With Bottom Six Forwards Struggling, Devils Defensemen Providing Depth Scoring
Devils Head Coach Sheldon Keefe made an excellent point during his postgame press conference following his club’s gritty 4-2 victory over visiting rival Carolina on Friday night.
Whereas I am among the many who have expressed concerns over the Devils’ paltry depth scoring when the top two lines centered by Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier are off the ice or held in check, Keefe astutely noted that such analysis neglects the contributions from his defensemen. He said they should count as “depth scoring.”
He’s right. When you’re playing a heavy pressure team like the Hurricanes, it takes all five skaters on the ice (and sometimes even the goalie, as was the case when Jacob Markstrom’s crisp pass out of the zone initiated the sequence that saw Ondrej Palat tie the game at 1-1 late in the first period) to generate offense. The defensemen are an integral part of everything from the transitions all the way to getting shots through clogged lanes. And you’d better be quick about it or else the Hurricanes will be right on top of you looking for opportunities to go the other way.
New Jersey’s d-men came through on Friday, generating five points. That pushed their total to 81 on the season, which ranks fifth in the league, according to StatMuse.com.
Much of the surge has come from the growth of second-year defenseman Luke Hughes, whose “chef’s kiss” stretch pass sent Stefan Noesen and Nico Hischier on a two-on-one that was finished by Hischier for a 2-1 Devils lead 42 seconds after Palat’s aforementioned deflection of defenseman Jonathan Kovacevic top of the slot wrister. Then four minutes after Carolina d-man Brent Burns tied the game early in the second period, Hughes jumped into the left faceoff circle to deposit the rebound of his partner Brett Pesce’s right point shot past Carolina goalie Pyotr Kochetkov.
Hughes, 21, had a rough start to the season, first missing all of training camp and then the first nine games due to an offseason shoulder injury. He then went through 13 games with just two assists to show for it. Since November 23, however, he is tied for fourth among NHL defensemen in scoring, with three goals and 12 assists in 16 games. More recently, Hughes has produced two goals and six assists over his last six games during which New Jersey has gone 5-1.
Hughes’ elite skating and puck possession ability in the offensive zone has given Pesce, a more traditional stay-at-home type of defenseman whom the Devils signed as a free agent last summer, opportunities to join in on the attack as well. Pesce’s timeline mirrored that of Hughes, as a broken foot suffered while playing for Carolina in the playoffs kept him off the ice until Game 10. Pesce then went pointless until November 30; he has since registered six points over those 12 games.
In that same span, New Jersey boasts three defensemen in the top 42 in the league in points per 60 minutes…and none of them are named Dougie Hamilton, the quarterback with a howitzer shot on the Devils’ potent power play. Hamilton’s physical sidekick Brenden Dillon somehow has managed a goal and four assists in this period to enter this conversation.
No worries, because Hamilton, a 22-goal scorer two seasons ago, has a high probability of regaining his form from earlier in the season when he blasted five goals, four with a man advantage, and added 16 assists during the Devils’ first 28 games. That 2.185 points per 60 minutes was good for ninth among NHL defensemen in that opening stretch.
The Jonas Siegenthaler/Kovacevic pairing is the only one where offensive contributions are considered bonuses. That’s because they’re primarily heralded for their ability to shut down the opposition’s top scoring lines. And they happen to be very good at it—per NaturalStatTrick.com, the duo sports the fifth highest goals for percentage among the 71pairs that have played at least 200 minutes together this season.
The Devils’ defense as a whole has been excellent in the art of shot suppression as of late—the Hurricanes were the first opponent to not only exceed 20 shots on goal since seven games ago on December 8, they were also the first club to outshoot New Jersey since December 2, ending a run of nine consecutive games of puck possession dominance.
Before Friday’s triumph, Keefe was worried that the three-day Holiday layoff would pull the plug on his club’s impressive track. The team seemed to have every situation accounted for in all three zones at any strength. And boy did the Hurricanes test them, since it took several ten-bell Markstrom saves and diverse scoring to come away with the win.
New Jersey (24-11-3) will now hit the road for six straight games, starting on Saturday night with a rematch at Carolina. While it would be nice to get the bottom six going during this stretch, having multiple defensemen who can step up to produce points is an underrated advantage.