New Jersey Devils: 5 Things That Ruined 2019-20 Season
The New Jersey Devils had arrived during the 2019-20 season, going all in on its assets to become a contender. The season fell apart immediately. Let’s take a look back at what went wrong in one of the worst Devils seasons in history.
The 2019 offseason was one of the most fun times to be a New Jersey Devils fan. They won the first-overall pick and the opportunity to take a future superstar in Jack Hughes. On the very next day, they traded for star defenseman P.K. Subban. In free agency, they were able to sign Wayne Simmonds to a low-risk deal to add depth to the lineup. Then, they traded for Nikita Gusev and the roof went off for this fanbase.
Everyone was loving the moves Ray Shero made. The Devils were going into the season with a healthy Taylor Hall, a superstar defenseman in Subban on top of Sami Vatanen and Damon Severson, giving them a great right side. The left side wasn’t the best, but the situation would fix itself because Subban could carry the load.
The Devils surprisingly made the playoffs in 2018 thanks to the workings of Hall, Vatanen, and Keith Kinkaid. This time, it would be a team effort. The Devils had budding stars like Nico Hischier and Blake Coleman, and they had established stars like Hall, Subban, and Cory Schneider. The stars were aligning, and Shero did a masterful job fixing the situation on the fly.
Yeah, that’s what we would have said if it worked. It didn’t. It worked out so terribly, actually. The head coach was fired by December (and should have been earlier, probably). The GM was fired in January. At the end of the season, the Devils had sold everything that wasn’t a future asset. Hall was traded in December for a pool of assets. Coleman was traded for two really good assets. Captain Andy Greene was traded. They also moved Simmonds, Vatanen, and Coleman in deadline deals.
The team finished last in the Metropolitan Division. They were the only Metro team not to make the expanded NHL playoffs due to the COVID-19 pause. It was awful, and the Devils weren’t nearly as well thought out as we thought they were. In a little bit of revisionist history, let’s take a look at what went wrong with that season.
1. Taylor Hall wasn’t MVP Taylor Hall
It’s hard to explain what Taylor Hall was at the end of his tenure with the New Jersey Devils. He just seemed like he was tentative. Maybe that was because he was coming back from a knee injury, or maybe it’s because he didn’t want to get injured again before going into unrestricted free agency. Prior to trading him to the Arizona Coyotes, he had six goals in 30 games. He had a ton of assists and ended up with 25 total points, but he wasn’t the gamebreaker he was prior to his injury.
Maybe Hall was just a one-hit-wonder. It’s possible he just hit it into fifth gear, but he didn’t have the ability to do that every season. It’s also possible the knee injury really had lingering effects. We expected Hall to return for weeks in 2018-19. Maybe the Devils weren’t lying when they said he could come back at some point and that Hall just kept suffering setbacks that kept him from being 100%.
Either way, the Devils season predicated on Hall being at least a point-per-game player. He wasn’t, and the points he was getting weren’t really helping.
Something just didn’t work here. He was back with Nico Hischier and Kyle Palmieri, so it’s not like he really had to make it work with different teammates. This was the same line that elevated Hall to MVP status. Yet, he just didn’t get there in this season.
2. The Goalie Situation Fell Apart Immediately
The Devils thought they had the best scenario possible in net. They had the youngster Mackenzie Blackwood who was phenomenal for a stretch in 2019. Cory Schneider looked like he was finally healthy, and he had a stretch where he was dominant. At the end of the season, in the World Championships, and in the preseason Schneider looked like a top-15 goalie in the league. Blackwood looked like he could be the future starter, which was technically true.
These two went into the season with a good rhythm, then the second period of the opening-night lineup happened. Schneider was rolling against the Winnipeg Jets, and the Devils had a 4-0 lead in the second period. Then, Schneider let in a goal at the very end of the second period. That’s okay, it’s still 4-1. In the third period, the Devils let up a goal, and Schneider got injured going side to side. Blackwood had to go into the game cold, and he let in the next two goals within 10 minutes.
Things didn’t get better from there. Blackwood struggled with his automatic starting role. In six games in October, Blackwood had an .871 save percentage. Schneider tried to play through whatever pain he had from opening night, and he wasn’t the same. He had an .847 save percentage in October. He would go from IR to Binghamton back to New Jersey throughout the season, as it became clear he was done. The Devils ended up buying him out at the end of the season, and it was the end of an era. The man who was supposed to take the place of the greatest goalie of all time was now a shell of his former self.
