With the New Jersey Devils having very little success over the past decade, how does each coach rank on the coaching grade scale?
For the past ten years, the New Jersey Devils have had a lot of changes in their franchise. However, the one constant change has been the head coaching position. The Devils had five head coaches this decade, with three lasting more than a couple of years. These coaches have been either great hires or complete failures, giving this fanbase bad memories.
This isn’t new for the Devils franchise. They have three different head coaches for each of their Stanley Cup wins. However, what coaching grade does each coach get from the past ten years? Also, which of those coaches has been the best in the past ten years?
Peter DeBoer and Adam Oates: Coaching Grade: B+
After Jaques Lemaire retired during the 2010-11 season, it was up to Lou Lamoriello to find a suitable replacement as head coach. In July of that year, the Devils hired Peter DeBoer after his stint with the Florida Panthers ended. In his first year, DeBoer certainly made the Devils a team that could do some damage.
DeBoer’s coaching style not only helped guys like Adam Henrique find their footing in the league but made Ilya Kovalchuk and Patrik Elias work under his system. It also helped that DeBoer had a special teams coach in Adam Oates that made the Devils powerplay one of the best in the league that year.
DeBoer led the team to the Stanley Cup Finals that year, which they ended up losing to the Los Angeles Kings. However, DeBoer may have seemed to be the coach that could lead the Devils to be an elite team in the NHL. However, things began to change for DeBoer after this season had ended.
Because of the 2012-13 lockout, the season got reduced to 42 games. In the first 17 games of that season, DeBoer coached the Devils to a 10-3-4 record, which was one of the top records in the Metropolitan Division. Unfortunately, the beginning of March came around, and it changed the dynamic of the team as well as DeBoer’s coaching ability.
The team went on a massive downfall for the rest of that season after Martin Brodeur went down with an arm injury. The team ended with a 19-19-10 season, failing to make the playoffs. The following two seasons showcase DeBoer in his worse seasons, as the first half of the 2014-15 season would see the end of DeBeor’s run as coach. Lou would fire DeBoer in December of that year. Adam Oates, Scott Stevens, and Lamoriello himself would take over coaching duties after DeBoer got fired. While Oates may not have changed the team into a team that could come back and makes the playoffs, he made what he did with the roster and had a .500 record as a coach. While DeBoer and Oates may not have led the team to a lot more Stanley Cup Playoff runs, they did make the team interesting enough to watch and enjoy.