Devils Playoff Preview: New Jersey Better Have A Shallow Learning Curve To Match Rival Rangers
No matter what happens in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it won’t take away from the significance of the Devils’ historic regular season. New Jersey (52.22-8) not only set franchise records for most wins and points in a season, they now own the NHL’s largest one-season turnaround after improving by 49 points over their dreadful 2021-22 campaign, when they sported the league’s fifth-worst record.
Still, there will obviously be a great deal of disappointment if the Devils are knocked out in the best-of-seven first round series by their bitter rival Rangers. Unfortunately, playoff hockey is rife with unpredictability, as many games are decided by a single goal (or one plus an empty netter). Besides, even if the Devils were gifted first place in the Metropolitan Division by virtue of a Carolina loss in the finale, it’s not like the Wild Card Panthers would have been an easy out either. Florida took two of their three regular season meetings.
As for the Battle of the Hudson Part VII, which commences on Tuesday at Prudential Center, the two clubs are too evenly matched to warrant a decisive prediction. For all the magnificence of New Jersey’s regular season, New York (47-22-13) finished just five points behind. The difference was in overtime outcomes, where the Devils’ 11-4 mark trounced the Rangers’ 6-10.
Of course, playoff overtime isn’t three-on-three, so you can throw that out the window along with the Devils’ 3-1 record over the Rangers during the regular season. Instead, this series will probably come down to the usual suspects—special teams and, perhaps most importantly, goaltending.
On paper, it would seem that the Rangers have a huge edge in net, with Igor Shesterkin posting the league’s eighth-highest goals saved above expected, per NaturalStatTrick.com, and 11th-best save percentage (minimum 15 games) this season. He was scorching hot during New Yok’s 20-game playoff run a year ago. Meanwhile, New Jersey’s No. 1 Vitek Vanecek, who has all of three playoff starts on his career resume, ranked 15th and 22nd, respectively, in the above categories. He’s been everything the Devils could have hoped for and more since last summer’s trade with Washington, but he’ll need to show he can perform under the brightest of spotlights.
For it will be the team that can most efficiently finish off their opportunities that takes the series. That could mean on the power play, in transition, or the simple puck luck of redirections.
Though the Rangers overall team shooting percentage was only 0.4% higher than the Devils this season, they are the more dangerous team when it comes to converting prime scoring chances, per NST. As Devils Head Coach Lindy Riff once said, “(The Rangers) have got some shooters that probably don’t need as many chances as we need.”
That applies to the specialty teams as well, where the Devils still employ a pair of players on the flank in Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt who are not as adept at one-time bombs as New York’s Mika Zibanejad from the so-called ‘Ovi-zoid” (though Devils defenseman Dougie Hamilton is a weapon at the top of the diamond power play).
Zibanejad and Chris Kreider are also potent when killing penalties, with four shorthanded goals when on the ice together for nearly 120 minutes. In New Jersey’s formation, with four forwards and one defenseman (like nearly every team), they are vulnerable to two-on-one counterattacks when either of the flanks can’t hold the offensive zone. It wouldn’t be shocking if the Devils surrendered a pivotal shorthanded goal during this series.
Both clubs like to play up-tempo, high-pressure hockey, which means we should expect to see loads of the euphemistic “puck management” errors. I don’t trust NHL.com’s “giveaway/takeaway” numbers, which show the Rangers as the second-most gracious club in the league this season (the Devils had the 12th-most giveaways), but both fan bases will probably attest to their teams’ failures to get pucks out of their zone at various points.
The Rangers will concentrate their attention on Hughes, who should be in the conversation as one of the three finalists for the NHL’s Hart Trophy this season based on his franchise-record 99-point campaign. He recorded four goals and two assists in the four regular season meetings.
Hughes will need a shallow learning curve when it comes to navigating his way through playoff checking intensity. One of the traits that made him special besides the obvious elite skating and skill was that, despite his high giveaway rate, which comes with the territory when you carry the puck a ton—most of the top 15 in the category per NHL.com are All-Stars—he was a hound in trying to win pucks back.
We’ll have to see how Hughes responds to the increased physicality of the postseason. While I wouldn’t call the Rangers an exceptionally heavy team up front, many of their top players are willing battlers along the walls and will finish their checks.
Plus New York has that playoff experience. They understand what it takes. The Devils, on the other hand, may have brought in a few players last summer like Ondrej Palat, Erik Haula, and John Marino who have been through the wars, but many will either be going through this for the first time or, like Vanecek and the foursome (Bratt, Nico Hischier, Damon Severson, and Miles Wood) who were around for the last Devils playoff appearance in 2018, have very little to draw upon.
In the end, that’s what I think will tip the scale.
Prediction: Rangers in 6