The New Jersey Devils took another loss on Saturday. It was the first time the New York Islanders ever won at the UBS Arena. The Devils have dropped eight of the last ten and both wins were against the Flyers. They need to string together some wins quickly or else playoff aspirations are done before the calendar rolls over to the New Year. Luckily for them, the next game is against those same Flyers.
The team played the game against the Islanders without captain Nico Hischier and top-pairing defender Ryan Graves and could be without them for a little bit as they are in COVID-19 protocols.
When it comes to personnel decisions, the coaches have been making insane ones. The team has been playing their fourth line five to ten minutes most nights and they have been effective in their role. That role is to provide energy which can’t be said about the whole lineup. In Saturday night’s game against a very bad but physical Islanders team, the team brought back Mason Geertsen for a whole three minutes and removed Nathan Bastian, the team’s best hitter and most physical forward, who could and should have been at twelve minutes. So in essence they wanted a bigger, stronger lineup and removed a strong player who would have done more. Bastian has been good since returning and he deserves a spot in the lineup every day.
As for the defense, Ty Smith should probably be in the AHL or watching from the press box but lack of depth is keeping him in the lineup. In past years, coaches have buried players like Will Butcher for far less, but Smith continues to make soft plays that hurt the team every night while the offense has completely dried up.
The team is getting far worse for giveaways as the season goes on as well and for some reason, they are trying to throw the puck up the middle in the defensive end or go across the ice multiple times a game and are giving teams grade-A scoring chances repeatedly.
Either every defenseman has not learned this is a bad idea in 10 or 20 years of hockey or the coaching staff is drawing up some bad plays and actively making them perform worse. Even the veterans who are new are starting to do this and players like Graves who are defensive stalwarts keep letting wingers slide in behind them for tap-in goals that were not happening at the beginning of the season which says a lot about how this team is being run.
The special teams once again were something special. The penalty kill was 66% and the powerplay was a solid 0% and -1. The team has no clue what to do when they are not 5v5 and someone needs to be held accountable for this before the season is gone. While I am not a fan of a coaching carousel and think it is blamed too often sometimes this is a competitive team being coached into the draft lottery and another pick in the 5-10 range. It is time to change them all out before this becomes Rebuild2.0.
Add us as a preferred source on Google