The New Jersey Devils are coming off their first win of the 2018 calendar year, and it was a big one. They beat the New York Islanders 4-1 in Brooklyn for the first time since they moved out of Long Island. It was an impressive win, but is John Hynes leaving more to be desired?
After discussing the lineup with fellow fans a lot in these past couple weeks, I decided to watch the highlights of the game again and take a look at the team stats. The thing that jumped out at me specifically was the time on ice stats.
The amount of minutes that Travis Zajac (17:14) and Drew Stafford (18:09) played were a bit confusing to me. These two guys haven’t been playing their best to say the least. Drew Stafford is just playing in his second game after coming back from being scratched for an extended period of time.
The thing that really made those numbers troublesome for me was that they played more minutes than Nico Hischier (17:10), Jesper Bratt (16:23) and Kyle Palmieri (15:48). These are three of the most important players for the Devils, especially offensively.
During Stafford and Zajac’s time on the ice last night, they both contributed very little. Drew Stafford did have 2 shots on goal, but 2 giveaways. Zajac had no shots on goal. Along with these stats, both Travis Zajac and Drew Stafford had a -1 +/- on the night.
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It’s no secret that the Devils have been struggling on their defensive game. They say the best way to play defense is to create offense. This cannot be used if you keep your most offensively talented players on the bench while guys like Zajac and Stafford are taking up plenty of minutes.
Recently, John Hynes had been questioned about keeping the youngsters like Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt’s time on ice in check to keep them fresh. However, in the circumstances the Devils have been in lately, I believe that Coach Hynes needs to focus solely on getting the players who give the team the best chance the win on the ice as much as possible. Down the stretch here the Devils need to pick up every point they can.