5 New Jersey Devils Players We’ve Lost Confidence In This Season
We lost confidence in five New Jersey Devils players thanks to this season.
The New Jersey Devils were probably the second most disappointing team in the NHL this season. Only the San Jose Sharks did worse with more expectations. At least the Devils still have their 1st-round pick.
Still, there are some long-standing impacts for the fans of this franchise. Devils fans had thoughts about players on the team coming into the season that they just don’t feel about them now. A lot of us thought the Devils could have been something fun, but this ended up being the least fun season in franchise history.
We had a coach firing, a GM firing, trading away the star player for less than what we hoped, trading away the captain, just the fire sale at the NHL Trade Deadline in general, and a long list of other terrible things that happened to this team. It’s hard to even fathom this much going wrong in one season and not even mentioning how bad it was on the ice.
Speaking of the trade deadline, we’re trying to find players who are still on this team that had any expectations anyway. Losing Wayne Simmonds, Blake Coleman, Andy Greene, Taylor Hall, Louis Domingue, and Sami Vatanen takes six NHL players off the roster in one fell swoop.
Some of the players are going to need to prove that this season was a blip because the fans aren’t going to go into the next season with the same level of faith as they had this season. Whether they are star players or ones that have a role, the Devils need to show they can perform.
These five players were supposed to help this Devils team become a contender, but now there are questions of what their future holds.
Cory Schneider
The biggest concern for the New Jersey Devils coming into this past season was the goaltender position. Mackenzie Blackwood was coming off a strong first season, but he had struggled in the past and there were worried he could be a one-hit wonder. Then, there was Cory Schneider. He was once again coming off a bad season where he gave us hope at the end. He had a great final stretch to the 2018-19 season, a strong showing at the World Championships, and a dominant performance during the preseason.
Well, it didn’t take long for Schneider to fall apart. On game one, he was looking good against the Winnipeg Jets. Then, a certain side-to-side save changed the trajectory of the whole season. He ended up getting injured at the end of the second period. The Devils ended up blowing a four-goal lead, and Schneider was terrible for the rest of the season.
Things would only get worse before they got better. The then 33 year old put up a .847 save percentage over the rest of October. The rest of the season went terribly. Schneider never really regained his form. He was eventually sent down to Binghamton, where there were times he was even the backup there.
Now, no matter what he does fans will be worried about it all falling apart. Or, his next injury that’s going to end Schneider’s season/effectiveness. Could Schneider bounce back enough to be a decent backup? Probably, but it’s going to be very, very hard to gain the confidence of the fanbase again. For the first few games, we see Schneider in net, we’re going to be waiting for the next shoe to fall and the goals to start going in.
P.K. Subban
The New Jersey Devils have major defensive issues, so they traded for P.K. Subban during the 2019 NHL Draft. He’s a former Norris Trophy winner that was one season removed from being voted one of the top-three defensemen in all of the NHL. However, the Nashville Predators needed salary cap room to sign Matt Duchene that offseason. The Devils only needed to give up Steve Santini, Jeremy Davies and a couple of 2nd-round picks to get him.
Subban brought immediate fanfare to New Jersey. They held a massive fan event to welcome him to the Garden State. He was given a Ric Flair-style robe while the team embraced his personality. It seemed like it was a perfect fit. Maybe the Devils could help Subban find his greatness. He was going to a team where he is the best defenseman without a doubt, something that wasn’t the case in Nashville.
We all know how it worked out. Subban looked like he was a step slow, the Devils struggled finding him the right partner, John Hynes kept changing that partner, and the fit was no longer what we hoped it was going to be. The defense was immediately one of the biggest problems on the team once again.
Subban is not a lost cause. We might think he’s older than he is, but he’s still just 31 years old. If he does things right, he could still be highly productive throughout the remainder of his contract (which has two years left). However, he needs to prove he can be a top defenseman right off the top of the season, whenever that begins again. He is eligible for a mulligan, but the confidence in Subban is low right now.
