New Jersey Devils Must Evaluate Why Play Is Worse For Cory Schneider
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils lost again with Cory Schneider in net. Despite a disastrous start, he played well and the team in front of him let him down.
It’s hard to ignore what’s going on with the New Jersey Devils. They have a serious problem with how they play when Cory Schneider is in net. It doesn’t make a ton of sense, but it’s hard to deny at this point. After playing well in front of Keith Kinkaid despite an undesired result, the Devils played awfully one day later in front of Schneider.
This game started about as bad as humanly possible. The Carolina Hurricanes were up 2-0 before the first minutes was done. Since Schneider was in net, and for some reason the Devils don’t play well with him in net, that was all they needed. The Hurricanes literally needed 30 seconds of offense to win the game.
This is a huge issue. The Devils won’t be able to claw their way back into the playoff race riding only Keith Kinkaid. Schneider needs to play better than he has on most nights, but on Sunday night he earned a win. He just didn’t get it.
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Looking deeper, the Devils score about 2.28 goals per game when Schneider starts. The Devils average 3.00 goals per game, and that’s not even that good. The Devils rank 8th in the league in goals per game. So, only two teams have a worse goals-per-game average than 2.28.
It’s hard to put all of the blame on the team in front of Schneider. It just doesn’t make sense that they would play worse in front of him for no reason. Could it be a confidence issue? It’s not like the Devils don’t make terrible mistakes in front of Kinkaid. They just seem like they come more often in front of Cory.
Whatever the reason, the Devils have to figure it out. Playing the poor version of hockey we saw on Sunday night is unacceptable. They need to play their best version of hockey in front of Schneider. He needs to get a win to grow his confidence. That could snowball into a series of wins, and before we know it the Devils early season slide could be behind us.