5 Realistic Goals For New Jersey Devils This Season

The New Jersey Devils have looked good to start the season. It changed the bar for realistic goals for the next 50 or so games.

It’s been a really good start for the New Jersey Devils to start the season. They beat the hated New York Rangers on Tuesday night and the Boston Bruins last weekend. With the Devils losing Corey Crawford to retirement before the season, waiting on visa issues for Jesper Bratt and Sami Vatanen, plus a lower-body injury to Nico Hischier had most of the team’s hope fall out the window.

The goals going into the season was basically to develop the young players. Mackenzie Blackwood is the clear number-one goalie for the foreseeable future. He’s just 24 years old and just signed a three-year deal. The Devils are happy to go all in on him, and he looks like he’s ready to take the reigns all by himself.

Jack Hughes is the number-one priority coming into the season. The Devils center had a terrible season statistically last year. He needed to start putting up points and gaining confidence on the ice. The season couldn’t have started better for him. He’s the only player in the league that’s averaging two points per game with at least three games played.

The goals for the Devils were very vague. Get better. Build towards a better future. Make sure there’s growth. Most of the goals dealt with looking ahead. However, after a strong start, the Devils can start looking to this season. There’s an outside chance they could be competitive for the entire season. There are still flaws, but once they get Bratt, Hischier, and Vatanen back, things will get better. And there’s a chance they can reach some realistic goals with actual numbers tied to them.

Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier Combine For 75 Points

Jack Hughes has been great for the Devils so far this season. He’s on pace for more than 100 points this season. Obviously, he’s not going to hit those ridiculous highs. However, it looks like he could definitely be a massive point producer. It will be hard to ever take him off of the top line. Who knows if Kyle Palmieri and Yegor Sharangovich remain his linemates, but the situation is definitely working right now.

Meanwhile, Nico Hischier is still recovering from a lower-body injury he suffered in offseason training. He doesn’t need surgery for the injury, but he is probably at least another two weeks away from making his season debut. That puts him behind in terms of points, but he can easily catch up.

If Hischier comes back for the final 45 games, then the Devils should be able to easily expect 30 points out of him. That would leave Hughes to get 45 points. The Devils should be able to get 39 points over the final 53 games from Hughes. He will likely hit a cold streak at some point in this sprint of a season. That shouldn’t halt him from getting to 45 points.

Hischier is the X factor here. Not only are we guessing when he’ll return, but he still needs to skate with the team, learn the system, and hopefully play fully healthy. Still, 30 points should be attainable.

P.K. Subban Goes Back To A First-Line Powerplay Defenseman

One of the most important factors of this season was getting P.K. Subban going again. He was downright terrible no matter what metrics you used to evaluate him last season. He was bad on offense, bad on defense, bad to the eye test, and really bad when looking at his advanced stats. Subban went from one of the best defensemen in the league to a downright liability.

To get him going again, the Devils have paired him with Ryan Murray. Ignore the last game against the New York Islanders where Murray had a rough game (which left Subban to make some tough 2-on-1 decisions), for the most part, it has been working. Still, Subban has looked average for his position so far. He hasn’t been bad, but he’s still just outside that top-30 defenseman the Devils need from him.

One way to get him going is to make him a great powerplay defenseman again. This season, the Devils have more offensive talent than the past two years. That might sound crazy since they don’t have Taylor Hall anymore, but combining the powers of Kyle Palmieri, Nikita Gusev, Andreas Johnsson, Jack Hughes, and the eventual returns of Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt, and the Devils have a chance to be really good on the man advantage.

They haven’t been so far. The Devils’ powerplay is 1/11. Somehow, that’s only seventh-worst in the league.

Subban needs to get the powerplay going. He looks like his shot is back to its former quality. He’s hitting the net with his slapshot again (which he wasn’t doing last season). To put a number on it, Subban’s best seasons saw him score 20-25 points on the powerplay. Last season, he had six in 68 games. In a 56-game season, the Devils need Subban to hit 15 points. He only has one point in four games in all strengths, so he has some work to do.

Mackenzie Blackwood Hits A .920 Save Percentage

Mackenzie Blackwood may be out for now, but he should be back within a week or so. He was surprisingly put on the COVID-19 protocol list. This obviously impacted the Devils on the ice, as they put up an absolute dud against the New York Islanders.

Blackwood is obviously important to the Devils this season. He has the best save percentage of any goalie who’s faced at least 100 shots. Right now, he’s rocking a .948 save percentage over three games. Just to compare with a completely random goalie, Carter Hart of the Philadelphia Flyers has an .880 save percentage after five games.

So, asking Blackwood to keep up this pace is impossible. He’s not going to stop 95% of the shots he faces. The best save percentage of all time was Jacques Plante who stopped 94.4% of shots back in 1971. Brian Elliott has the modern era record, with a .940 save percentage in 2011-12. Let’s be a little more realistic in our goals.

Blackwood should be able to get to a .920 save percentage, and that should be enough to make the Devils competitive in every game. Last season, a .920 save percentage would be him in the top ten (of goalies who qualify). He’s been playing like a top-five goalie to start the year, but asking him to be a top ten goalie will make it a goal he can hit.

Hit Hockey .500

The New Jersey Devils just missed hitting hockey .500 last season, finishing the season 28-29-12. It still wasn’t a good season, so maybe hockey .500 isn’t the best bar to chase, but this team has to start somewhere. There are going to be losing streaks, so the Devils have to put together wins around those streaks in order to put a winning culture in place.

The Devils need to show that something is working here. If they are one of the worst teams in the league yet again, then it’s another wasted year of Jack Hughes’ entry-level contract, another wasted year of this team’s youth in general, and a completely wasted year of Blackwood’s dominance.

For those who are unaware, hockey .500 is different from traditional .500. Basically, take out the overtime losses (since they basically equal half of a win since the team gets a point), and then get to .500 in all other games. Hockey .500 roughly comes out to one point per game.

The Devils can absolutely get a point per game. So far this season, they are above that mark. Obviously, they’ve done that without Hischier, Bratt, Vatanen, and now Blackwood. Eventually, they will all be back. The Devils have done well playing without stars in the past, outside the year they didn’t have Taylor Hall. Getting to .500 would mean the Devils are finally moving in a direction we can all accept. It shows that Tom Fitzgerald can make certain moves to improve the roster now instead of only looking at down the line. The most important of those decisions is the contract of Kyle Palmieri.