Finally healthy Devils visit short-handed Islanders before holiday break

The New Jersey Devils didn't win Sunday night, but they finally got to see their optimal lineup on the ice.

The New Jersey Devils didn't win Sunday night, but they finally got to see their optimal lineup on the ice.

The New York Islanders will have to wait until at least after Christmas to get closer to whole.

A pair of Metropolitan Division rivals will look to enter the holiday break on a winning note Tuesday night, when the Devils face the Islanders in Elmont, N.Y.

Both teams are coming off losses to the surging Buffalo Sabres. The host Devils suffered a 3-1 defeat Sunday, 24 hours after the visiting Islanders fell, 3-2, in a shootout.

The game started positively for the Devils on Sunday, as they took the lead when one of their returning players, Jack Hughes, scored at 8:51 of the first period. Hughes had missed the previous 18 games following surgery to repair a finger injury suffered in a "non-hockey" setting. He was initially expected to be out for up to two months.

The Devils, who raced out to a 12-4-1 start before Hughes got hurt, went 8-10-0 without the star center. New Jersey entered Monday tied with the Philadelphia Flyers for the Eastern Conference wild-card spots and one point behind the third-place Islanders in the Metropolitan Division.

"When you're sitting on the couch and guys are playing -- that's the taxing part about being injured," Hughes said. "You want to be out there. That's what you want to do the most. For a guy like me, watching these games sucks. To get back out there, personally, I'm just grateful that I was able to have a chance to get back out there."

The Devils also welcomed back wingers Timo Meier, who missed the previous five games for personal reasons, and Arseny Gritsyuk, who was sidelined for four games with an upper-body injury.

The Islanders will be down another player for at least Tuesday night, when goalie Ilya Sorokin will be inactive with what the team described as a "small nagging issue," but he is expected to return after the holiday break, which runs through Friday.

Marcus Hogberg was recalled on an emergency basis from Bridgeport of the American Hockey League to serve as the backup to David Rittich, who is 7-3-2 in 12 starts this season and made 30 saves Saturday.

The Islanders will be without right winger Kyle Palmieri (left knee) and defenseman Alexander Romanov (right shoulder) for the remainder of the regular season with injuries suffered last month. Leading scorer Bo Horvat (left ankle) has missed the last four games and resumed skating in a red non-contact jersey Monday, though he's not expected to play Tuesday.

"When it first happened, I was pretty scared, pretty worried," said Horvat, who missed just one game in each of the previous two seasons. But it's been healing pretty quick. I'm feeling pretty good out there. It's getting better day by day and just trying to get back as soon as possible."

The return of Horvat, who has 19 goals and 12 assists, will be welcomed by the Islanders, who have scored two or fewer goals in each of the four games without Horvat and have collected more than three goals just three times in 11 games without Palmieri and Romanov.

--Field Level Media