Keefe Chirp A Pivotal Tipping Point For Devils
You’d think being surrounded by the cauldron that is the Toronto hockey media for the previous five seasons would have given Sheldon Keefe an impenetrable shell. The former Maple Leafs Head Coach was trained to parry the firing line of criticisms over every result that didn’t go the team’s way. Had he succumbed to the peppering by popping off on any of his players, it would have become the lead story on the back pages in every city publication.
Maybe it’s because Keefe is now in the relatively tame and lame (from a hockey media perspective) environment of New Jersey, he felt he could get away with singling out an underperformer without causing major reverberations.
We’ll see if it lights a fire under his club without burning down the locker room.
For we can officially move the Devils’ bounce from their trade deadline moves into the short-lived bucket. Saturday’s 3-2 defeat to visiting Ottawa was their third in the last four games, all in regulation.
That’s a troubling trend for a team that is holding on to a playoff seed for dear life. Combined with a Rangers’ victory over Vancouver, New Jersey’s lead dropped back to six points with 11 games remaining. Starting with Monday’s home tilt versus the Canucks, the Devils ( 37-28-6) are slated for five games over eight days, with the ending three games-in-four-nights gauntlet at Winnipeg plus the home-and-home with Minnesota likely to be the most daunting.
No wonder Devils defenseman Johnathan Kovacevic told reporters after Saturday’s missed opportunity to bank points thanks to a soft second period that the team needs to play with a “playoff mentality” down the stretch. Keefe responded, “Kovacevic just needs to play better. That would help.”
Then Keefe stormed off the podium and out of the press room.
Two things can be true simultaneously: Kovacevic, whose game was starting to regress to his mean before signing a 5-year, $20 million contract extension at the March 7 NHL Trade Deadline, a significant raise over the approximately $767,000 he was earning in the final season of his current deal, does indeed need to get back to the shutdown form he exhibited over the season’s first half for the Devils to avoid an epic collapse; and Keefe could have bit his tongue like I’m sure he did to bloody excess during his Toronto days.
Kovacevic was on the ice for eight of the 16 goals the Devils allowed over the last four games, per NaturalStatTrick.com; in the nearly 800 minutes he was paired with Jonas Siegenthaler during the first 55 games before the latter was lost for the season due to a lower-body injury, the Devils were scored on just 17 times at all strengths.
Understand that a large portion of those minutes were high leverage, as in with the second-most defensive zone faceoff starts among any of the league’s defensive pairs and against the NHL’s top lines. Kovacevic’s solid positioning and ability to clear pucks away from danger and out of the zone was what earned him that extension.
Except the last month has seen an inordinate number of poor puck management executions and soft coverages at the net front. Brian Dumoulin, whom Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald acquired at the deadline to ostensibly replace Siegenthaler as Kovacevic’s partner, has been more of a drag on team performance, on the ice for eight goals against at five-on-five in his first eight games in New Jersey, per NST. Over the last four contests, none of the team’s seven defensemen who have seen action posted an expected goals share over Luke Hughes’ 43.7%.
Which is another way of saying that Kovacevic has had plenty of accomplices to the Devils’ recent lackluster efforts. In addition to what Siegenthaler once brought to the back end, the team’s depth has been tested by injuries to All-Star center Jack Hughes and power play quarterback Dougie Hamilton. Keefe’s low faith in his sixth defenseman Simon Nemec/Dennis Cholowski and fourth liners has forced him to shorten his bench from the get-go, a major change in the team’s dynamic from the ideal line-rolling formula.
It hasn’t worked, nor has Keefe’s lineup juggling up front/in-game line blendings. Without Hughes’ game-breaking talents, the Devils have much less margin for error, making every blown scoring chance, defensive zone gaffe, or soft goal against a potential catastrophe. It takes a full 60-minute effort for them to secure valuable points; before Saturday’s second period meltdown, the Devils surrendered four goals in the final frame to turn a comfortable 3-1 lead over Calgary into a 5-3 disaster on Thursday night at The Rock.
The lapses got to Keefe on Saturday. Whereas he could have easily stuck to the time-worn, coach-speak clichés, he went rogue to go after just one of the many culprits.
The Devils can respond in several ways to this latest bout with adversity. Did Keefe just light the fuse to fire his club up and spark a hot streak, or will it be the final straw that sets it ablaze?