Devils Hoping To Reconnect With Speed Game In New Year
As the Devils head into their Christmas break following Saturday’s 3-2 victory over visiting Detroit, I hope they made sure to ask Santa for one special gift that will uplift their spirits heading into their playoff push. Like when The Flash is in peril, New Jersey (17-13-2) is in dire need of being reconnected with their speed force to have any shot at jumping into the playoff picture.
Either that or they can request an identity change into a more cerebral power, like a bunch of Batmans. For the underachieving Devils have looked nothing like the flying dervishes that had opponents eating ice chips all last season.
For a change, this post won’t inundate you with numbers, since Jack Hughes can create a one-man “rush chance” out of thin air (and Jesper Bratt is an underrated magician in that respect as well). No, this is purely eye test, and there have been plenty of games, especially home games, where Devils fans have been moved to avert them.
On paper, the Devils appeared to be superior to the group that set a franchise record for points and were a top-five team in all of NaturalStatTrick.com’s puck possession metrics at five-on-five last season. But the games aren’t played on paper, and while there have been some nights where the Devils have been on their “A” game, there have been too many others where Head Coach Lindy Ruff has had to excoriate their skating, such as after New Jersey’s 6-3 loss to visiting Edmonton where the Devils failed to draw a single power play.
That shouldn’t happen—and can’t in Ruff’s aggressive system. The speed game works in both directions, and the Devils have been too often caught failing to backtrack (or not matching up properly off an opponent zone entry) on transitions.
Though the club’s goaltending issues can be the subject of an entire thesis, it doesn’t entirely explain away why the Devils have been so inconsistent this season. A team with this much firepower up front this season should be more fun to watch, not less.
You take Tyler Toffoli and a full season of Timo Meier over guys like Jesper Boqvist, Miles Wood, Tomas Tatar, and Fabian Zetterlund every day of the week. They’re both elite NHL goal scorers, not bottom-six types. But let’s not gloss over the reduction in pace that has ensued up-and-down the lineup from these changes.
With Bratt moved to Hughes’ line, Ruff’s “peanut butter and jelly” combo, it left Nico Hischier centering a second line with the more lumbering Ondrej Palat and Curtis Lazar on Line 2 for Saturday night’s affair. That trio was New Jersey’s worst, according to NST’s expected goals for percentage.
The experienced Palat might be a guy you want to have around come playoff time and Lazar is your stereotypical mucker to play on a heavy line that eats up clock with cycles in the offensive zone for 30 seconds. Playing them with Hischier, however, is a waste of the captain’s considerable talents.
The good news is that Meier seems to be getting his legs back after an undisclosed lower body injury cost him seven games. He had gone pointless in the nine games following his return but has potted three goals in his last two games, including a pair on Saturday night.
Fans have been irrationally exuberant over Meier before, or rather ever since he was acquired at the 2023 NHL trade deadline from San Jose, only to become between somewhat and massively disappointed. In fairness, he has received more high-danger scoring chances at five-on-five than Toffoli has despite nearly 90 minutes less ice time. Maybe being “snakebitten” is a real thing.
Even Ruff admitted that Meier’s injury impacted his skating. As for the others not named Hughes or Bratt, well, this may be who they are. The dynamism just isn’t the same.
It hasn’t helped that the Devils were forced to turn to a more youthful defense corps for salary cap management purposes, or that top pair d-man Dougie Hamilton tore his left pectoral muscle in Game 20 and is likely out for the remainder of the regular season. There was no way the organization could have justified paying Damon Severson the $6.25 million AAV he got from Columbus to play third pair minutes, but his puck-moving ability to jumpstart counterattacks as perhaps the best stretch passer in the NHL has been sorely missed.
As such, the ice time burden has fallen heavily on rookies Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec and 23-year old Kevin Bahl. All three have shared many difficult moments ending plays in the defensive zone and/or then making the right decisions upon puck retrieval.
Under Ruff, the defensemen are encouraged to play aggressively, and that’s not limited to joining the rushes. They’ll pinch or move in to all the way behind the net. In the neutral zone, they’re supposed to maintain tight gaps to throttle counters.
In all cases, the defensemen must rely on their forwards as cover. When the team isn’t skating at the highest level, such tactics can be exposed. How many times have we seen Brendan Smith get caught up ice this season? I can’t think of any situation where I’ve been glad Smith has been involved with the puck on his stick, so we all end up thinking, “What’s he doing?” A probable answer is, “What he’s been coached to do.” It’s incalculable how much Hughes’ development has been stunted by having to play with Smith for 167 minutes at five-on-five this season, during which the Devils have been outscored, 9-2, per NST.
Which is why I am grateful that Ruff finally allowed Marino to be paired with Hughes instead of Bahl—the early results have been promising, even though the duo was a bit lax on Detroit’s opening goal. You combine Marino’s solid defensive positioning with Hughes’ exceptional skating and you should have a pairing that could be trusted to play heavy minutes.
The struggles in their own zone has hindered New Jersey’s ability to get to whatever speed game remains in their arsenal. The question for Ruff to ponder over his holiday spirits, then, is whether he really has the personnel to play the style that made him so successful last season.