Stanley Cup Finals - Devils Looking to Restart Their Offense NEWARK - Coach Peter DeBoer told the Devils to take Thursday off, even though they have several things to work on before Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals on Saturday. Among them, for starters, is their normally robust forechecking, which was not very productive Wednesday. DeBoer said there were many factors in establishing a successful forecheck, not merely charging with the puck into an opponent's zone and staying there until a goal is scored. First, the Devils need to break out of their zone cleanly and move through the neutral zone with speed. Then, he said, the Devils must put the puck in the right places and run proper forechecking routes, using their defensemen to pinch into the zone to keep pucks alive. They need to hustle the puck around while there, attempt to block the goaltender's view - and shoot a lot. "We have multiple issues," DeBoer said, referring to a 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings. The Devils took only 18 shots, including just one by Ilya Kovalchuk, their $100 million forward. "I can't box this up and wrap this up in one nice little package for you," DeBoer said. We had a lot of different issues. Some of them you give credit to them for what they did. Some of them were self-inflicted. We've got to fix them all up. He said the Devils" staff had already looked at the videotape of the Game 1 loss at Prudential Center. The players, he said, will get to examine the tape Friday, then will use practice to try to restart an attack that had been resoundingly successful in the playoffs. The Devils lost the opener in their previous two playoff series, against the Philadelphia Flyers and the Rangers. They won four straight against the Flyers and won four of the next five games against the Rangers. Against the Kings, the loss came in overtime. "We felt that, yeah, we missed an opportunity because we were able to hang around against this team not playing our best game," center Travis Zajac said. Still having a chance to win, that makes us feel pretty good that we can play better, be a little bit more successful. The Kings said that they did not think they played well, either. The teams may as well have spent the first period staring at each other. The Devils had five shots on goal until Zach Parise was credited with a shot that rolled off his stick late in the second period. The Devils tied the score with 1 minute 12 seconds remaining in the second period on a shot by the low-scoring defenseman Anton Volchenkov. It pinged off two Kings before landing in the goal; the Devils did not score again. They came close. But one goal is usually not enough. "I think we need to focus on our game, how we need to play," said Adam Henrique, the Devils" rookie center. Maybe we were a little nervous coming out at the start of the game. We were throwing pucks away. We weren't hanging onto the pucks, making plays. I think there's a lot of room for improvement on our side. The Kings are big and fast and make it difficult for opponents to ram pucks at them because they do that well themselves. They were also more attentive than the Flyers and the Rangers were about slowing down the Devils at their blue line. Jonathan Quick, the Los Angeles goaltender, is much better at handling the puck than the Rangers" Henrik Lundqvist (and, certainly, the Flyers" Ilya Bryzgalov), and an adept puck-handling goalie can short-circuit an aggressive forechecking team. "I think at times we were careless with the puck a little bit and got away from what got us where we're at, turning it over and not making the plays that we're used to making," said the Devils" Ryan Carter, a fourth-line forward. That created a little momentum for them, some room. You can't give that up this time of year. Midway through the third period, with the score tied, 1-1, Carter took a pass from Steve Bernier and fired at Quick. The puck rattled off Quick and dropped in front of the speeding Devils defenseman Mark Fayne, who somehow missed an open net. That was the difference between the Devils taking a lead into the final minutes of regulation and scrambling into overtime, where the Kings" Anze Kopitar beat Martin Brodeur on a breakaway. DeBoer has spotted a trend: The Devils are capable of bouncing back with vigor. "The comforting thing for me is when I listen to the comments of our players last night, they were dead-on," DeBoer said. We weren't good enough. We have to be better. We got over the early game jitters. We started to play a little bit better. But, you know, as a group, we've got to bring more to win this time of year.