5 New Jersey Devils Who Can Win Awards This Season
The New Jersey Devils have players with an outside shot to win awards.
A lot of the hope surrounding the New Jersey Devils 2021 season went out the door when Corey Crawford announced his retirement last weekend. Now, it’s looking like the Devils are staring down another season without much to play for except a good trade deadline haul and an even better draft pick. However, crazier things have happened.
If the Devils are even able to get into contention, a lot of members of the organization need to have career seasons. That could lead to awards chatter throughout the year. There will be talk of “stepping up” and the word “adversity” that voters love to bring up. The Devils are facing a bigger hole this season than they have ever felt going into a season. Last year, there was hope around Nikita Gusev, P.K. Subban, Wayne Simmonds, and Jack Hughes helping to carry this team. The season before, Cory Schneider would finally get right after surgery and Taylor Hall was coming off an MVP season. There’s nothing like that to hang your hat on this year. Maybe that works better for this team.
The Devils have fallen well below expectations after blowing them out of the water three seasons ago. Maybe with no expectations, they can pull off miracles on a nightly basis. If that happens, expect a lot of this team to be in the discussion for just about every award imaginable.
To be clear, just about every one of these is a long shot, but they definitely aren’t impossible. The Devils could be a good team this season if literally everything goes right. Just about everything went wrong in training camp, so hopefully, the antithesis of this will happen during the season.
Mackenzie Blackwood – Vezina Trophy
The Devils might play Mackenzie Blackwood 50 games this season with the absence of Corey Crawford. As of this writing, the only goalies behind Blackwood are Gilles Senn, Evan Cormier, Scott Wedgewood, and Jeremy Brodeur. That’s in the entire organization. Only Senn has any NHL games last season, and they were emergency situations.
Blackwood is going to take the brunt of the load in a shortened season. He’s already been building a legacy the last two seasons, but inconsistency has hurt his overall numbers. His .916 save percentage ranked 20th in the league. He was better than a lot of the goalies above him, but his .871 save percentage in a disastrous October tanked his numbers. If Blackwood didn’t play in October, he’s closer to 12th in the league.
Many nights, Blackwood was the only reason the Devils were winning games. In February, he didn’t have a single game where he allowed more than 10 percent of his shots past him. This included two shutouts. He also went 6-0-1 in February, which if you remember was the month the Devils started trading anyone and everyone.
If the Devils are even in remote contention, it’s going to be thanks to Blackwood. He would have to put up numbers similar to Connor Helleybuck. That led to him winning the Vezina for a pretty bad Winnipeg Jets team. Blackwood could get similar respect from voters for carrying an arguably worse Devils team.
Ty Smith – Calder Trophy
This one is another we can absolutely see happening. Ty Smith is coming into his rookie season after he was the last cut in Devils training camp twice. He was unlikely the make it right after he was drafted, but he played so well in the preseason and training camp that the Devils strongly considered it. The next season, the opposite happened. Smith was terrible in camp and even worse in preseason games. They sent him to Spokane each time, and he responded by winning WHL Defenseman of the Year both times (and OHL Defenseman of the Year one time).
Smith is used to winning awards, so why not do it again this year? He’s been interesting to start training camp, but it’s really hard to tell how well he actually looks. Lindy Ruff is putting in a new system that really puts a lot of offensive responsibility on the blue line. This is going to work right into Smith’s advantage.
Smith had 19 goals and 40 assists last season with the Chiefs. If he can translate those numbers to the NHL, he will absolutely get some hype for the Calder Trophy. Last season, it came down to Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar (with Adam Fox also getting some votes) to win the award. A lot of that had to do with how easily those two were able to provide offense from their defensive positions. Makar won it thanks to his 50-point season.
If Smith can put up similar numbers, or even comparable numbers, he will be right in the Calder Trophy consideration.
