The New Jersey Devils continue to spin their wheels.
After putting forth a solid performance in a 5-1 victory over bottom-feeding Detroit, the Devils were home again on Tuesday in a really good position to build on it.
They were taking on a struggling Minnesota Wild team that entered play with nine wins in 24 games. Minnesota was also in the latter half of a road back-to-back and playing their fourth game in six nights. That’s essentially as big of a schedule loss as you’ll see in today’s NHL.
Yet, as has so often been the case, the Devils came up lame and failed to take advantage.
Not only did they lose, but they looked lifeless while doing it. They generated just two Grade A chances at 5v5 over the first two periods of play.
The 3rd period was a little better, however, the Devils still didn’t do nearly enough to test Kaapo Kahkonen. Forget about the shot total (34); very few were remotely dangerous.
Not to take the players in the lineup off the hook – even the skill guys were really sloppy – but the Devils got what they asked for with that lineup construction.
With all due respect to Brett Seney, who seems like a good, hard-working kid, I’m not sure what business he has playing L3 for an NHL team right now. He has five goals and 50 shots in 53 NHL games. He’s not going to produce, and I don’t think he’s a plus-defender either.
His presence doesn’t combo with Travis Zajac to make it a defensive line, and he certainly isn’t going to help Nikita Gusev turn it into a dynamic offensive unit. The line as a whole struggled but, with him on it, I didn’t really see a path to success.
Going back to John Hayden on the 4th line took away any hope of getting offense from that unit as well.
The Devils entered play with two lines that, on paper, you’d expect to get production out of, and one of them (Taylor Hall, Nico Hischier, and Kyle Palmieri) has been noticeably struggling for a while.
Rather than dressing all the speedy, skilled players at their disposal – like Jesper Bratt – the Devils elected to go with more of a gritty lineup to play exactly the way Minnesota wants to play.
Not only are they built for slower, low-event hockey, but that style makes it easier for a fatigued team to keep up. It just didn’t make sense to me.
I’m not saying the Devils would have won 10-0 with a couple lineup changes, but tell me a top top-12 like this doesn’t make more sense when trying to spark the offense and force a fatigued team out of its comfort zone:
Taylor Hall - Jack Hughes - Kyle Palmieri Jesper Boqvist - Nico Hischier - Jesper Bratt Blake Coleman - Travis Zajac - Nikita Gusev Miles Wood - Pavel Zacha - Wayne Simmonds
Again, I’m not putting this all on coaching decisions. The players in the lineup still underperformed. But I think the Devils’ best chance at victory would have been dressing all their skill guys and trying to play a way their personnel is suited to play.
Instead, they elected to go with the low-event style Minnesota is much better at playing – and has enjoyed success doing so for years.
Now, the Devils remain at eight wins through 23 games.
Despite adding Jack Hughes, Jesper Boqvist, Nikita Gusev, Wayne Simmonds and P.K. Subban, while losing nobody of note, this year’s team is garnering the same kind of results as last year’s. Perhaps worse.
That can’t be acceptable.
Numbers via NaturalStatTrick.com Recent Posts On tweaking the top line, more run for Bratt, and Vatanen’s PP play