The New Jersey Devils Injuries: Numbers Never Lie

In this second edition of New Jersey Devils – Numbers Never Lie, I’ve decided to take a closer look at just how much the team’s injuries have impacted them from a statistical standpoint. It’s no secret the Devils have been one of the NHL’s most injury plagued team this season, but to help illustrate that a little further I went to mangameslost.com which helps keep track of the amount of games each team loses to injuries each season.

According to the man games lost website, the statistic “Man Games Lost (team reported)” is:

"“Man Games Lost (Team Reported) – This number is the official, team-reported Man Games Lost number for each team as of their last game. An injured player missing 1 game is counted as 1 man games lost for the team.“"

The Number 165

165 is the amount of man games lost for the Devils so far this season. This means that as a result of the various injuries and the mumps going around the league, the Devils have lost 165 games from injured players in just half the season. In comparison, last year had 261 man games lost in 82 games.

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It is obvious the Devils have been more injured this season than last year or even previous years, but it is pretty alarming to see that the Devils could see their man games lost increase by more than 50 from last season. Sure a bunch of these missed games have been due to this year’s mumps outbreak, but the Devils have also had their share of a variety of short and long-term injuries.

When compared to the rest of the league the Devils are ranked 5th in man games lost with the Anaheim Ducks ranked 1st with 239 man games lost. Even though the number of man games lost for the Devils is lower than Anaheim’s, the Devils injuries have had a greater impact on their performance.

The Number 1

The Devils are ranked first in the league in “Time Missed Impact To Team” or TMITT according to mangameslost.com. TMITT is defined as follows:

"Time Missed Impact To Team (TMITT) is a metric that attempts to quantify the impact of a player not playing for their team due to injury. A higher TMITT number equals a higher impact of injured players to the team. TMITT utilizes a skater’s average time on ice (ATOI) or minutes played for goalies, the number of games missed due to injury, the number of games played by their team, and the number of games that the player has played in (necessary due to players who aren’t on the team’s roster or IR at all times i.e. AHL call-ups)."

So in more basic terms, this metric means that the Devils have been the team most impacted by their injuries this season as they have resulted in less goals for and less minutes played by players expected to contribute to the team.

Even though the explanation for the TMITT metric was long, I decided to include it because I want to show that the Devils lack of skill is only hindering their performance on-ice to a certain degree. We all saw the way the Devils started the season when everyone was healthy, one can only wonder where the Devils would be in the standings if not for all the injuries this year.

The Number 2

The Devils have had only two players who have avoided the injury bug and have played in every game this season (not counting Cory Schneider and Keith Kinkaid). Defensemen Marek Zidlicky and Andy Greene have played in all of the Devils 42 games so far and have managed to not be included in the list of 19 Devils to have missed time due to injury this year. One could have predicted that the Devils would be one of the more injury plagued teams due to their age, but having almost your entire roster miss time to injury is incredible.

Even more incredible in my opinion is that soon-to-be 43-year-old Jaromir Jagr has managed to only miss one game this season. The oldest man on the team has actually been one of the most durable players for the Devils, which is more than any of us could have ever asked for when he signed in New Jersey. As the second half of the season continues to unfold, it will be interesting to see if the New Jersey Devils injuries continue to mount and plague the team for the rest of 2015.