New Jersey Devils Grades For Terrible Month Of November
The New Jersey Devils were a very bad hockey team, but some players weren’t a train fire. That being said, these grades for the month of November are not going to be nice.
The New Jersey Devils had one of the worst months in recent memory during November 2018. The highs were so outweighed by the lows, that the highs are near impossible to remember. The team won four games during the month. Four games all month. It’s the kind of month that dooms a season.
The Devils may be out of the playoff race thanks to November. Right now, the Devils are in last place in the Eastern Conference. They find themselves six points out of the last spot in the playoffs, while playing more games than most other teams. It’s been pathetic. That’s probably the best way to describe the Devils season so far.
The team lost nine of 13 games during this terrible, terrible stretch. So, how does one grade a team that’s spiraling as bad as they are? Well, let’s just say the red marker is out of ink. Things are so bad for this Devils team, that fans are giving up on fan favorites.
One can’t really blame them. Every single player is under performing on a nightly basis. In eight games, the Devils allowed four or more goals. In five games they allowed at least five goals. The defense and goaltending has been atrocious.
The offense hasn’t been much better. The numbers will look better on paper than they do in real life, but there were multiple instances where the Devils scored goals in garbage time. When it mattered, the defense was nonexistent. The power play was even worse. Yet, somehow, the Devils continue to try the same things on the ice.
Because this team has been so bad, we will go in reverse order. We will start with the failing players, and work our way up to the players that got A’s.
One last thing, remember that these players are graded on a curve based on expectations. Taylor Hall and Brian Boyle are expected to do different things and have different roles. We grade them based on their role.
Andy Greene: F
Andy Greene was looking alright to start the season when he was finding some really good chemistry on the second line with Damon Severson. Whatever was budding between these two is now gone.
Greene is making mistake after mistake after mistake in the defensive zone. He’s given away the puck right in front of the net more times than I can count, and he puts Keith Kinkaid and Cory Schneider in a position to fail all the time.
I thought about giving Greene a slight upgrade because of his play on the penalty kill. He’s been decent there, and the Devils have been better than average on that unit, and that unit only. However, this is the captain we’re speaking about. The captain needs to be better on more than the three minutes per game he spends down a man. He’s failing as a defenseman. He’s a major problem, and the Devils coaches refuse to sit him for a game.
Jean-Sebastien Dea: F
This feels like a low blow, but here we are. Jean-Sebastien Dea was so bad on the Devils in November that now he’s in the minors… for the Pittsburgh Penguins. After the Devils claimed him in September, they tried to put him on waivers. The Penguins claimed him and put him back into their system.
Dea was quite good to start the year. He scored three goals in his first four games with the organization. In November, he had one game where he had two assists against his former team, then zero points in any other game. It just wasn’t acceptable, and it seemed like the Devils kept him in the lineup because they knew if they tried to send him to the minors that was the end of his career with the Devils.
It just didn’t work out. It was well worth the shot, but it didn’t work. Back to the drawing board for Ray Shero.
Stefan Noesen: F
What happened to Stefan Noesen? I wish I could tell you. He’s spent more times as the worst forward on the ice than he has as a player you want on your team. He’s been in and out of the owner’s box, as Hynes tries out other players.
Despite basically getting cut from the team, Jean-Sebastien Dea has more points than he does. His only goal came when the Devils were down three in the first period to the Tampa Bay Lightning. It ended up being another slaughter.
Noesen has regressed immensely. It looks like he’s the player the Anaheim Ducks gave up on. It’s way too early to give up on him as well, but he needs to figure out what is causing his issues.
Will Butcher: D
Here’s another player that I have no idea what is wrong. Well, I have a theory, but we will get to that in a second.
Will Butcher had a great game against the Pittsburgh Penguins (are you catching the theme here?), but the rest of the month he scored one point. It might be fine for most defensemen to get three points in a given month, but Butcher is different. He’s had 69.9% of his starts in the offensive zone. When you consider the faceoffs he takes during icings, that means John Hynes rarely, if ever, puts him on the ice with his back against the wall. To be given that advantage and only score three points in a month is not good at all.
Butcher is atrocious on the ice, which is why he doesn’t get a failing grade. However, there is one reason why he came close; the Devils power play. It was anemic in November. They couldn’t get set. There were games where the Devils scored more penalty killing goals than power play goals. Heck, there were games where the opposing team scored more goals on the Devils power play. Butcher’s play is unacceptable. He needs to be better, and soon.
