New Jersey Devils: 5 Harsh Truths About 2023-24 Season
The New Jersey Devils are currently 11-10-1 – a record that seats them seventh in the Metropolitan Division standings. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Devils are just 21st overall in the NHL, bumbling around near the likes of the Calgary Flames and the Montreal Canadiens, two teams who will likely be sellers (and some already so).
With the first quarter of the season having come and gone, now might be an appropriate time to start sounding some alarms and to start improving the team.
5. The coaching staff can’t be trusted to do the right thing
That process starts internally with Lindy Ruff and the rest of the coaching staff.
What’s worked, and what hasn’t? For starters, the Devils’ defense is something that should be looked at a little more closely. The Luke Hughes-Colin Miller pairing has been excellent, as was the Jonas Siegenthaler-Simon Nemec pairing in their short time together against the San Jose Sharks.
That leaves the Kevin Bahl-John Marino pairing. Per Moneypuck, they have an expected goals percentage of 51.1% across 247 minutes together. Out of all Devils defense combinations that have played 10 minutes together or more, that ranks 10th. For a defense pairing that plays regularly, that isn’t good enough for a team with playoff aspirations.
Brendan Smith is also suspended for now, and while he has played on some successful pairings based on the same criteria, he’s been on many unsuccessful ones. The Hughes-Smith pairing has a paltry xG% of 40.7%, and the Siegenthaler-Smith pairing is even worse with a 30.8% xG%.
You can only hope that Ruff and the rest of the Devils’ staff will continue to give Nemec a chance to be the team’s 1:1 Dougie Hamilton replacement.
4. The Devils have no offensive chemistry
Even though Jack Hughes is having a rockstar 2023-24 campaign, the Devils have done very little offensively. And they’ve done very little offensively on a consistent basis. Sure, Hughes and Nico Hischier both missed sizeable portions of the season’s first quarter, but it’s a team game. When the A-game isn’t there, the Devils should turn to their B-game or C-game. That’s not something they have because the team’s playstyle relies on the speed and skill of players like Hughes, Hischier, and Jesper Bratt.
The turnover from last season is partly due to inconsistency. For example, Dawson Mercer looked great next to a play-driving ace like Tomas Tatar and Hischier. The youngster has been less great this season but has looked better recently on lines with Hughes and Tyler Toffoli, and Erik Haula and Curtis Lazar, respectively.
The one Devils line that has been elite – and we mean the only one – is the Ondrej Palat-Hischier-Bratt line. They have an xG% of 77.8%, while no other Devils line has surpassed 66%.
New Jersey still has a lot of work to do on this front because a lot falls to the wayside when injuries happen. Timo Meier didn’t have a great game against his old Sharks playing on the third line, and the team sorely misses Erik Haula. The Devils can’t sleepwalk towards the spring, hoping everybody is healthy and firing on all cylinders.
3. Yes, the Devils are missing Jesper Boqvist and Yegor Sharangovich
The Devils traded Yegor Sharangovich for Toffoli. And yes, they let Jesper Boqvist walk. That’s fine and dandy, but replacing them has been less than easy.
It’s not necessarily about their individual talents as players but their overall contributions to the team. Sharangovich was a star penalty killer who scored a short-handed goal every year of his career, played up and down the lineup, and even scored 20 goals once.
Even though the Belarusian had a down year in 2022-23 by most people’s standards, he still scored 13 goals and 30 points.
Meanwhile, Boqvist is stuck in the AHL with the Providence Bruins. He made it as an NHL regular with the Devils last year as a penalty killer and bottom-six contributor, playing in a career-high 70 games. He scored 10 goals and 21 points whilst averaging just 11:36 of ice time a game.
Tomas Nosek, Nathan Bastian, and Chris Tierney have combined for just one goal and one assist across 39 games between the three. Bastian has the goal and the assist.
