5 Things That Must Happen For New Jersey Devils To Win Stanley Cup
The New Jersey Devils can win it all. It’s not impossible.
The New Jersey Devils are about as far as unlikely as any team in the league when it comes to winning the Stanley Cup. According to Fanduel, the Devils are +6000 to win the Stanley Cup. (For those non-bettors, that means someone who bets $100 on the Devils to win the Stanley Cup, they get $6,000). Just to win the extremely tough East Division, the Devils are 16/1.
To say it’s unlikely that the Devils win the Stanley Cup is like saying it’s unlikely one of us is going to date Ariana Grande. I mean, I guess it’s possible, but a nearly impossible set of circumstances all have to come together for it to happen.
The motivation for this piece came from Editor In Leaf, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ FanSided blog. They wrote today that the Buffalo Sabres could meet them in the Stanley Cup Finals. We don’t have time to unpack all that, but since everyone is taking crazy pills today, we figured why not join the party.
The Devils have a nice, young core that is as talented as any. If you take the upside of any organization right now, the Devils have to be in the top five. So, theoretically, they should have a shot at the title if everything goes right. Right?
Listen, everything has to go right. EVERYTHING. Neary a fault for 56 games of the season and an entire four-series playoff run. It has to be perfect. They can’t blow a game, a period, even a simple play going wrong can knock them off course. That’s how delicate the Devils’ chances are to make any kind of run, let alone the magic it needs to make the Stanley Cup Finals and win. Still, it could happen.
1. A Dominant Goaltending Duo
First and foremost, the New Jersey Devils need their two goalies to dominate. This is the most likely thing to happen on the list, but also the most important. For the Devils to win the Stanley Cup, they need Mackenzie Blackwood and Corey Crawford to carry them there.
Take both their stats, and this is the type of duo who can carry a team to the promised land with great talent around them. Crawford is a two-time Stanley Cup winner, and was one of the so-called “Black Aces” for the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 (basically, an emergency call up that travels with the team). He knows what it takes to be the goalie for a Stanley Cup winner.
Last season, Blackwood went 22-14-8 behind a putrid defense and a mess of a team overall. He stopped 91.5% of the shots against him. He got hot as every towards the end of the season. Blackwood absolutely has to avoid the bad stretches he had last season. He was awful in the beginning, putting up a .871 save percentage in October when the Devils season went off the rails. This cannot happen.
Crawford needs to stay healthy. He hasn’t played more than 40 games in three seasons. Now, with a 56-game season and being the 1B of this tandem, the Devils don’t need him to play more than 28 games, but he HAS to be there for those 28 games. If the Devils eventually have to go to Scott Wedgewood, things clearly went wrong.
The Devils know how important having two great goalies is. The team hasn’t been able to trust two goalies since Martin Brodeur and Johan Hedberg in 2011-12. Even when Cory Schneider first came, Brodeur was on his last leg. Having Crawford and Blackwood gives them the most confident duo in a long time.
2. P.K. Subban Has To Be A Top-Line Defenseman Again
The defense is the glaring weakness on the Devils. This is the headline for this franchise for many years now. The various GMs have tried to rebuild a blue line that was once held down by the likes of Scott Stevens, Scott Niedermayer, Ken Daneyko, Brian Rafalski, and Colin White. Over the past eight years, this unit has struggled to even stay relevant.
The Devils tried making Sami Vatanen the top guy. They threw money at Ben Lovejoy. They attempted to give bigger roles to Andy Greene and Bryce Salvador. The team attempted to build from within with the likes of Eric Gelinas, Adam Larsson, Jon Merrill, Alexander Urbom, and Steve Santini (among many, many others). Nothing seemed to work. Then, last offseason, Ray Shero went for broke. He traded for P.K. Subban and the entirety of his $9 million contract.
Subban was, in a word, terrible last season. He looked lost on the ice, he was constantly out of position, and his offense fell off at an unprecedented pace. Subban went from 59 points in his Vezina finalist year in 2018-19, to 31 points in his injury-riddled final season in Nashville, to a paltry 18 points last season. He played almost every game, and he just could not put the puck in the net or set up his teammates for a goal. He was bad.
Subban clearly has talent. He’s only 31 years old. There’s a chance he made too many changes to his body to compensate for a back injury, and that could have caused him to lose a step. If he gets himself back into the right shape, and he gets his speed back, he could be a very good defenseman.
He doesn’t need to be a Vezina-caliber defenseman. The Devils can win it all if Subban is just one of the 20-best defensemen in the league. A lot of other things need to go right, too, but Subban just needs to be worthy of being the best defenseman on a championship team. If he’s below the top 20, it’s not likely the Devils have enough on that unit to win it all. The tandem of Crawford and Blackwood can make up for a lot, but they can’t do it all by themselves.