Part of me believes that Butcher is hurt. He just looks like a different player. It looks different than a sophomore slump. Butcher left a game in October with a shoulder injury. It looked like he was going to be out for a while, but didn’t miss a game. Maybe he should have waited to get healthy.
Cory Schneider: D
The New Jersey Devils goaltender was a bad position throughout the month. Yes, the defense needs to help them out, but eventually this duo needs to make a save.
Cory Schneider was the worse of the two, but maybe that’s because he’s working his way back from injury. He started his first game of the season on November 1st, so he’s had a full month to try and be a competent goalie. He is nowhere near competent.
Schneider has given up 19 goals in five starts. He has yet to win a game in the regular season since 2017. His save percentage is .864. It’s .001 percentage points away from the worst goalie save percentage of all qualified starters. The worst in the league. This is a player that was towards the top of that chart in the middle of last season. How has he just forgotten how to goalie?
Miles Wood C-
Miles Wood had the look of building off his huge year last season when the season started. Travis Zajac looked like he was getting a second wind to his career. John Quenneville was doing the little things right, and the offense would come eventually. Then, Hynes sent Q down to the Binghamton for some reason, and we haven’t seen him since.
Wood has been a different player since going back on the fourth line. He’s taking too many penalties. He’s playing out of position more times than not. Worst of all, he isn’t scoring. He only had one point the entire month. It broke a scoreless tie with the Florida Panthers.
Wood didn’t get a worse grade because he’s still all over the ice. He’s in the face of the opponent on every play. When it looks like other players on the Devils are quitting, Wood still skates at 120%. We all wish he could use his speed and skill in a more controlled way, but when you pay the Tazmanian Devil this is what your get. He can’t have another month like this, however. Hynes will start benching him completely.
Mirco Mueller: C-
Mirco Mueller went from a top-line defenseman to the first player scratched on any given night. What a fall it was for the 23 year old. That’s the thing with Mueller, he’s still 23 years old. There’s so much career ahead of him. However, if this is what he is, then he’ll be in the Swedish league before we know it.
Mueller was never going to be an offensive dynamo, but we didn’t expect him to be useless. He scored zero points in the month of November. He couldn’t he get a pass to the net that got tipped. He did not get a puck up the ice and the team eventually scored, giving him a secondary assist. That’s hard to do when you’re trying not to score. Somehow, Mueller did it.
He also wasn’t great defensively. His Corsi is down big from the beginning of the season. His PDO is even worse than it was last season. He just hasn’t played well. He honestly could have a worse grade, but the Devils are putting him in really hard situations, starting in the defensive zone about 59 percent of the time.
Keith Kinkaid: C
Keith Kinkaid was better than Schneider, but not by much. He at least won some games, and watched others go to over time, so there was that, but he was average at best. Thus why he’s getting the grade he is getting.
There were nights were he kept them in the game, but there were much more like his game against the Capitals, where he allowed four goals on 29 shots. Again, like with Schneider, the defense is doing him no favors. Yet, we really just need him to make some saves.
The Devils have a slightly better chance to win with Kinkaid in net, but if they can somehow find a way to get Cory going, then the sky is the limit. Not sure if the sky is the limit for Kinkaid. He seems like he can go through stretches within a game where he’s the best player on the ice. Then, seconds later, he’ll let in a laughable goal. The Devils just need a little more in net.
Sami Vatanen C
Sami Vatanen did his best trying to carry the Devils defensive unit all by himself last season. He helped carry this Devils team all the way to the playoffs when John Moore or a regressing Damon Severson was the second best defender. This year, something is different.
Vatanen was a bonafide 1B on any team the way he played last season. This year, he looks like he’d be a fourth on a really good team. We know his skill set is better than that, but he just isn’t playing better. He’s making mistakes on the ice, especially in the defensive zone. He’s done a good job of making up for mistakes in the offensive zone by getting back and stopping chances, but his mistake put him in the position in the first place.
He needs to step up in a major way. He needs to be much better than an average defender. He’s definitely not the biggest reason the Devils season is going in the toilet, but he’s not helping either. He’s got a case of the Andy Greenes when it comes to getting the puck out of the defensive zone. He’s been getting too many icings, and he throws a puck up, but it doesn’t get past the line.
