New Jersey Devils: 5 Players Poised To Turn Around Bad Seasons
Just about everyone on the New Jersey Devils is having a terrible start to their season. Which players do we think have what it takes to turn around their stats?
What if I told you there was one player on the entire New Jersey Devils team that was on pace to score more than 50 points? Obviously, you would know that player is Taylor Hall, but even he’s not having a very good season. All around, this season has gone as bad as we could have imagined.
Just think what’s happened already. The Devils starting goalie Cory Schneider is now in Binghamton after he passed through waivers without anyone even testing him. Hall’s agent met with Ray Shero, and all that did was make the trade rumors grow louder. They’ve blown more third period leads than any of us can count.
This has been an upsetting start after an offseason that was nothing short of amazing. Shero did what he could to retool the cupboard. He also did with losing Jeremy Davies as the largest piece when acquiring P.K. Subban, Nikita Gusev and Wayne Simmonds. It looked like this long, undesirable rebuild was finally over.
Then, almost immediately, the rug was pulled from under Devils fans’ feet. We thought this was going to be one of the most fun seasons in a long time, but instead it’s been one of the worst, maybe ever. We so wanted this season to be great after going through more than half a decade of mediocrity, but so far it has not been in the cards. Some fans are even saying they cannot wait for the season to end. (Not us, we never want hockey to end.)
Still, it’s only November. There’s 62 games left in this season. Despite how bad it is, the Devils are still only six points out of a playoff spot. That means if some of the Devils players can step up, they can get themselves right back in this race.
So, which players are most likely to turn things around? Here are five that compared to what we know from them previously, and what we’ve seen so far, have the best shot to turn this season around.
Kyle Palmieri
Kyle Palmieri was looking to have his best season yet. He was going to either spend his entire season with a Taylor Hall looking to get paid or with a Jack Hughes who had an insane amount of skill that could compliment the shoot first Palmieri.
Last season, Palmieri had the best stretches of his career until everyone got hurt and he was the best player on the ice. He also had his own injury that put a stop to his momentum. This season, he looks as healthy as ever, but the goals just haven’t been there. It doesn’t help that the Devils power play has looked like absolute garbage for most of the season. Once the Devils finally get the power play fixed (or at least as fixed as it’s ever going to be), he will start scoring more goals.
The real reason Palmieri is on this list is he’s been the best player on the team at 5v5. He’s has the best 5v5 CF% at 51.76. He’s been on the ice for 46 high-danger chances, with only 33 against him. If you include special teams, that jumps up to 73 for.
Palmieri just needs to start putting pucks in the net. Palmieri isn’t the worst player on the roster, and already has seven goals. He’s far from the problem with this team, but he definitely could be playing better. He needs to get to 60 points this season. He’s 28 years old, and needs to be playing like it’s his prime.
Nico Hischier
Nico Hischier has sneakily had a bad offensive season. He’s on pace for just 40 points, by far the worst of his career. He has the same amount of points as Jack Hughes, who is in his rookie season. Hischier was supposed to have a major breakout year, but instead he’s taken a while to get going. He scored zero goals in October while the Devils were losing just about every game. Meanwhile, November has been better, but it’s far from a breakout.
Like Palmieri, his underlying numbers are pretty good. He’s got the second best CF% at 5v5 with 51.07%. He has an 8.3 shooting percentage, the worst of his career so far. What he needs to do is get more shots on goal. Right now, he’s only averaging two per game. He needs to get that closer to three or four per game if we’re going to see the breakout we all hoped for.
That’s a pretty simple fix. The Devils just need to coach Nico Hischier to be more aggressive. He’s been too passive, and with Hall shooting the puck at a ridiculously low 2.8 percent, Hischier has to step up and take those shots while Hall is snake bitten.
We expect Hischier to play first-line minutes for most of the season, if only because his defensive acumen allows Hall and Palmieri/Jesper Bratt to excel in a scoring role. That in turn puts Hischier in a scoring role himself because once they get in the zone, he can just set up shop in a high-scoring zone and eventually get a few easy goals to get going. Hischier is playing well in plenty of phases, but we really needed him to contribute more offensive than he was. That’s why he was just given a seven-year deal worth more than $50 million.
