New Jersey Devils: Building Off Early Struggles For Nikita Gusev

The New Jersey Devils officially “won” the offseason after trading for Russian sniper Nikita Gusev at the end of July. He’s been much less than we suspected to start, but we at least see some glimpses.

You’ve all heard the stories of the New Jersey Devils offseason before. Adding Jack Hughes, P.K. Subban and Wayne Simmonds made the team look brand new. Then, on July 29th the Devils and the Vegas Golden Knights got together and sent KHL superstar Nikita Gusev to the Garden State.

Things were all hype from there on out. Gusev was a favorite among Devils Twitter fans. In fact, many credit our own Tyler Kelley for getting Gusev to New Jersey. We thought he could be easily a 30-goal scorer who could also be a great distributor when necessary.

We finally got the finisher the Devils desperately needed on the second line. We hoped that would be Marcus Johansson, but injuries really hurt his Devils career. Jesper Bratt was that for a while, but he hit a rookie wall. Blake Coleman could have worked, but he makes much more sense on a shutdown line with offensive upside next to Travis Zajac. Miles Wood was good for one season, but he seems to thrive as a ball of energy for ten minutes per game.

Gusev gives Jack Hughes a player he can trust to put the puck in the net, and one that makes the second-line power play one of the best in the league. At least, that’s what we thought.

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Through six games, Gusev has been bad. To be honest, he’s been bad at the exact things we should have figured he’d have trouble getting used to. He’s been knocked off the puck very often. There are times where he makes bad turnovers when he misjudges where a player is.

His underlying numbers have been terrible. The only player with as many games as Gusev with as bad a CF% (Corsi For, basically chances for and chances against while on the ice) is Luke Glendening. Gusev has a problem with getting stuck in the defensive zone when he’s out there.

Head coach John Hynes made the decision to put Gusev on the fourth line for a couple games with Jesper Bratt and Kevin Rooney. He just needs time to get reps on NHL ice, that much is clear. However, will he get better playing just ten minutes a night?

This is the problem with new players to this league. They need time on the ice to work through their issues, but they’re also hurting the team through those issues. Gusev is definitely not the main problem for the Devils, but he’s been on the ice for 17 high danger chances against him, while only leading his line to six high danger chances himself at 5v5.

We’ve seen that Gusev can score. He’s definitely a necessary piece to succeed this season. However, the Devils don’t have a lot of room for error anymore after starting the season with six-straight losses.

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There are two things that could help Gusev transition easier to the NHL. One is helping him out with the language barrier. The Devils players say that he already understands English, but he can’t speak it yet. Maybe he’s being tentative with the puck on his hand because he feels like he can’t communicate like he did in Russia. It’s something we saw last year with Egor Yakovlev. If the Devils could find maybe a simple way to communicate, like literally yell goose when you’re open, that could simplify that for him and eventually build confidence.

The other is the speed and size of the NHL game. It’s clearly a problem for Gusev, and it’s hard to think it wouldn’t be. He’s played, what, ten real games on this sized ice sheet including the preseason? That’s not enough time to break habits. He just needs to spend his time solely focusing on working on those intangibles. He clearly can steal the puck, Gusev has as many giveaways as takeaways according to Natural Stat Trick.

There are simple ways to fix Gusev’s issues. Tonight, he’s on the third line with Pavel Zacha and Jesper Bratt. That’s actually a pretty good spot for him. We’re excited to see him continue to grow.

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