Pavel Zacha: C
Pavel Zacha came back into the Devils lineup with a vengeance. He scored four goals in three games, his first four goals of the season. However, we can’t just ignore why he was taken out of the lineup at the start of the month.
Zacha was terrible to start the year. He spent some time in the minors, and gained a little confidence back. He’s been playing much better than he was to start, but there is still some inconsistency. He did return in time to fix the team’s penalty, that is now the best unit on the team.
If he plays like this throughout December, he will have a much better grade. We are choosing to hold the fact that he was taken out of the lineup against him. He should take the C, because he got an F in October.
Ben Lovejoy: C
Ben Lovejoy isn’t the trash defenseman he was in his first season with the Devils, but he’s also not as good as he looked to start the season. He had two assists this month, which is fine for him. He was playing on the team’s penalty kill, which has done its best keeping the team in games.
Yet, he’s still on a defense that’s being killed by mistakes and is leaving their goalies out to dry. He has his own issues pushing the puck up the ice. He spends a lot of time with Butcher, so he doesn’t take as many faceoffs in the defensive zone, but when he ends up there his outlet passes aren’t exactly crisp.
That is bad twofold. For one, the Devils have to immediately turn around and play defense again. They thought an offensive chance was on the horizon, but that changed. Also, it means the lines can’t change. That leaves tired players on the ice, and that leads to mistakes.
Brett Seney: C+
Brett Seney has been… fine. I mean, he’s been fine. He hasn’t really blown me away, yet he hasn’t done anything to hurt the team. He’s just been there. He plays on the fourth line with Brian Boyle, who’s been varying degrees of successful this season.
The problem is Seney just hasn’t been able to light the lamp. He’s had plenty of chances. He’s seen himself go on multiple breakaways, and some beautiful chances right in front of the net. He just hasn’t been able to light the lamp on these chances. He had four points, which again is fine. He’s definitely not the worst player in the lineup. He just needs to do something more.
He was starting to look really good with Joey Anderson, but things just haven’t turned into goals. If he’s going to keep himself in the lineup, he needs to get a little more than one goal per month. Even if he ups it to three, he’ll be more than fine and will likely stay in this lineup.
Joey Anderson: C+
We’re just going to go ahead and give Joey Anderson the same grade. It’s bittersweet, since Anderson broke his ankle and he will be out for a long time, but it seemed like he just needed a little more time to get actually comfortable.
He had one goal and one assist on the month. He was playing fourth line minutes, and getting a little special teams time, but it was mostly for the defensive aspects of his game. His scoring didn’t really develop like we’d hoped.
A C+ is alright for now. He will do better later, but for now, this is what we get. Hopefully he gets to spend time watching film and learning the ins and outs of John Hynes system.
Brian Boyle: C+
Brian Boyle is the best player on the ice when it is Hockey Fights Cancer Night. He scored four goals in two such nights in November. He scored zero goals besides that in the month.
Boyle was injured for a little over a week, so that also impacted Boyle’s final numbers. Still, he could have done a little more besides that one game with a hat trick. It was an amazing game, and he was the main reason for one of the Devils four wins, but we’d love for him to find that scoring stroke in other games.
He’s not spending as much time on the penalty kill, but he’s still on that unit. Pavel Zacha is taking most of his minutes, but he has a role to keep the puck out of the net. He’s also back on the power play, but that’s nothing to go home about. If he could provide something to this team’s power play unit, his grade will go way up.
Egor Yakovlev: C+
We’ll keep this one quick, because Egor Yakovlev is incomplete for the most part, but he played just enough games to get a grade. He showed flashes of being a startable defender throughout his first few games in the lineup. He is still struggling to secure a lock-down spot, but I’ve liked what I’ve seen.
He still has issues with positioning, and part of that probably has to do with his language barrier. He’s also getting used to the size of the NHL ice. He has very good offensive instincts. If he can use those to his advantages, he could be key to the Devils turnaround.
Marcus Johansson: B-
Marcus Johansson might have looked bad overall, but when you look at his month in a vacuum, it’s not terrible. He had seven points in the month. One of his three goals came at the very end of the third period against the New York Islanders, securing an elusive point for the Devils.
