New Jersey Devils: Can Anything Be Done About Cory Schneider?

The New Jersey Devils positivity coming into the season had a lot to do with Cory Schneider seemingly getting his stroke back. Then, the season started and all hope was lost.

The New Jersey Devils have a ton of problems this season, but likely tops on their list is Cory Schneider‘s issues reappearing. It all started on night one. Schneider looked really good to start the game. Then, he allowed a goal towards the end of the second period. Eventually, he was forced to leave the game due to what looked like a lower-body injury. So, to recap, it took just 40 minutes for our hopes of Schneider to dissipate.

That was one of two games where Schneider had over a .900 save percentage. On the season, Schneider has zero wins, a 4.59 GAA and a .852 save percentage. To be fair, taking out a terrible performance against the Tampa Bay Lightning (7 goals on 23 shots) and the overall numbers look better.

Still, Schneider has been bad more often than not. In his last performance, he allowed four goals while the Devils scored zero. It seems the Devils do have trouble scoring when he’s in net. We don’t know if there is a connection, but his trouble with the puck cannot help.

So, what can the Devils do at this point? They options are very limited.

If you think the Devils just need to cut their losses and put him on waivers, well, they absolutely could do that. However, that doesn’t get him off the team necessarily. All that would do is give other teams the chance to take the final two and a half years of his contract. If nobody claims him, the Devils are forced to send him down to Binghamton, where things will either get better or worse for him, but either way we’re not sure what that would do.

The one argument for him to get sent down is to get his head back on straight. There’s clearly something up with him because there are stretches during the game where he is lights out, but then the wheels seem to fall off. Maybe he’s hurt, and eventually he hits the limit to what his body can take. Maybe his confidence is just shot, and the second things go wrong for him he gets in his own head.

Either way, nobody is taking on his $6 million annual salary, so he’s easily get through waivers.

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Another option is to put him on injured reserve. He clearly isn’t 100 percent healthy. Schneider never seems to tell when he is hurt, and tries to play through it. Unfortunately, the results are not great when he does this, which tells us this may be happening again. Right now, he’s getting plenty of rest as Mackenzie Blackwood does his best to hold onto the net while he recovers from whatever is ailing him.

Why not put him on IR? The Devils have Louis Domingue in Binghamton. Sure, if they play him too often they do have to give up a draft pick, but it’s a late-round pick that likely won’t turn into much. Then, the Devils can call Evan Cormier back from Adirondack. He and Gilles Senn could split the net while we figure out what is going on with Schneider.

If you think the Devils should just buy Scheider out completely, unfortunately for you they cannot do that right now. There is a very specific buyout window in the offseason. The good news is they can buy him out in the offseason, and it would cost them $2 million over the next four years.

Moving on, the Devils don’t have many options beyond that. Maybe they could trade Schneider for a player with an even worse contract, but maybe with a higher likelihood of bouncing back. Is that Jonathan Quick? Could Martin Jones be a player that would interest the Devils? Both these players have contracts longer than Schneider’s. For Quick, he has an extremely complicated buyout if it didn’t work. It would actually last for six years after this season.

That’s not really a great option. If the Devils are in a bad way now, why would they want to tie themselves to a longer contract?

So, basically the Devils are in an unwinnable situation with Schneider. He’s bad again, and we’re really not sure what happened. He was dominant in the preseason. He was great at the end of last season. In World Championships, he was the starter for Team USA, and he played great. Now, he’s not playing even remotely well. The Devils defense is doing him no favors, but sometimes you need a guy to make a save behind them. Hopefully, it is an injury issue. Then at least we have a reason the second games started things fell off the rails.