New Jersey Devils Need Power Play Answers Before Next Season

The New Jersey Devils are a very young team. Their three leading scorers (Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes) are all kids and most of their team is still full of youngsters trying to develop and reach their ceilings in the NHL. Naturally, there are going to be growing pains.

One of the tough parts of being a young squad is dealing with special teams. It takes time to be good on the penalty kill and on special teams when you are a young player. Comprise most of your team with young players and you get the results that the Devils have shown.

For New Jersey, the penalty kill isn’t half bad. There are some solid players on the team that have the ability to defend the opposition’s man advantage. They have the 11th best penalty kill at 81.0 percent. That’s not bad at all for a team that is 29 points out of a playoff spot.

On the other hand, the power play is a complete disaster. At 18.1 percent, it is the 8th worst in the National Hockey League. That is up a few ticks thanks to some recent success but it has still been mostly bad all year long.

The New Jersey Devils have had a bad power play for a couple of years now.

This is going to be the second straight year where the team finishes in the bottom ten of power-play percentage. It is hard to win when you don’t take advantage of your man advantages on a regular basis.

On Wednesday night, the New Jersey Devils lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs by a final score of 3-2. It was a tough way to follow up a huge victory over the New York Rangers one night prior. The problem is that New Jersey could have won the game if it wasn’t for an extremely bad power play showing.

Damon Severson scored a power-play goal assisted by Bratt and Hischier to open the game’s scoring. That was a nice start but the man advantage killed their chance to win the game later on. They didn’t score but if that was the only issue they still probably would have won the game.

New Jersey allowed two shorthanded goals to the Toronto Maple Leafs in this one. The first one tied the game at one after the Devils got off to a lead and then the second one was the game-winner for Toronto. It was, as mentioned before, a very difficult way to lose.

There are a lot of ways to fix this problem but it has to get fixed before the 2022-23 season begins. They have awesome forwards that are capable of doing some special things for this team. They need to do something in order to change it up.

That could be firing Mark Recchi or others on the coaching staff that has an influence on the power play. They could look for a sniper to help the playmakers succeed a bit more as well. Whatever it is, they need to figure it out and fast.