Devils Get A Glimpse Of What Could Have Been With NHL-Level Goaltending During Five-Game Road Trip
What Does Zacha Do Here?
This Devils season was lost long ago, doomed by a glut of absences due to injuries/COVID-19 protocols, poor coaching, and horrid executions in all three zones.
The area where all three of those obstacles intersected the most was in New Jersey’s net. Injuries took out goalies 1A (Mackenzie Blackwood) and 1B (Jonathan Bernier) for the vast majority of the season and left coach Lindy Ruff to choose among a slew of sieves. Nico Daws has seemed like a literal savior in comparison, winning 10 of his 23 starts, but let’s not get too excited. His minus-5.13 goals saved above average prior to the Devils’ just-completed five-game road trip ranked a mere 54th among 68 NHL netminders (minimum 10 games played), per NaturalStatTrick.com, which is what you’d expect from a 21-year old rookie thrown to the wolves.
Still, Devils fans just got a glimpse of what could have been, as the team jetted home with seven of a possible ten points (3-1-1) following a 3-2 victory in Vegas on Monday night. New Jersey’s goalies posted the league’s fifth-best 2.20 goals against average and seventh-highest .926 save percentage in that stretch played entirely without star center Jack Hughes and underrated veteran defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler.
Daws and newly-acquired Andrew Hammond split the goaltending duties, with Daws notably brilliant in the 3-1 triumph over Dallas to open the trip while Hammond reverted back to his “Hamburglar” days from seven years ago while with Ottawa in stealing the Vegas game.
Both of those opponents were, or should have been, in desperation mode with the regular season winding down. The Devils, in contrast, were playing for next season, with five rookies among the 18 skaters in the lineup, including a couple (wing Fabian Zetterlund and defenseman Kevin Bahl) recently called up to audition. When Ryan Graves was wounded in the chin by a skate during the 3-1 loss in Colorado and was forced to miss the last two games, it left the Devils’ back line awfully thin and young.
Fortunately, the goalies stepped up, limiting those “Are you kidding me?” goals against that you’d expect an NHLer to save but too often eluded New Jersey’s keepers this season. Daws and Hammond were, for the most part, savvy in their positioning and competent in their rebound control. Sure, there was luck involved, especially when Vegas missed the net 23 times (with another 24 shots blocked) in 91 shot attempts on Monday.
The point, however, is that this season saw too many games where the Devils did not receive even league-average goaltending. According to moneypuck.com, New Jersey has posted the NHL’s second-worst goals against above expected (50.86) this season. That has translated into about 9 or 10 fewer wins, which wouldn’t have put the team back in the playoff hunt, but it sure would have given management a better understanding of what really needs to be addressed this offseason.
Instead, the results from the road trip should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. Until we know for sure that this team has fixed its goaltending consistency issue, it can’t be taken seriously.
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There’s a scene from the hysterical film “Office Space” where an exacerbated outside consultant is so fed up with the uselessness of one of the firm’s employees that he just blurts out to him, “What would you say you do here?”
That’s how Devils fans are feeling about forward Pavel Zacha these days. The No. 6 overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft has been mostly invisible on the ice since around Thanksgiving, recording just six goals and 13 assists in his last 47 games. He’s been a drag on the power play in Hughes’ spot, one of the reasons why New Jersey is 0-for-25 with the man advantage since netting one against Montreal 11 games ago.
Zacha is constantly turning the puck over and too often gives only token efforts in his attempts to win it back. His egregious penalty with a cross-check of Seattle rookie Matty Beniers after getting beat to the front of New Jersey’s net in the latter stages of overtime summed up Zacha’s recent play in a nutshell.
Yet Ruff keeps trudging him out there on the ice, giving him top-six minutes and a slot on PP1. Why?
The advanced stats seem to love Zacha, as he’s only behind Jesper Bratt among Devils forwards in five-on-five Corsi percentage. However, it hasn’t translated into nearly enough production.
Zacha is a pending restricted free agent, so maybe the Devils are trying to pump up his trade value for the coming offseason after failing to deal him prior to last month’s deadline.
It doesn’t seem to be working. At this point, Devils fans would be fine if were traded for scraps—anything so that he won’t be on the roster next season. Let some other team try to figure out what he actually does on the ice.
why does it feel like goalie is a constant issue for this team for the past 5 years? Is it this difficult to develop or at least sign an average one in free agency?