The New Jersey Devils have allowed a combined 13 goals in their last two losses, and head coach Sheldon Keefe isn't the least bit happy with the way his team has been performing to finish the first month of the 2025-26 season.
They've earned some grace coming off an impressively dominant eight-game win streak, but complacency is death in the NHL, and Keefe knows it.
“That was not it. That’s not the way you can work, compete, and the urgency you need to have defensively. You cannot win in the National Hockey League with that as the baseline. That’s unacceptable, and once again you get what you deserve," Keefe was quoted as saying by Devils team reporter Amanda Stein after a 5-2 loss to the lowly San Jose Sharks on Thursday night.
"Some things defensively have been creeping in and have been there not just throughout the start of the season," said Keefe. "And that’s individuals. If we want to be a serious hockey team, we’ve got to do these things better or we don’t have a chance to compete with the best.”
Issues facing the Devils are nothing new
The problem, unfortunately, is that this was a trend in Keefe's first season with the Devils last year, too.
The Devils were one of the most dominant, suffocating teams to play against heading into the New Year, and Jacob Markstrom was playing lights-out in goal.
Then, after the break, the Devils fell flat and looked incohesive, and things never recovered after the 4 Nations Face-Off break. Markstrom, Dougie Hamilton, and Jack Hughes all suffered injuries, and the Devils went out with a whimper in the playoffs, losing to the Metropolitan Division rival Carolina Hurricanes in five games.
So far, the Devils have been one of the teams to beat early in the 2025-26 season, but they've quickly fallen off a cliff in the wake of injuries to center Cody Glass and defenseman Brett Pesce. With the holidays rapidly approaching, this Devils team is going to have to decide who they are and what they want to be, or risk producing more of the same mundane, low-ceiling results.