In what was an astonishing way to start the year off. A new addition to the team, Wayne Simmonds, looked to fit in very well with the team and he could be more valuable than previously thought.
The first game of the New Jersey Devils season always has a ton of question marks surrounding it and as fans, we all wish we’d get answers after one game. After this game, there seem to be more question marks for this team than there was heading into it, but we won’t fixate on those right now. Let’s point out some of the positive things that we saw from Wayne Simmonds last night.
At the start of the game, Simmonds was a bit sluggish, having a hard time handling the puck as it was getting lost in his feet a few times. This is to be expected from any player in the first game of the season, especially in Simmonds case being with a new team. As the game wore on, however, he was finding his feet and was playing much better. He looked good skating, threw his body around as a guy of his size needs to do and progressively looked like he was fitting in nicely.
The second goal of the game for New Jersey in the second period was largely in part because of Simmonds corralling a pass by P.K. Subban between his feet to give him the chance to throw the puck on the net which eventually saw Blake Coleman finish up a rebound for the Devils to make it a 2-0 game. After this, Simmonds seemed to find a nice groove and was keeping up with the pace of play for the rest of the game. He wasn’t making many mistakes, ultimately setting up his teammates for the best opportunity to succeed. That is what we can ask for from Simmonds at this point in his career.
Expectations for him aren’t high. From how he looked tonight, he can be a very strong component to this team. This is never going to be the Philadelphia version of Simmonds, those days for him are over. The guy has some years left on him, but he has logged a lot of miles across the NHL because of how he’s played the game and that style wears you down a lot more quickly.
However, expectations for him increased ever so slightly tonight after seeing a lot of the little things he was doing so well and he looked more comfortable as the game wore on. Any time we talk about Simmonds, concerns about him staying healthy are going to be discussed as he’s been banged up the last few years, but if he can keep that big body healthy over the entire season he’s going to be a much bigger attribute than previously thought.
He finished the first game of the year with 3 hits, 2 SOG, 1 assist, +1 and was third among forwards in ice time at 19:02.