The Devils also have a penalty kill unit that’s clicking at just 75% – good (bad?) for 25th in the league. They had the opportunity to claim Boqvist on waivers earlier in the season and didn’t do so despite knowing that he knows the system.
With Nosek now on the shelf for an indeterminate period of time after undergoing foot surgery, the Devils’ decision to go with bargain bin replacements for Boqvist and Sharangovich has backfired in the worst way so far.
2. The Devils still lack the killer instinct they need to win games
When the Devils played the Philadelphia Flyers, Joel Farabee pinched the offensive blueline and whiffed on Alexander Holtz. Holtz went down and scored the game’s first goal immediately after. After 56 seconds of playing time, Farabee didn’t see the ice again that night.
The @SanJoseSharks are on the board early into this one! 🦈
— NHL (@NHL) December 2, 2023
📺: @Sportsnet or stream on Sportsnet+ ➡️ https://t.co/sEijvXhbA1 pic.twitter.com/sFnCb3F0H1
Take the play above – made by Timo Meier and the Devils – as a prime example of why the team can’t win the ‘easy’ ones. Meier, wearing Damon Severson’s old no. 28, takes about three seconds too long on the puck retrieval and turns the puck over in his own zone. Without watching what happens after, it was far too casual of an effort on the puck and frankly unacceptable.
Well, when you watch what happens after, the Sharks score. Jacob Macdonald knocks Meier down to win the puck back, and then Meier allows Macdonald to go right down to the circles to score while guarding absolutely nobody. Nemec does the right thing by tying up the Sharks player in front, but Siegenthaler never got out in front to challenge Mario Ferraro.
In short, the Devils made multiple errors on a play that should have never happened, should Meier have executed on one of the most basic defensive zone puck possession plays.
Meier’s responsibility there comes down to what the system asks for. If they aren’t going to get the saves, New Jersey needs to eliminate that kind of mistake from their game entirely. The lack of killer instinct and winning mentality already lost them at least one game this season.
1. The goalie you want the Devils to get isn’t out there
Sorry guys, but the Armchair GM CapFriendly era of Devils goalie trades is pretty much over.
Connor Hellebuyck isn’t on the market anymore, and neither is Juuse Saros. Some people counter with Yaroslav Askarov, but he’s a 21-year-old with one season of North American hockey under his belt. He’s also 0-1-0 in his NHL career with a .886 save percentage.
If the Devils are to compete for a Stanley Cup this year or the year after, Askarov isn’t the guy you want. Conversely, that also puts the onus on the Devils to go out and draft their franchise goalie if they’re convinced Akira Schmid isn’t that. Again, Schmid is only 23 and had one year of AHL seasoning prior to last season. There’s a reason the rumor of keeping him in the AHL this year was out there.
The Devils’ system calls for a goalie that can make saves when the defense whiffs and the opposing offense yells ‘jailbreak!’. Vanecek and Schmid have done that. The problem is Vanecek has a .900+ save percentage in only a third of his games this year, whilst Schmid’s confidence probably took a hit after being foolishly played in both games of a back-to-back last week.
So, if/when Dougie Hamilton goes to LTIR, the team gets $9 million in cap space. Out of the realistic options left that might give New Jersey what they’re looking for, you come up with John Gibson and Jacob Markstrom. The problems with them?
Markstrom is 33, signed at $6 million until 2026, has a no-movement clause, and was terrible last year. Gibson is 30, signed at $6.4 million until 2027, has a modified no-trade clause, and is having his first decent season since 2018-19.
Basically, the two guys that can play at the level the Devils need are 30 or older, carry huge money for long terms, carry huge risks in terms of performance, and might not even agree to a trade in the first place. Plus, New Jersey would probably need to get both at half retained, and that’s going to cost them a lot.
Next. Holtz has been great for the Devils so far. dark
Right now, the New Jersey Devils just don’t have many options, especially after shipping out Mackenzie Blackwood for peanuts. Barring something crazy, this is the bed they made for themselves.