Jack Hughes
It sounds silly that we’re losing confidence in a player that is still a teenager, but that’s the case with Jack Hughes. The Devils and the fanbase weren’t expecting him to pull an Auston Matthews in his rookie season, but we hoped he’d play well enough to at least get some Calder Trophy consideration. Right now, Hughes isn’t going to get one single vote for Rookie of the Year. He was just not very good this season.
Hughes ended his rookie season with 21 points in 61 games. We know +/- is a bad stat, but we point out that it does tell an interesting story when it comes to the extremes. Hughes -26 is eighth worse in the NHL, ironically tied with second-overall pick Kaapo Kakko. At 5v5, Hughes had two goals. Two. In 61 games. That’s just terrible.
The Devils and its fans were expecting a lot more out of the top pick. When they drafted Nico Hischier first overall, he helped the team break a five-year playoff drought. Hughes didn’t help much at all in his first season.
We do have to remember that this was Hughes’ first season, and it’s not like he didn’t show he belonged int he NHL. There were just moments where he would deke the pants off a player, but the finish wasn’t there. He was on the ice for 134 high-danger chances. Only nine turned into goals. That’s insane, and generally just bad luck. Still, Devils fans need results from Hughes. It’s even more insane to give up on him as some fans have, but to say we have the same confidence in Hughes that we did coming into the season is just incorrect.
Will Butcher
Will Butcher’s season was not good, but on the spectrum of things, it just doesn’t come on the radar of a season where everything went wrong for the Devils. Coming off signing a three-year deal worth $3.73 million per season. It seemed like a fair deal for the Devils, if not a slight overpay. Either way, if he could bounce back from a sophomore slump, then it would be a steal for the team.
Unfortunately, Butcher fell even further in the defensive abyss. He became bad in his own zone, and the Devils were putting him in his own zone much more often. He was a major positive in Corsi% at 5v5 in 2017-18, about even the next season, then he was just terrible this season. He fell from 53.14% in his rookie year to 46.39% this season.
The worst part of all of this is the Devils took him off the power play. That was by far his most useful attribute. Instead, the Devils used P.K. Subban, Damon Severson, and Sami Vatanen as the power-play defensemen. He went from two straight years of 200+ minutes on the power play to just 74 this season. Even when taking his injury into account, his power-play minutes per game were about cut in half.
One place that should give you confidence is Butcher’s line usually gave up low-danger scoring chances. Despite his Corsi being in the tank, his line had more high-danger chances than they gave up. They also gave up the same amount of high-danger goals as they scored. That feels like it’s more philosophy over talent.
Michael McLeod
Michael McLeod is a former 1st-round pick that seems to be far away from our expectations now four years from his draft year. This season, he was given another 12 games to prove himself after his 21-game shot in 2018-19. That means he has 33 games of NHL action under his belt. He has as many NHL goals as I do. I have zero.
McLeod had a worse season in traditional points and in terms of advanced statistics. His line was more lucky than good (Devils had a .967 save percentage when he was on the ice). Unlike Hughes, McLeod just didn’t look like an NHL player for the most part on the ice. The aspects of his game we once loved seem like a distant memory. McLeod’s ceiling now looks like a really good fourth-line center.
This is a huge blow for the Devils, who may soon hit a breaking point with McLeod. It will be telling what the Devils do with him next season when his contract expires. Either way, in the hearts of the fans, McLeod’s expectations are at an all-time low. Most fans don’t even believe he’ll ever be an NHL regular.
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It’s sad really because McLeod once had a ton of promise. His draft+1 season was once of the most exciting seasons we’ve seen from a prospect. He looked like he could truly be a superstar in the making. Now, we’re just hoping he becomes an NHL player. Even that seems like it may be a stretch. Of all the players on the New Jersey Devils, McLeod’s confidence level is lower than just about everyone, especially considering where it once was.