Playing Hughes On The Right Has Been So Wrong For The Devils
On January 25, the Devils claimed right-handed defenseman Nick DiSimone off waivers from Calgary, presumably for emergency purposes.
Who knows, maybe one will pop up.
In case you couldn’t tell, that was meant to be sarcastic, because the Devils went into Washington on Tuesday without their top two right-handed defenseman—Dougie Hamilton has been on injured reserve since the end of November with a torn pectoral muscle that required surgery while John Marino was out sick.
So how did Head Coach Lindy Ruff address the issue in a crucial Metropolitan Division contest? He moved 20-year old rookie Luke Hughes from his natural left side so he could be paired with Brendan Smith, a duo that didn’t work earlier in the season and didn’t work on Tuesday in New Jersey’s 6-2 defeat.
Now, I’m not proclaiming that DiSimone would have saved the Devils’ bacon on Tuesday—this is a 29-year old career minor leaguer who has all of one goal and four assists over 27 games in the bigs. But New Jersey is paying him more than twice what he would make in the AHL (if he cleared waivers again) and he’s yet to even step foot on the ice in a Devils game since his acquisition. If not Tuesday, then when?
Instead, the Hughes/Smith pair started the game and promptly got scored on just 39 seconds in. Both defensemen seemed to lose their bearings as Connor McMichael was left unattended at the doorstep of Devils goalie Nico Daws and buried a rebound.
For Hughes, who has been positioned almost exclusively on the left side since the recall of fellow rookie Simon Nemec following the Hamilton injury, it was the sort of play one might expect can happen to such a young defenseman. Smith, however, had no such excuse for skating right past the front of the net instead of stopping to play a potentially dangerous puck—he’s a 13-year veteran.
I get that Smith had a goal and an assist in Saturday’s memorable 6-3 victory over Philadelphia in the raucous elements of MetLife Stadium, so maybe he deserved another lineup nod despite his posting of the lowest expected goals for percentage of any Devils defenseman (10 games minimum) at five-on-five this season—in fact, he’s the only one under 50% (all stats courtesy of NaturalStatTrick.com). The “hot hand theory” is tough for coaches in any sport to ignore.
Still, avoiding messing with Hughes’ growth should have been the higher priority. The Devils’ No. 4 overall pick in the 2021 NHL Entry Draft may have flipped sides often as a college stud at the University of Michigan, but this is a different ballgame. The opposing players are quicker getting onto pucks, the battles are tougher, and passing/skating lanes shut down in the blink of an eye.
Hughes has had to learn all of this on the fly since his arrival in New Jersey days after last season’s NCAA Tournament defeat. He had all of 59 games of NHL experience, including three playoff games, under his belt heading Tuesday’s contest.
And no matter what Ruff will say, playing on his stronger left side has mattered. Just look at this season’s five-on-five stats, per NST:
Expected goals for (left): 57%
Expected goals for: (right): 47%
Actual goals for/against (left): 30-24
Actual goals for/against (left): 16-21
High danger chances (left): 53%
High danger chances (right): 44%
In layman’s terms, Hughes has played like a top-10 NHL defenseman on the left side and a bottom-20 d-man on the right, as measured by NST’s stat rankings of the 179 players at the position who have logged at least 500 minutes this season.
Of course, nearly two-thirds of Hughes’ right side minutes have come with Smith as his partner. They account for a 12-2 negative margin of the actual goals deficit and the pairing owns a lousy 38% expected goals for percentage. On Tuesday, NST recorded them playing just 1:07 together, yet the Caps scored twice against them.
It’s not like Hughes fared that much better with fellow lefty Jonas Siegenthaler in his first game back from a broken left foot that cost him 16 games either. In the small sample size of the 16:47 pairing at five-on-five, the Devils posted a 44% expected goals for percentage and surrendered another goal.
This was a game where the Devils outshot Washington, 39-26, though the higher shot quality metrics were much closer. That means Daws also could have been a lot better—he was dinged by NST with a minus-2.8 goals saved above average for the night.
But as it relates to the Devils’ performance in front of their goaltender, which had been much improved since the All-Star break until Tuesday, it’s on Ruff to tweak his pairs properly when players rotate in and out of the lineup.
So imagine my horror when I saw the Devils’ social media post of their lines at Wednesday’s practice in preparation for another tough home affair versus the Metro-leading Rangers: With Marino missing in action again, DiSimone was still an extra, though Smith was lined up with another erratic lefty in Kevin Bahl while Hughes skated with Nemec, a pairing that has been killing it this season (small sample size disclaimer of 64 total minutes of five-on-five ice time). The potential of high Draft picks Hughes and Nemec actually playing together against the Rangers might have Devils fans drooling, but what of the other 40 minutes or so of ice time that doesn’t include New Jersey’s best puck movers?
It made me both pray for Marino’s swift return to action and wonder why in the world DiSimone is taking up a precious spot on the Devils’ 23-man roster.