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The New Jersey Devils are full of surprises – and not the pleasant kind.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, they dug deep into their bag of tricks and managed to hit new lows.
They were blown out, 4-0, by their biggest rivals on Saturday in what was probably the most disappointing loss of the season.
Despite having seven power plays, including a five-minute major, against a Rangers team that has struggled on the PK all season long, the Devils failed to convert and allowed two short-handed goals. Inexcusable.
Somehow, someway, things were worse Monday night in Buffalo.
After a scorching hot start, the wheels completely fell off the Sabres. They entered last night’s game on a 3-8-3 run, good for last in the NHL since the 27th of October. You certainly wouldn’t have known it.
They skated circles around the Devils and capitalized on each and every breakdown to the point where they led by *double checks notes* five goals after 20 minutes of play.
Buffalo went on to win 7-1, putting them up 14-3 over the Devils on aggregate this season.
As a result of last night’s debacle, the Devils own a 9-13-4 record. They’ve won nine times in 26 games (34%) and have a -31 goal differential.
Only Detroit, a team in a full-fledged rebuild and happily embracing all the losses coming their way, has fared worse than New Jersey this season.
To me, there are two ways you can choose to view the state of the team:
1) GM Ray Shero did a horrible job building the roster and they are where they’re supposed to be – contending for the 1st overall pick;
2) The coaching staff is not coming close to maximizing the talent on hand.
I’m going with the latter. Allow me to explain.
To start, it’s worth noting John Hynes and his staff legitimately squeezed more out of the 2018-19 Devils team that was severely lacking in talent.
Through 26 games last year’s Devils had the same amount of wins, albeit one more came in regulation, and fared much better at 5v5. They actually generated more shots and chances than they allowed, even if the scoreboard didn’t always show it.
That’s not exactly the case this season.
The 2018-19 Devils had J.S. Dea, Stefan Noesen, Joey Anderson, Brett Seney, and Ben Lovejoy playing frequently. Not one of those guys are holding full-time NHL jobs this season.
Replacing that underwhelming cast of characters on this year’s team are the likes of Jack Hughes, Nikita Gusev, Jesper Boqvist, Wayne Simmonds and P.K Subban. Even with the latter two players on the wrong side of their primes, that is a significant talent upgrade and yet no dividends have been paid.
Making the optics even worse: other coaches are leading teams with less talent to more wins.
Nick Paul and Connor Brown are Ottawa’s two most utilized forwards (5v5) on a per game basis. Nikita Zaitsev routinely plays on their top pairing. They have 11 wins.
Alex Iafallo plays on LA’s top line. Mike Amadio is their 2C. Their top-6 defenders are Drew Doughty, Sean Walker, Alec Martinez, Ben Hutton, Joakim Ryan and Matt Roy. Only Detroit has a worse team save percentage. 11 wins.
Columbus lost Artemi Panarin, Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel and Sergei Bobrovsky in the off-season. They did little to replace them and are trotting out a Joonas Korpisalo/Elvis Merzlikins goaltending tandem. 11 wins.
By now you get the point. The Devils don’t have Joe from the corner store playing top line wing or centering the 2nd line and they’re garnering *worse* results than teams that do.
I’m not saying the roster is perfect – they don’t have an established starter, which is kind of important – but these kinds of results simply can’t be justified.
That the team looks so lifeless and disorganized while piling up the losses only makes things worse.
At some point, something has to change. We’re quickly approaching it.
Numbers via NaturalStatTrick.com
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