New Jersey Devils: 3 Ways To Try And Fix Penalty Kill
By Nick Villano
Hold until everyone comes back
This isn’t outside the box, per se. However, it’s hard to see the penalty kill unit doing as bad as it has and do nothing. It could be considered incompetence. Let’s be serious. The most important part of a team’s penalty kill unit is the goalie. The Devils have lost both Mackenzie Blackwood and Corey Crawford in a matter of a few weeks.
On top of that, the Devils are now missing Hischier, Zajac, and Palmieri, three players who likely had a big role on the penalty kill coming into the season. They were also missing Bratt, who has 88 career penalty minutes (although, Hynes only used him for three minutes last season). There’s just a lot missing from the PK.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, the Devils are ALSO missing Sami Vatanen, who has played more than 90 minutes of penalty kill time. Obviously, once a number of them return, the PK is going to look a lot better.
Nasreddine needs to keep tinkering with the strategy until everyone returns. The Devils need to get their penalty kill figured out. It’s already lost them games against the Bruins, Flyers, and Sabres. The Devils are literally trying to survive the early part of the schedule.
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They’ve yet to face the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins, who both sit in the top four in the division. However, for the Devils to put up 10 points in the first nine games shows they are going all out to win these games. Once they get healthy, this could be a really good team. It might make sense to just fold tight.