Rough Waters For Devils Should Bring End To Ruff’s Reign As Coach
Cue the GIF of the Ted Knight’s character Judge Smails on the 18th green in the classic film Caddyshack: “Well, we’re waiting!”
That would aptly describe the mindset of angry Devils fans who were anticipating the firing of coach Lindy Ruff on Wednesday following an embarrassing 6-1 defeat in Philadelphia the previous evening.
What more does Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald need to see? New Jersey is mired in a 3-9-3 slide, with just one win in its last eight games. Worse, I would count only half of those eight efforts as competitive.
What does Fitzgerald want to blame, injuries/COVID-19 infections? Welcome to professional sports in the 2020s. Yes, the team has been hurt by certain key personnel losses, but not at the volume of last season. You move on as best you can with the next men up. And by the way, what happened to that supposed vaunted prospect pool, the one that has their juggernaut AHL farm club at Utica at 17-1-2?
It’s not been due to an overly difficult schedule either. The Islanders have one win at home all season. Guess who they beat during a stretch where the Devils should have been able to get a little well, with four of their last games coming against bottom-10 teams. New Jersey has gone 1-3-1 in advance of Thursday’s home tilt versus Vegas.
That Ruff will likely be behind the bench then is unfathomable. Fitzgerald is compounding his initial mistake of choosing Ruff over Gerard Gallant prior to last season. I speculated at the time (Devils Blow Head Coaching Search With Lindy Ruff Hire (audacy.com) that familiarity may have played a large part in the decision, as the duo overlapped for four seasons in Florida where Fitzgerald played and Ruff was an assistant coach.
Of course, if you haven’t noticed, Gallant has the Rangers playing a pretty good brand of hockey this season while the Devils continue their neverending rebuild. Whereas the Rangers once struggled keeping pucks out of their net, they’re now seventh in the league in goals against per game. The Devils rank 24th.
Ruff happened to be nominally in charge of the Rangers’ defense for three of those ugly seasons, when my former WFAN colleague Sean Hartnett often bemoaned the sorry state of the defensemen’s development under Ruff’s tutelage. We’re seeing it replay in New Jersey now, especially in the curious case of Ty Smith, a 2018 first-round pick (17th overall) and Calder Trophy contender last season who is playing like one of the worst defensemen in the league this season, according to metrics like expected goals above replacement. Among the 156 NHL defensemen with at least 300 minutes of ice time, only four have a lower expected goals for percentage than Smith’s 42%, according to NaturalStatTrick.com.
Ruff talks a good game in his media press conferences, possibly because there are few, if any, independent journalists covering the team these days, but the product speaks for itself. It’s not just Smith, but almost everyone on the team has been guilty of poor “puck management”, which is Coach-speak for simply giving the puck away to the other team in such a way that it feeds transition opportunities. We’re back to the time when Ray Shero, Fitzgerald’s predecessor and mentor, upon firing then coach John Hynes, lamented that his team couldn’t “make a five-foot pass.”
That’s how discombobulated the Devils look right now. If Jack Hughes or Jesper Bratt isn’t making a high-skilled play, there’s been little sustained offensive pressure.
Which brings me to the Devils inept power play, which has now fallen below tanking Arizona for last place in the league at a 12% conversion rate. In these last 15 games—and I know this is hard to fathom—New Jersey has scored three times on the power play while surrendering four shorthanded goals. Yup, the Devils have been minus with a man advantage.
It's not hard to figure out why. In their bids to set up an angled shot from the left faceoff circle (with a left-handed shooter, no less) there’s too little movement in the offensive zone and then not enough traffic disrupting the goalie/hunting for loose change when the shot is finally unleashed. And since the Devils use a diamond formation with a bumper, any puck that escapes the offensive zone off a wraparound or blocked shot is a golden opportunity for a two-on-one rush against.
Ruff seems to think that this is all fine, that his team has played well in spurts, even if the scoreboards suggest otherwise. Finish a scoring chance here, better puck management there, maybe a save or two in a big spot, and this thing gets turned around.
That’s not happening with this team under this coach. You know, teams that struggle to score find ways to stay in games with a commitment to a more disciplined, albeit more boring, system. Since Hughes returned from his dislocated shoulder that cost him 17 games, Ruff seems to want nothing to do with trying to win games, 2-1. The Devils are 30th in blocked shots per 60 minutes and by my eyes would be rock bottom in giveaways if the league actually tracked every one of them.
What matters most is that at 10-12-5, another season is rapidly slipping away, which would make it nine out of 10 years outside the playoffs. Other than Bratt, the core young players are regressing.
Tom: We’re waiting on you to set a course correction.