He’s been good since the return of Jesper Bratt. It seemed like he was passing well early in the season, but he had trouble finding linemates who could finish. Now that he has them, things are going much better.
MoJo isn’t exactly what the Devils thought they were getting when they traded for him in the offseason last year, but he’s getting there. The Devils hope he can get back to his peak of close to 60 points, but the Devils would take 45-50 right now.
Nico Hischier: B-
This is one of those situations where the grade is the same, but the tone is much different. Nico Hischier was alright in November, but should be better. It seems like he’s still looking to pass when he should shoot. That instinct comes with time, but if he’s going to play on the top line there’s no time to wait.
He will score two points in one game, then go scoreless in the next two. He goes through that cycle over and over again. He’s consistently inconsistent in the month of November. Hischier had more points in October in two less games. Things started off well enough, but ever so slightly fell off.
Hynes already showed the willingness to put Travis Zajac on that line. He did it when Nico got hurt for a few games, and did it to see if he could spark the team. It worked well enough, but not even close to as good as when Nico, Palms and Taylor Hall are rolling. The Devils need Nico to be poised with the puck, and his grade will continue to improve if he is.
Kyle Palmieri B-
What a difference a month makes. After scoring a ridiculous nine goals in October, Kyle Palmieri scored three in November. We all knew there would be serious regression. Palmieri isn’t Patrick Laine over here. However, we hoped it would be a smaller fall than it was.
Listen, seven points from Palmieri in a month is not the end of the world. That’s why he’s still within the B’s. However, his power play shot is almost non-existent. He’s having trouble getting an open shot. He had zero power play goals during the month, which is where he excelled in October.
The Devils desperately need Palmieri to figure out what is different with the man advantage. Things can’t change this fast, right? He doesn’t need to score nine goals a month, but five or six isn’t too much to ask when Taylor Hall is on your wing.
Taylor Hall: B
Taylor Hall has been his good self that we’ve seen before, but he isn’t MVP-level Taylor Hall. He comes out of the month with 14 points, by far the most on the team. Now, he isn’t deserving of the exodus of Devils fans that are giving up on him, but he could be doing a little bit more.
Saying that, understand that he’s still playing better than any other Devils every single night. It’s not close, either. He has five more points than any other player on the team, despite Palmieri’s scorching hot start. He’s on pace to have the second-best season of his career. He’s doing just fine.
He was a little better in October, but he was still very good in November. He’s an elite player, and we need to not lose our minds with Hall.
Jesper Bratt: B+
Jesper Bratt came off his broken jaw, and has been great. He’s scored a point in seven of 11 games in the month of November. He helped Pavel Zacha look like a completely different player. He’s the reason Marcus Johansson finally got going. His offensive skill looks like it did at the beginning of last season.
He’s been pretty clutch. Bratt scored a goal with eight minutes left against the Panthers to give his team the lead. Sure, the Devils found a way to lose that game, but the clutchness already happened. His assists come at times when the Devils need a goal to tie or go ahead. He’s not getting points at less than ideal times, despite a lot of Devils goals happening at that point.
Bratt is one of the very, very few bright spots early in the season. It looks like the end of last season was a fluke. He’s a very good player. He just needs to get the rest of the team to play up to his level.
Travis Zajac: B+
Travis Zajac has been better than I thought he could be to start this season. He’s positioning himself in the right place, and is actually lighting the lamp at a good pace. He scored five goals in November. That may not sound like a lot, but Zajac hasn’t scored five goals in a month since March of 2016. Remember, a lot of that time he was on the team’s first line.
This season, he’s actually providing some offense beyond a few assists. He’s tied for fourth in points, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. He did have a little slump in the middle of the month, but scored in the final game to end it.
He’s also on the team’s power play, which, again, is by far the best unit on the Devils. His line with this next guy is the only thing giving me life when it comes to this hockey team.
Blake Coleman: B+
Blake Coleman has been worth every penny of the extension he signed this offseason. Coleman signed a three-year deal in the offseason. He’s currently paying the Devils back for their commitment to him.
Coleman scored 12 points this month. That’s a pace of 70 points. Obviously, he can’t stay on that pace the whole season. However, the fact that he did it was great. Hopefully he can keep doing it.
He scored the Devils first shorthanded goal, then scored another one. He’s been amazing, and honestly should have gotten some power play time with that unit struggling. Either way, it was a great month for Blake.