Devils' Results Won't Improve Until They Make Significant Changes
The New Jersey Devils' middling results won't change without some kind of major shakeup.
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The New Jersey Devils are staring down the barrel of another wasted season. They are 20-17-2 and have just gone 4-10-2 since American Thanksgiving, following their 4-0 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs last night.
At this rate, they will not qualify for the playoffs, and there’s no reason to think anything will change any time soon. Until they make a trade or two to better suit their current style of play or they change how they play altogether, their results will remain what they are.
Devils Overcorrected But Haven’t Brought in the Right Players
I feel like this is a tale as old as time in the NHL, but a rush team has a disappointing season—the 2023-24 Devils, in this case—and that team’s front office overcorrects to what wasn’t really a problem.
The Devils being a rush-based team under Lindy Ruff wasn’t why things went off the rails at the end of the Ruff era. But the front office clearly believed it was and that the team needed to add more grit.
There’s probably a bit of truth to the grit part, but to assess that was the main problem with the Devils is a giant miss on the front office’s part. General manager Tom Fitzgerald could have opted to continue to build on what the team achieved during the 2022-23 season, but he went in the opposite direction.
The Devils became grittier in the bottom six with additions like Stefan Noesen and Paul Cotter, and they became tougher and less mobile on the back end with Brenden Dillon and Brett Pesce and the losses of John Marino, Ryan Graves and Damon Severson.
This is where the personnel issues come into focus. If you want to play a more defensive style of hockey, that’s fine, but you need to get the right players to fit that style of play.
That’s why the Devils are long overdue for a trade. I don’t know how many more times I can talk about Ryan O’Reilly, but he’d comfortably strengthen the team down the middle.
If you want a bit more sandpaper in the forward group, adding a player with some hard skill like Blake Coleman makes plenty of sense. He’s been in the rumor mill this season, and there’s obviously some history with the Devils. Add him and O’Reilly to the middle of the lineup, and you can get away with playing this style of hockey.
The problem is the Devils don’t have any cap space to add either player. That obviously falls on Fitzgerald, and the longer he goes without shedding salary to add new players, the more likely this will become another lost season.
This Isn’t the Keefe I Thought the Devils Were Getting
While personnel is a problem, playing style may be just as much of an issue. How much is Sheldon Keefe to blame for the Devils’ problems? I think it’s hard to say for sure, but it’s starting to look more and more like he’s not the answer. That’s not to say he’s a bad coach, but sometimes the fit isn’t right.
The disappointing part is that Keefe looked like a great fit at the time the Devils hired him. His Toronto Maple Leafs teams had the reputation of playing fast, rush-based hockey, but that hasn’t come to fruition in New Jersey, and it certainly shows in the numbers.
Since the start of last season, the Devils have averaged just 2.53 expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five. That ranks 16th in the NHL, but it’s actually been worse since last Christmas. They’re averaging just 2.42 expected goals per 60 minutes, ranked 25th in the NHL.
Furthermore, the Devils ranked 17th in shots off the rush last season. In 2022-23, Keefe’s second-to-last season in Toronto, the Maple Leafs ranked fourth in shots off the rush. Keefe began to change the Maple Leafs’ style in 2023-24, with the team falling to 20th in shots off the rush, and that seems to have bled into New Jersey.
For context’s sake, more than a few teams are averaging more rush attempts than the Devils did in 2022-23, a season they ranked first in that metric. So while more teams are playing more like that team, the Devils have since gone in the opposite direction.
This doesn’t mean the Devils have to go back to the run-and-gun ways of Ruff, but they’ve sacrificed offense for defense, and it wouldn’t be a shock if that’s caused some of the finishing issues the Devils have had for the last calendar year.
Timo Meier, Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, and Jack Hughes had no problem scoring goals under Ruff. Maybe Meier did, but the other three did not. You’re telling me that they have all of a sudden forgotten how to score goals, especially Hischier and Bratt?
Look at the Colorado Avalanche. They’re not a fair comparison for anyone right now because they’re such a wagon, but they’re destroying teams off the rush. The Devils may not have Nathan MacKinnon or Cale Makar, but Hughes, Bratt, and Hischier would likely thrive in a similar environment.
If the team isn’t playing off the rush as often as they once did, they aren’t getting as many quality chances as they did in prior years. And as plenty of analysts have written about, your most dangerous scoring chances generally come off the rush.
Should a Coaching Change Be on the Table?
Pete DeBoer is a free agent and would be an upgrade over Keefe; his resumé speaks for itself. And I think the longer the losing continues, the more of an option a coaching change becomes.
I personally believe DeBoer would get more out of this team’s top players, and that’s enough for me to consider a coaching change. There’s no reason for the Devils to be ranked 32nd in five-on-five goals since Christmas 2024, despite the roster issues, and a fresh voice with a different style of hockey could salvage the season.
At the same time, Keefe can adjust. We know his Maple Leafs teams had success off the rush, and the Devils have enough good players to play that way. Even third-liners like Arseny Gritsyuk, Connor Brown and Cody Glass should suit that style well, and it wouldn’t shock me if that brings the best out of some blueliners like Luke Hughes, Dougie Hamilton and Šimon Nemec.
Ultimately, this all falls on Fitzgerald and the front office for changing the organization’s philosophy. The Kurtis MacDermid trade was the first sign that this was trending in the wrong direction.
If you want to play this style of hockey, you need to bring in the right type of players, but they haven’t done that. Either the Devils make a couple of trades to better suit how they’re playing now, or they change how they’re playing altogether, whether that’s Keefe adjusting or hiring a new coach.
Otherwise, nothing will change. The results will stay the same, and it’ll be another season wasting Hischier and Hughes’ primes.
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Advanced stats from Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Stats
Some random thoughts:
* I agree that the Devils needed to add grit and scoring but didn’t add enough scoring.
* The bad results from 11/12 to 12/21 were the predictable result of missing players lost to injuries, particularly Jack. The losses since his return have resulted from a combo of bad puck luck and getting re-aligned with the players who are coming back from injury.
* I love to have ROR and Coleman, but it’s not clear that they’d be affordable without giving up essential starters.
* Changing coaches now is not the answer.
* I think the return of MacEwen and particularly Dadanov will help.
* Puck luck will change.
Happy New Year!