P.K. Subban
New Jersey Devils fans are not thrilled with the return they got from P.K. Subban so far. It’s really unfortunate, because the numbers show that he’s been good among a bad group of defensemen. He’s the only defenseman with a CF% over 50 at 5v5. He’s been awful offensive, but we need to stop acting like he’s a bad defender because he’s made a couple of turnovers or he had a bad play here or there. His numbers show insane consistency after what he’s been paired with.
The one place where he needs to be better is special teams. We’ll start with the penalty kill. He’s allowed six goals while he is on the ice while the other team is on the man advantage. It’s been in large part an entire falling apart of what was once the league’s best, or at least in the top five, penalty kill unit. Theoretically, adding Subban to that would only make them better. The better players are even worse. (Travis Zajac, Blake Coleman and Andy Greene have all allowed 8+ goals albeit in much more minutes.)
A lot of Subban’s issues may come down to luck, and his goalie just making a save. We don’t have the breakdown of which goalie was behind him at the time, but some of the other numbers bar that take. Subban has been on the ice for 58 high-danger chances for and the same exact amount against. Despite that, he’s been on the ice for 12 goals and a whopping 20 goals against. He’s seen a goal per game go in against his team.
Those numbers should even out, unless his luck is just never going to change. We expect it to, though. Subban is a very good defenseman still. Is he worth $9 million? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is he finds a way to jump back into the conversation for top-15 defensemen in the league. To do that, he needs to start scoring and start getting the primary assists. Five points at this stage of the season is unacceptable.
Jesper Boqvist
Alright, this one is a stretch by us because we don’t have the numbers to back it up, but there’s no way Jesper Boqvist’s season goes as bad as it has so far. A lot of this has to do with John Hynes inconsistency with how he’s using him. He’s only played him in seven games this season, and he’s probably had different linemates for each and every one. That’s led to one of the best offensive prospects in the system going pointless for the first month and a half of his rookie season.
We know what Boqvist can do, but in reality he’s a 21-year-old winger that has one more shot than he has penalty minutes. The game is just going way too quick for him, and he’s not producing for the team at all. However, Boqvist is filled to the top with pure skill and athleticism. He was playing against men last season in Swedish leagues, and he played very well. Sure, we had dreams of Boqvist playing on the second line with Hughes and Bratt, but in reality that was a long shot.
Boqvist really just needs to play NHL minutes for a month. He needs to work through those kinks just like Nikita Gusev had to do. Now that Hynes knows who he should pair with Gusev, he’s been thriving. Once the Devils find a way to do that with Boqvist, then he will also thrive.
The one thing Boqvist needs is an opportunity. He’ll never grow being in and out of the lineup, at least he won’t this particular season. Sure, putting him out there to get crushed is a bad look, but if Gusev is all the way back, maybe throw Boqvist in his spot, and move Gusev back next to Jack Hughes and hope he’s learned more about the game than he has since Russia.
Taylor Hall
Where to start. He has a 2.8 shooting percentage. There’s zero percent chance that he has an under 8 percent on the season. It’s hard to expect he’s going to shoot 14 percent like he did in his MVP year after the start he’s had. If he just gets to the point of shooting his career average of 10.5%, and continues on the same shot total, he will have another 30-goal season.
He’s clearly frustrated, and just needs a break to go his way. The puck is just not going in for him, and he’s letting it impact his game in other ways. He’s taking penalties out of frustration. He’s taking bad shots out of frustration, and then he makes really hard passes that bounce off sticks because he’s trying to hard to make it work.
Hall is an elite talent. He’s not playing up to his caliber, and maybe that has something to do with the knee injury. Maybe he was tentative at first, but tried to ramp it up after seeing his numbers suffer. Now that those numbers are suffering, he’s now frustrated with his play. That frustration is causing his numbers to suffer. It’s a vicious cycle, but it could end with literally one goal. No matter how stupid the goal, a break going his way would do wonders.
Next. Taylor Hall Knows He Has To Play Better. dark
There’s no way Hall will continue to see his numbers where they are. Even his possession numbers need to be better. Both Hischier and Palmieri are over 50% in CF%. He’s right outside, but it shows he isn’t the one carrying his linemates anymore. He has that in him still, he just needs something to go his way in the worst way.