Hello, New Jersey Devils fans! Welcome to a new little mini series. It is straight forward and to the point. I will be looking at the potential candidates for the New Jersey Devils’ head coaching spot one at a time and then predicting what we believe will happen with them. In our premiere “episode” we will look at interim head coach Alain Nasreddine.
Coach Nasreddine took over the head coaching role of New Jersey on December 3, 2019. He replaced John Hynes who was fired due to the poor performance of the team. So we are only going to look at the team stats from that date until their final game against the Pittsburgh Penguins before the COVID-19 pause.
Stats
Team Record- 19-16-8
Goals Scored- 120
Goals Against- 131
Save Percentage (all goalies)- .908
Goals Against Average (all)- 3.31
I am not too big into the analytics game. But take a look at the Corsi on Natural Stat Trick. Based on these numbers above and anything you can find on that website if you are into the more advanced game. We can draw one conclusion; this team STUNK. If not for the superb goaltending of Mackenzie Blackwood this team would be an embarrassment to the league, not on a Detroit Red Wings level but close.
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The problem was there was just not much difference between what Nasreddine was doing to what Hynes was doing. It was more of “same thing, different day” in terms of lineup decisions, shift times, special teams strategies, etc. I could go off all day about how Miles Wood getting top-line minutes even briefly for a second straight season but it would defeat the purpose of this article.
The bottom line here is that if Nas wanted to keep a spot here with the New Jersey Devils for the 2020-2021 season he would have changed things up a little more. But there is a major overhaul happening in the front office as well as behind the bench and I expect a lot of things to change systematically. When all is said and done I believe Alain Nasreddine will be relieved of all duties in New Jersey and seek employment in another organization.
That wraps up the first-ever head coaching analysis. I will do my best to keep all “episodes” around this length, remember fans, short and to the point!