5 Mistakes New Jersey Devils Can’t Repeat This Season

Mistake #1: Holding On To Coaches

This one is a little different than the situation in 2019. John Hynes had been with the Devils for a while going into that season. He could not get this team to win. Not only did they lose seven games in a row to start the season, but it seemed pretty clear they were the product of bad coaching. They were blowing leads, they couldn’t stop the bleeding, and the players seemed to tune out a lot of what was going on.

This season, Lindy Ruff gets a little bit more rope than Hynes deserved. He started in the middle of a pandemic year, he has a ton of experience, and things seemed to really work for him at times last year. He’s directly gotten the best out of Miles Wood, Michael McLeod, and Pavel Zacha. These are assets other coaches failed to unlock. That doesn’t even include the precipitous rise he helped get out of Yegor Sharangovich, Janne Kuokkanen, and Jack Hughes. Ruff deserves more than one chance on the coaching staff.

The places where the Devils should have a short leash are from the assistant coaches. It seems they didn’t get near what they needed from Mark Recchi and Alain Nasreddine last season. Nas was in the running for the head coaching gig, and some even thought he could talk to other teams and get a top spot behind the bench elsewhere. He needs to be better, especially on special teams.

This isn’t to say that the coaches need to be fired if the Devils don’t come out to a fast start, but the coaches have to be willing to make changes. The special teams were a disaster last season, but Nasreddine and Recchi kept the same game plan with the same lineup. Changes clearly needed to be made, and if they aren’t willing to do it Ruff needs to take over these aspects of the game himself.