3. Jonas Siegenthaler was a flash in the pan
Jonas Siegenthaler was not good last season. That’s the truth. He had a bad season. We can make some easy excuses for him. The system wasn’t best for his skills (more on that later). The injured foot really impacted his movement and decision-making. It seemed like he was tentative and unconfident after the injury. It led to way too many goals against.
We go into next season with Siegenthaler as the clear weak link on this defense. Honestly, that’s pretty fine. We expect Dillon to take his spot on the top line with Hamilton (at least at first). That leaves Siegenthaler playing with either Simon Nemec or Brett Pesce. He’s had a really good stretch with other defensive defensemen in the past, but it makes sense to make Siegs-Nemec the bottom pairing to protect them both and open up opportunities.
We’ve seen two very different versions of Siegenthaler. We’ve seen this uber-confident player who knows passing lanes before the puck is off his opponent’s stick, and then there was the guy from last season. He was constantly out of position, and players did not have to try to hard to get into a good position around the net.
This year cannot be a repeat of last season. The Devils traded John Marino so they removed at least one question mark from the blue line. The one that’s left is Siegenthaler. We do think he’ll bounce back, but we won’t pretend it’s not a risk.