalized, but Zubrus insisted that he is good to go for tonight. Losing Zubrus would have been a tough lose for a New Jersey team that is already short-handed at center.

Mattias Tedenby will return to the lineup tonight after sitting out Wednesday night as a healthy scratch. Tedenby was replaced by Ilya Kovalchuk against the Sabres with Zharkov remaining in the lineup, but head coach Pete DeBoer has decided to send Zharkov to Albany and start Tedenby tonight.

Here are the projected pairings:

Parise-Henrique-Kovalchuk
Sykora-Elias-Zubrus
Palmieri-Carter-Clarkson
Tedenby-Mills-Janssen

When healthy, the Devils offense has potential to be special. New Jersey ranked last in the NHL last season with 2.08 goals per game, but this year they have moved to 23rd with a 2.41 average.This increase has also occurred without Travis Zajac in the lineup and Kovalchuk, last year's leading goal scorer, missing five games.

The one thing the team must continue to work on is their powerplay, which has improved in the past two games. New Jersey has scored two  goals with a man advantage in two games compared to the five goals they had the rest of the season. The Devils success rate has gone up from 10 percent to 11.9 percent in the past two games as well, but they are still ranked 28th in the league.

Ilya Kovalchuk's return should help the powerplay even more, especially after he scored on a 5-4 against Buffalo on Wednesday. The Devils had given up two short handed goals with Kovy injured, but DeBoer hopes that the team can get into a groove over the next few games.

Tonight will be another good chance for the Devils to score some goals, as the Lightning rank 23rd in the NHL with 3.00 goals allowed per game. New Jersey has scored at least three goals in seven of their last eight games (5-3) and will try to continue that success tonight.

Martin Brodeur will start in net for a second straight night over Johan Hedberg. Brodeur was considered the team's best player by DeBoer against Buffalo and was key to the Devils holding a lead most of the game. He is 34-15-5 with a 2.04 career GAA against the Lightning and posted a 3-0 record against Tampa Bay last season.

The game will be broadcasted on MSG+2, which may make it difficult for some fans to watch the game on Comcast. WFAN will cover the game on the air waves and live audio streaming can also be found at devils.nhl.com.

Follow Joe on Twitter @jkuchie and check out the Devils Alley website at devilsalleyhockey.wordpress.com