With fresh players and a quick start you can cause problems in a first period for them, but slowly and surely their superior skating and systems get hold of you.
Only if you let them. (OK, not "only" - they're skilled enough to have a damned good chance of overcoming anything the British teams do - but the point remains)
One thing I've noticed about the differences in styles... the British teams tend to play a more 'loose' system, with players further apart and fewer but longer passes. These European teams play a very 'tight' system... the players much closer together and a lot more shorter quick passes. They can get away with it because their speed is high enough to get them out of trouble if it goes wrong... and that makes disrupting their plays so much harder. But all systems have their weaknesses... and theirs is that if you CAN get in there and disrupt things - and if you have the speed, teamwork and attitude to exploit the turnovers thus generated - then you have a decent chance.
Physical play slows down both sides - the checking player also loses speed (although not as much as the player sent crunching into the boards! LOL) - and that is one of the weaknesses of our more physical system... if their team-mates can pick up the loose puck before our players, then it's all for naught. But if we play physical and support that by exploiting the turnovers... it throws them. We've seen it... hell, listen to the after-match interview with Corey from Saturday night - that's pretty much what he's describing.
Now this isn't easy... the physical play is part & parcel of the British teams' standard tactics, so that's not so much of an issue... it's the support work that's hard - at least at the speeds we're talking about!
We found this out last time in the CHL... and the lessons were painful at times! We seem to have got it right this time... it's not easy, but it's do-able. Now I know that the Devils have the physicality required... the question is, do they have the speed required and the systems to exploit it?