The New Jersey Devils are an excellent team. Their process, at 5v5, has statistically been among the very best in the league, and the results of late have followed suit, with the Devils having won five of their last six games and seven of their last nine. All of those wins have come in dominating fashion, with only one truly ugly loss occurring in the second half of a brutally-distanced back-to-back.
To boot, they finally have competent goaltending thanks to Connor Hellebuyck's addition to the crew, and their finishing woes seem to be subsiding for the most part.
The one part of their game that has lagged in starting the campaign has been their power play, which is now operating at a 16.7% conversion rate, good for 25th in the National Hockey League. For a team with the level of talent New Jersey has on their first unit -- Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, Luke Evangelista, and Luke Hughes -- this is a surprising-at-best outcome thus far through the campaign. Heck, their second unit -- Timo Meier, Arseny Gritsyuk, Evan Rodrigues, Anthony Mantha, and Dougie Hamilton -- could likely give a couple of teams' first units a run for their money from a talent perspective. Still, they remain in the bottom quadrant of the league.
The New Jersey Devils power play is about to explode
The good news is that, much like there was at 5v5 to begin the campaign, there are signs that positive regression is due, and that the goals will come eventually. Right now, the Devils rank 11th in the league in terms of generating expected goals (xG) per 60 minutes, at 8.4, tied with or ahead of top power-play teams like the Utah Mammoth (8.4 xGF/60 but 2nd in the NHL in conversion rate) and the Nashville Predators (7.4 xGF/60 but 3rd in conversion rate). In theory, this alone should manifest into more goals on the man advantage over time.
The reason for this disparity between expected results and actual results is simple: shooters have had poor luck so far. The Devils' power play is currently shooting just 9.7%, which is third-worst in the league behind only the Montreal Canadiens (7.3%) and the Columbus Blue Jackets (8.7%). The Devils' players are, simply put, more talented than the vast majority of teams shooting at higher clips than them, which again should only result in the goals normalizing compared to the chances they are creating.
"Trust the process" was the mantra for the team as a whole over the first handful of games, and that worked out well. The same ideology is likely a good choice to apply to the power play as well.
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