Lindy Ruff – Jack Adams Award
If the Devils are even competitive this season, with everything they’ve already had to go through, Lindy Ruff will get consideration for the Jack Adams Award. The Devils have lost their veteran goaltender Crawford, lost their best player Nico Hischier to an offseason injury, missed one of their top-six forward Jesper Bratt to a contract dispute, and they have to get his team to learn a new system after being away from hockey for ten months.
Is there any coach facing more adversity than Ruff to start the season? Sure, the expectations are rock bottom right now, but in the building, this team wants to win. So, how can he get them there?
First and foremost, his system has to work. Many are judging his system already, but it’s way too early to see what it will look like based on training camp scrimmages. It’s basically putting two of the same system against each other. Instead, we have to wait until the games actually start to see how these systems will actually look in real time.
The best coaches in the league don’t often win the Jack Adams Award. It’s the coaches that do the most with the least that win it. Ruff already won the award once, when he edged out Peter Laviolette by one single point in the first NHL season after the 2004-05 lockout. Maybe after three years away from a head coaching position, he’s ready to win the award again.
P.K. Subban – Lady Byng Trophy
The votes never really come in for P.K. Subban when it comes to the Lady Byng Trophy. That’s despite pledging $10 million to help open a children’s hospital, went to Haiti to bring hockey to an underserved community, started P.K.’s Helping Hand to help kids with illnesses, he started the Blueline Buddies foundation to invite a local police officer or sheriff’s deputy to every game with a young member of the community to close the divide, and a lot of other community efforts that go unlisted. Subban is probably the most philanthropical player in hockey, and maybe even in all of sport.
Yet, Subban has never had even one Lady Byng vote. The definition for the Lady Byng Trophy is “the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability”. Maybe Subban didn’t bring the latter of that definition last season, but what more can he do to get consideration for the Lady Byng?
Last season, Will Butcher got two votes for the Lady Byng (he was not good on the ice), Kyle Okposo got a vote (he was worse than Butcher), and Auston Mathews was second in voting (he was involved in a very seedy incident with a female cop in the offseason that, while we don’t know all the details, definitely did not make the league look great). Subban’s unwarranted reputation is the reason he’s never considered for the award. His social media presence (which will make him money well after his NHL career is over), his locker room activities (which are mostly rumors), and his propensity to be in the news beyond his hockey play (which usually isn’t a bad thing) are not reasons to ignore his immense charitable efforts. If he could bounce back on the ice, he needs to not only get Lady Byng votes, but he should win.
Jack Hughes – Hart Memorial Trophy
This is crazy, right? This has to be crazy. Maybe I’ve gone crazy. Everyone must be taking crazy pills.
Actually….
Jack Hughes might be the perfect contender for the Hart Trophy in such a strange season. We saw three seasons ago when Taylor Hall won the award that putting a team on a player’s back could be all a player needs to win MVP.
Hughes could bounce back in the biggest way we’ve seen from a year-two player. Look at the second year of past number-one overall picks. Connor McDavid went from 45 points in an injury-riddled rookie season to 100 points in his next year on the ice. Steven Stamkos went from 46 points to 95 points in year one to year two. Rick Nash went from 39 points to 57 points (including 41 goals). The list goes on of players making major jumps from year one to year two.
McDavid won the Hart Trophy in his second year. Stamkos ended up sixth in voting in his second season. Nash won the Rocket Richard Trophy, and if Columbus was any better than a tire fire, he would have done better in the MVP voting.
Next. 3 Options To Replace Corey Crawford. dark
Hughes has a chance to be a points machine if he stays on a line with Nikita Gusev and Kyle Palmieri. Both those wingers are in contract years and looking to cash in. They will be motivated all season, and if the Devils are in contention, the team could look to keep them and pay them in the offseason. That means Hughes just had to make smart decisions and his point total will explode. That could lead to MVP votes thanks to the narrative. Some actually gave up on Hughes already, but with 14 pounds of added muscle, his new NHL body could be just what he needs to dominate.