3. Nico Hischier And Jack Hughes Need To Become Stars
This one is key. Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes can’t be “on the cusp” or “budding superstars” for this to work. They need to become two great centers in this league. They are both number-one overall picks. To win it all, they need to play like the best players in their draft year.
Hischier needs to become a Selke-worthy center who makes his linemates much better. He was really good with Taylor Hall during his rookie season, but has he gotten better in the two seasons since? Maybe he got better defensively, but that’s not how you build a star in the NHL. Now that he’s good at killing penalties, how about we teach Hischier how to put some points on the board.
Speaking of points on the board, he needs to double them. He scored 36 points last season. For the Devils to be an actual Cup contender, he needs to get himself to 70 points. Well, let’s call it a 70-point pace to be fair. On the other hand, 70 points in 56 games would be very helpful. Hischier has to not only make his teammates better, but he has to make them immensely better. Do you know how Sidney Crosby can turn Conor Sheary into a competent goal scorer? Hischier has to do that for whoever ends up on his line.
As for Jack Hughes, it’s obvious he needs to be better. He scored 21 points in his rookie season. That’s gross. It was obvious that Hughes was going to take some time to get acclimated to the NHL style of play. He’s the first player to jump from the U.S. National Development Program right to the NHL. Now, he needs to live up to his billing. He gets a reprieve for the dumpster fire that was last season.
Hughes needs to score somewhere in the 40-point range in this 56-game season. He needs to set up his linemates for scoring opportunities, and more importantly, he needs to score goals himself. Those 40 points should be split 20 and 20 between goals and assists. This type of season would help the Devils fast forward the rebuild.
4. The Secondary Scoring Must Be Off The Charts
The offense can’t be just Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes. Honestly, it can’t be just their lines either. The Devils need to get offense from all four lines. They have the talent to get it done. Heck, there’s a possibility they have a fourth line with three 1st-round picks on it (if they go with Nick Merkley, Pavel Zacha, and Michael McLeod).
Miles Wood needs to play like he did three seasons ago. He at least has to be a 10-goal scorer in this shortened season. Jesper Boqvist has to become a great secondary scorer. Nikita Gusev needs to be a 20-goal scorer in this shortened season. Kyle Palmieri has to destroy opponents in his contract year. Basically, the scorers have to score at a pace we’ve never seen them score.
Then, the other players need to play their roles better than expected. All of them. Andreas Johnsson has to show that he was more than the centers he played with on the Maple Leafs. Travis Zajac needs to turn back the clock in the offensive zone. Jesper Bratt has to pick up where he left off last season. Zacha needs to finally play to his offensive talents consistently.
The Devils need to be top ten in scoring in order to be a legitimate threat on this side of the league. There are so many teams that can absolutely stop the puck from going into the net. The Devils need to get through that with skill and determination.
To be completely honest, the Devils probably need to sign or trade for at least one really good middle-six forward who could jump onto the top line. Whether that’s a Mike Hoffman or a Max Pacioretty, the Devils just need another player who has a track record of scoring.
5. Lindy Ruff’s System Works Perfectly
Not many people were thrilled with the hire of Lindy Ruff this offseason. Many were hoping to get Gerald Gallant, Peter Laviolette, or someone more ambitious. Instead, they took an assistant coach for the New York Rangers who was in charge of a weak defense. Well, Laviolette took a big paycheck to go to Washington, and Gallant still doesn’t have a job. Ruff is a coach with a ton of experience, and his offensive system could be a lot of fun.
Ruff has the experience to immediately get the trust of the locker room. He has 736 wins with the Dallas Stars and Buffalo Sabres. The fact that he was willing to take an assistant coaching job shows he’s willing to change his style with the times. It’s been three years since he was a head coach in the NHL, so hopefully, he learned how to get the most out of offenses and defenses.
The Devils only have roughly two weeks to put in an entirely new system and zero preseason games to test it out. It needs to work immediately. That’s just how things are in this strange world.
The good news is every other team is dealing with the same thing. Coaching is so important in the NHL, and the Devils know that more than most. John Hynes’ message was lost last season, and it was likely the main reason the Devils season fell apart in the spectacular fashion that it did.
Ruff will bring stability to the Devils. His system will be fun for them on the ice. He will allow them to build chemistry. It should lead to more scoring. As long as everyone buys in, it could lead to a special season.
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Again, this is a lot of ask. One thing on this list is likely to happen. Two things could even happen in most alternate universes. However, the Devils need all five to even be Stanley Cup contenders.