Sadly, Never In Doubt: Devils To Miss Playoffs Again
Lost amidst the apathy permeating the franchise, the Devils’ 2021-22 season, despite 15 games still to be played, went out with a whimper with an 8-1 thrashing in Boston on Thursday night.
For the record, the elimination extended a decade-long nightmare where New Jersey has qualified for exactly one playoff series—and won just one playoff GAME—since their surprising run to the 2012 Stanley Cup Final.
And folks, it’s hard to see the corner to turn from here. The tunnel is pitch black. Sure, there were some positive developments, most prominently the leaps taken by young forwards Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt, but the same details that have bitten this team since the end of the Lou Lamoriello era seem to be entrenched. Too young, too lousy in their own end, too inconsistent on the special teams, and, most importantly, too many godawful goaltending outings.
The Athletic did a story on New Jersey’s goaltending conundrum and pointed to a stat called goals allowed above expected. Of course, the Devils ranked last, with a cumulative 36.36 goals allowed above expected, according to moneypuck.com. They then calculated that having average goaltending in those games would have translated into about seven extra wins.
Seems like a lot, right? The problem is that the Devils (24-38-5) are not 14 points out of a playoff seeding in the Eastern Conference. No, they’re currently sitting 31 points behind Washington, the second Wild Card. Ergo, New Jersey’s problems extend far beyond the occupier of the net, though stabilizing the position has to be priority number one for General Manager Tom Fitzgerald this offseason.
Well, after finding a new coach.
Lindy Ruff, who hasn’t had a team (including his three seasons as a Rangers assistant) reach the postseason since 2016 and should have been canned months ago, will likely finish out the year owning the second-worst points percentage in the team’s post-OTL history, ahead of only John MacLean, who lasted 33 games in 2011.
Maybe after John Hynes, the Devils wanted to go with someone with a smoother and more positive stroke. It hasn’t worked either. After the noncompetitive effort in Boston, Ruff said, in typical Ruff-speak, “The group didn’t have a good night.”
You think?
Look, Ruff knows hockey, but the messages aren’t getting through. The same aspects that contribute to loss after loss—most often “puck management”—are recurring issues with no adjustments made to fix them. When things snowball on the ice, he rarely uses a timeout. Case in point: The Devils surrendered six unanswered goals in Thursday’s second period and Ruff waited until it was 7-1 before saying to himself, “Maybe we should talk things over.”
Again, coaching is just one of many areas where this organization is deficient. Fitzgerald also hasn’t been as proactive this season in improving his personnel. When both goalies, Mackenzie Blackwood and Jonathan Bernier, went down with injuries, his external solution was to bring in Jon Gillies, who has been so bad that Ruff has been forcing 21-year old rookie Nico Daws to play both ends of difficult back-to-backs. At the trade deadline two weeks ago, the Devils acquired damaged goods goalie Andrew Hammond, who has been mostly laboring in the AHL since a short-lived turn as “The Hamburglar” in Ottawa during the middle 2010s.
Fitzgerald has also stuck with a group of skaters who were undeserved of such faith. After somewhat hot starts, Pavel Zacha registered five goals in his next 31 games before an upper body injury sent him to the sidelines on March 15 while Andreas Johnsson hasn’t scored a goal in two months. Janne Kuokkanen, who started the season playing alongside Hughes, never really got on track and produced 11 points in 43 games before he too was felled by an injury. On the back end, while Jonas Siegenthaler has played well above expectations, allowing Damon Severson to step up his offensive game, Ty Smith and P.K. Subban have been unmitigated disasters.
With so many guys struggling, where was the accountability? If the Devils really do have all these prospects lighting it up at AHL Utica, why have only few of them been called up, and only for cups of coffee?
Obviously, minor league dominance has never been a guarantor of NHL success, so I’m not suggesting that callups would have been a cure-all, but how about sending a message that production is a prerequisite for ice time?
The Comets’ top three scorers are Fabian Zetterlund, A.J. Greer, and Chase DeLeo, all of whom looked like AAAA players in their brief appearances in Devils uniforms. Even Alexander Holtz, New Jersey’s first-round (No. 7 overall) pick in the 2020 NHL Draft who is among the favorites for AHL Rookie of the Year, did not look NHL ready in his seven-game audition with the big club earlier in the season.
Maybe next season, he will. And then 2021 first-rounder Luke Hughes, Jack’s brother who had an outstanding freshman season as a Michigan defenseman, probably comes the year after that. But by then, will the team be ready to contend? Not as currently constructed.
At some point, Fitzgerald has to take some of these prospects and draft pick assets and make a heck of a hockey trade to bring in difference-makers. While the Devils will break a two-season streak as the team with the most unused salary cap space, they’re still projected to end this season with the eighth-highest total. Remember, this isn’t the NFL, where teams carry that into next season. What are we doing here?
Because again, this all comes back to the question I seemingly ask every year: How long do fans have to wait before this organization puts a professional product on the ice?