3. P.K. Subban Fell Off A Cliff
The Devils had an issue with defense at the top of the lineup. They had Severson and Vatanen who were really good guys for the second line, and they had Will Butcher who was a decent prospect. Greene still had something left in the tank, although he shouldn’t have been playing top-line minutes. The Devils had a decent defensive lineup on paper with some depth with Mirco Mueller and Connor Carrick. Instead, the Devils had to play Matt Tennyson for 20 games. That’s how bad it got.
It was all predicated on Subban still being a star. He wasn’t. The back injury clearly had an impact on his game, as he lost just about all of the agility that made him the player he was. He was still trying to do all of the things he used to do, but they just didn’t work. It put the Devils in a position to allow a 2-on-1, and the goalies were constantly asked to bail out the Devils.
Subban would eventually learn how to play with his new skill set, but this just wasn’t a good fit. Subban could hide behind Roman Josi and the rest of the great Nashville defense. There was nowhere to hide on the Devils blue line. Add into the fact there was no left-handed defenseman to help him out, and the Devils were constantly left out to dry.
Subban has always been a high-risk, high-reward defenseman. When you take away the high rewards, then he becomes a bad defenseman. He is much better now that he has a very specific role in the Lindy Ruff system, but the 2019-20 Devils were expecting him to carry this defense. He just couldn’t do that anymore.
4. When It Rained, It Poured
The 2019-20 Devils were a team where a snowball turned into an avalanche every single time. It started on night one. They took a 4-0 lead in the opening game, and then one last-second goal turned quickly into four goals and a tie game. The Devils COULD NOT stop the momentum from turning. That’s the sign of a good team. When the going gets tough, they tighten up and get the job done. This Devils team just got tight and let the other team do whatever they wanted.
Things kept falling apart. The Devils ended up losing their first seven games of the season, and the season felt over before it even started. The players seemed a little disengaged after that. The playoffs already felt like a long shot. The team just didn’t bounce back, and even the wins seems too little too late.
Things kept getting worse. Then, in early December the season just got buried. The team lost seven games in a row. This was the point where John Hynes was fired. He could not get this team to bounce back. He changed the lines constantly, and nobody could build chemistry. There were mistakes galore on the ice, and the team had no rhythm from shift to shift. At one point, the Devils were 11-19-5. There was no coming back at that point.
This is where we’ll talk about Hynes. Many people have revisionist history because Hynes has been amazing with the Nashville Predators, but Hynes went into the 2019-20 season desperate, and that seemed to impact his coaching decisions. He was always trying to change things up, and it seemed like he was looking to show his impact on the team. However, that just led to losses and a lack of chemistry. Hynes has some blame here, but it’s more likely Shero put that desperation on him, and it left behind a mess of a franchise.
5. Every New Player Failed
How could the Devils have a 0% conversion rate for the new players? We talked about Subban. He was a net negative on the back end that year. It seemed like he was allowing more goals to go in than he was helping the team score. He wasn’t the only abject failure on the roster.
Let’s start with Gusev. The Devils big acquisition needed some time to get adjusted to the NHL game. He was a superstar in Russia. He was considered the best player who wasn’t on an NHL roster. After the Devils sent a couple of picks to the Vegas Golden Knights, he was now going to make his NHL debut in New Jersey. It immediately looked great. He scored the first goal of the Devils season. His shot was dynamic, and he proved it right away. He wasn’t able to be a consistent scorer like we hoped, but he was at least fine when Hynes wasn’t benching him.
Simmonds was just bad. This wasn’t the right fit for him. He needed a team that wanted grit and depth on the fourth line. The Devils wanted a middle-six forward who could still score. He couldn’t do that, and he only had 24 points in 61 games.
Jack Hughes was the big surprise failure. He had a lot of trouble staying on his feet as opposing players took advantage of his lack of size as an 18-year-old kid. Because of this, Hughes couldn’t show how dynamic he was. He finished the season with 21 points in 61 games. It was one of the worst seasons for a number-one overall pick of all time.
Next. 5 Goals To Achieve Rest Of Devils Season. dark
This season was a failure from the start after an offseason that is still one of the most fun times it’s ever been to be a Devils fan. The team is in a better place now thanks to the leadership of Tom Fitzgerald, but this was probably one of the most disappointing and hard seasons to be a fan ever.