New Jersey Devils: Blake Coleman’s Penalties Becoming A Problem

New Jersey Devils forward Blake Coleman has taken ten steps forwards this season, but lately his penalties have been a major issue.

Blake Coleman is one of the few New Jersey Devils players that’s been a major positive this season. After signing on to a new three-year deal in the offseason, he saw his goals jump from 13 to 21 and he even has more assists, despite going from a team making a push for the playoffs to one likely getting a top-five pick in the NHL Draft. Just about everything has been a major positive for his game this season, well except one little thing that would be a big thing if this was a playoff push.

Blake Coleman is taking way too many penalties. He’s average one minor penalty per game over the last eight games. This isn’t like Miles Wood getting a match penalty to make his PIMs look insane, Coleman has put his team at a disadvantage for 16 minutes over eight games.

What makes this even worse is Coleman is on the top penalty killing pair, the only unit that’s still one of the league’s best on Jersey’s Team. With Coleman in the box, the Devils replace him with Joey Anderson, Nico Hischier or Kevin Rooney on the second line, and moving Pavel Zacha to the first line. It’s nice to have such depth at the penalty killing forward position, but those numbers might be less effective next season.

Players like Rooney or Anderson may have to start next season in the minors if the Devils make certain signings or trades. That means next season, when the Devils are more likely to rely more on Coleman, he needs to stay out of the box.

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Now, is this a recent issue? That would make it much easier to sweep it under the rug. It would be easy to say that Coleman is just frustrated with all the losing, along with his increased role in a go-nowhere offense. With the margins so small in each game, this means Coleman has to make every play count. While doing this, he may try to poke a puck away when he would usually back check, or try a stick lift in the corner when he would usually try board play. This causes more penalties.

Coleman’s frustrations have been clear this season, but it’s not a recent thing. He didn’t have nearly as many penalties near the beginning of the season, but often one penalty led to another. This shows a pattern of frustration Coleman has, which changes his game.

Through December 3rd, Coleman had just four games where he sat in the penalty box. However, three of those four games he sat in the box for more than two minutes. He comes out of the box like a bat out of hell, which is usually good, but he plays with that frustration, which sometimes changes his game.

This season, Coleman has 35 games where he has a goal or a penalty. Of those, Coleman did both in just four. That means he’s been able to overcome the frustration of getting a penalty to come back and score just four times. Obviously, he may have scored before the penalty, but either way the numbers are eye opening.

This is an annoying fact this season, but not devastating. There’s no playoffs in this team’s future. These games don’t matter, vis-a-vis Coleman’s penalties don’t matter. However, if a penalty comes at a time where the Devils are fighting for points, then it could become a problem for head coach John Hynes.

Coleman does so much right, it’s hard to rag on him for the one flaw he has this season. It’s just something he really needs to address in the offseason. If he can keep his cool, and play his best game, he could eventually become a 30-goal scorer. If he continues to let these calls get in his head, then he’s hit a ceiling pretty quickly.