Time For Devils Kids To Grow Up; Vets To Put Up Or Move Out Of Lineup
The Devils open up their six-game preseason slate on Wednesday night in Washington in what will be our first look at how coach Lindy Ruff plans to accelerate what has basically been a 10-year rebuilding plan.
Since their run to the 2012 Stanley Cup Final, the Devils have won exactly one playoff game in its sole postseason appearance in 2018. In this wretched stretch, their many bottom-tier finishes in the standings have helped the organization stock their system with prospects, including a pair of first-overall draft picks in centers Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes.
This season, Devils fans should be demanding that this team finally starts to show signs of growing up.
To help turn around a losing culture, general manager Tom Fitzgerald was active in the offseason, highlighted by the big-money free agent acquisition of top-pair defenseman Dougie Hamilton. Adding size to this team seems to be a priority since Fitzgerald took over for Ray Shero in 2020, but it should be noted that he also pounced on the opportunity to reel in a five-time 20-goal scorer in Tomas Tatar in free agency as well.
With all this new blood, there should be plenty of competition for lineup slots this preseason, which is a good thing for a team that has had accountability issues in the past. We shall see if the young players in training camp, some of whom (Nolan Foote, Marian Studenic, and Kevin Bahl) got their first taste of NHL action last season, are hungry enough to warrant full-time promotions to The Show or if they will best be served by continuing their development at AHL Utica.
On the other end of the ledger, the Devils housed several veterans who looked like they didn’t belong in the NHL last season. Some of them are still here and are on one-way contracts, but that doesn’t mean Ruff has to play them. In an ideal world, if Ruff were to prepare his lineup on a pure performance-based model, here are two such veterans who should be, for lack of a better phrase, on thin ice, and the kids who could conceivably step in to supplant them with impactful preseason efforts:
Andreas Johnsson/Dawson Mercer
Mea culpa from me for predicting at the start of last season that Johnsson would finish second on the team in goals. I was only off by 10 places.
I know there are all these analytic experts pointing to metrics that show that Johnsson was this great driver of 5-on-5 play last season despite his mere 5 goals and 6 assists in 50 games, but I would argue that a large chunk of his positive possession numbers was attributable to playing with Hughes for 244 minutes, according to NaturalStatTrick.com. For the most part, Johnsson was just another guy on the ice, only noticeable when he was muffing a scoring chance.
In addition to the youngsters mentioned above, Fitzgerald brought in some veterans on professional tryout contracts who could easily fill Johnsson’s role. Jimmy Vesey in particular looks like an upgrade from watching the intrasquad scrimmages the last few days, though Johnsson did pot one himself during Tuesday’s contest.
Rather than Vesey, who will make a fine extra forward, I’m keeping my eye on Dawson Mercer this preseason. From the initial impressions at the Prospect Challenge in Buffalo earlier this month and the scrimmages, the Devils appear to have something in their second first-round pick (18th overall) from the 2020 NHL Draft.. The puck just seems to find its way to this kid’s stick.
I’m sure there will be discussions about whether to give Mercer top-line plus special teams minutes down on the farm, especially since Ruff seems committed to having Pavel Zacha and Michael McLeod as his bottom-six centers, which is Mercer’s natural position. However, the Devils oddly could go into the season without a single right-handed winger on its 23-man roster, which opens the door for the righty Mercer should he be able to continue coming up with loose pucks along the walls when facing men in the preseason.
The larger point is that Johnsson shouldn’t be guaranteed a lineup spot if he isn’t bringing anything to the table, so let the best man win it.
P.K. Subban/Reilly Walsh
In his first two Devils campaigns on the back line, it wouldn’t have been fair to have expected Subban to replicate his elite offensive production from his days as a Norris Trophy candidate after a hard 10 seasons in the league. That he only contributed 37 points in 112 games in New Jersey isn’t why he’s on this list.
No, it’s on the other end of the ice where Subban has been conspicuously deficient. Besides the giveaways (17th most per 60 minutes among 156 defensemen who played at least 40 games last season, per NHL.com) and the ineffectiveness in front of the Devils’ net (134th on the same list of defensemen in blocked shots per 60 minutes and countless failures in simple net-front coverage), I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an NHL player lose his edge while performing perfunctory maneuvers as often as Subban.
The good news is that with the Hamilton signing pushing Damon Severson to a more suitable second-pair role on the right side, Subban can be relegated to third-pair minutes. Still, the gaffes have got to stop.
Fitzgerald traded wing Nick Merkley to San Jose for Christian Jaros this offseason, but I figured that was done with the intention of using Jaros as a swing seventh Devils/Utica defenseman. No, the player to watch this preseason is Reilly Walsh, a 2017 third-round pick who played three seasons at Harvard before signing his entry level contract last season. Walsh, who then put up 15 points in 33 games with AHL Binghamton last season, could use more development in his defensive game but can replicate a lot of what Subban does in moving the puck.
Walsh did cough one up in Subban-like fashion that led to a Sabres transition goal in the Devils’ first game at the Prospect Challenge but he has been solid since. Again, Walsh would likely get plenty of ice time, including power play minutes, should he be shipped off to Utica, but the determining factor for Ruff really should be who gives the Devils the best chance to win games.
As it should be for all his decisions. The fan base is growing tired of waiting for next year.