Steve Santini May Be New Jersey Devils Most Important Player
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils were without Steve Santini against the Calgary Flames Sunday night. The defense looked lost in his absence.
The New Jersey Devils defense has been anything but consistent this season. While the unit is much better as a whole than they were last year, it’s still the clear weakness of this team. That being said, the emergence of Will Butcher and Steve Santini has been a positive step to the future.
The latter of those two may be the most important player on the Devils this season. Obviously, he’s not the best player on the team. Taylor Hall takes that moniker, and it’s not even close. However, Santini’s role seems much harder to replace.
If Hall were to miss a game or two (God forbid), the Devils have enough offense to survive in the short term. As the team proved on Sunday night against the Calgary Flames, Santini’s absence turns this defense from bad to indefensible.
With an 83% defensive zone start, Santini plays the most dangerous game on this team. He’s the only resemblance of a shut-down guy on this blue line. While Andy Greene gets used to being the veteran and Damon Severson tries to find his spot on this defense, Santini just shuts down the opponents top lines as best he can.
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Santini is dealing with an upper-body injury right now. That’s pretty much all we know about his injury at this point. It seems like it’s minor, and rest is in order.
Unfortunately, it’s early in the season and Santini has missed two games. One was for rest, which was at best a weird reason, but hopefully isn’t a sign of things to come. This team can’t afford to go without Santini for multiple games. They certainly can’t go without Santini if he isn’t injured.
That’s what makes Santini so important to this Devils team. It just isn’t likely that Cory Schneider and Keith Kinkaid can save them on a nightly basis. The defense must get better. This defense is just plain old bad without Santini in the lineup. When you replace his production with the likes of Ben Lovejoy and Dalton Prout, it’s a vast dropoff. If the Devils will be true contenders this season, then Santini might need to lead this defense.