Reality needs to set in for New Jersey Devils
By Kevin Whalen
The 2019-20 season for the New Jersey Devils is already a quarter of the way through, and it’s safe to say that things have not gone according to plan. The Devils are among one of the worst teams in the league in points, goals against and goals for. That’s a perfect recipe for a bad team. Then, add on top of it the blown leads, continuous shuffling of lines, no defensive structure what so ever and poor coaching. This team has underperformed on a monumental level.
With a quarter of the season already through, we have been given more than just a sample size to see what the reality of the situation is. This isn’t a good team. A team can have great talent on it, but it doesn’t always mean it will translate to being a good team. This is the case with the New Jersey Devils. It is a young team that needs structure and leadership, and this team simply doesn’t have that. It starts with the coaching and it trickles down from there.
Coach John Hynes has been all over the place this year with the decisions he has made with the lineups on a night in and night out basis. He has made questionable choices as to who gets scratched and who doesn’t and there seems to be no consistency as to why these moves get made. It isn’t as though he has taken a defensive liability out of the lineup because we were playing against an offensively gifted team or vice versa and put in a player with more defensive capability. It is as though he has been throwing darts at lineup cards and hoping something miraculous comes from it. When there is no continuity with a lineup there is constant flux within the team and that isn’t sustainable. This is because of the team lacking an internal structure, an identity that it can build on. There is no such thing in place.
The telltale sign of poor coaching is blown leads, and we have a boatload of those this year. This team has been given no coaching on how to respond to a lead, what not to do and how to handle your opposition scoring to make that lead smaller. It is no secret that the goaltending early on with Cory Schneider was an issue and that the defense continues to be woeful. That isn’t enough to put blame on to why those blown leads happened and it falls squarely on the coach to fix that and yet it continues to happen.
Aside from the coach and wanting there to be a change in that area, the reality is that if there was a change made unless the position was going to be filled by someone we want to be full time going forward then it is going to do very little in terms of improvement. This is going to be an unpopular opinion with some and I know why but we have to start thinking about the long term and not about what is happening right now and that starts with adding building blocks around the talent we have for the future.
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Even with a moderate turn in fortune for this season, the Devils are still looking at a lottery pick in next year’s draft, a draft which is supposed to be extremely deep in talent. If we were to add a 1st-round pick from spots 1-6, that is a huge addition to this team. Then you add on to it what we can get from a Taylor Hall trade (a trade that absolutely needs to happen at this point) then there are pieces being put in place for years to come. This season has gone horribly for us to have a shot at re-signing Hall and I’m not so sure we should have kept him anyway. He is a supreme talent, that much is certain, but on the right team for him to flourish and that isn’t this team right now.
He is much better suited on a team that can win right now. Hall is not the type to guide players and take them under his wing, he lacks those intangibles. Teams like Colorado, Calgary, Dallas even going back to Edmonton can all offer the Devils major assets in return for Hall. These assets can be a huge part of our long term goal of getting back to being a contender every year. It is a painful reality but it is the reality of the situation, he needs to be traded to help this team’s future.
There is plenty to look at and plenty of blame to go around this year, but if this team wants to be on the top of the league again, then it starts with a coaching change, and then it has to bring in more pieces to build on what we already have. I do not consider Hall a part of the foundation for the future but the returns in a trade for him could certainly shape the future for this team.