Early Takeaways From Two Devils Preseason Games

The New Jersey Devils have two preseason games under their belts. What can we take away from them?

Preseason hockey is weird.

On one hand, the games ultimately mean nothing. Two teams play something that resembles professional hockey. Some players score goals. Some players make saves. One team wins. One team loses. And in the case of the New Jersey Devils, winning all of their preseason games one year ago ultimately didn’t mean anything.

On the other hand, the games definitely mean something.

The games mean something to the players, as there is competition for jobs on the NHL roster, and while the Devils don’t seemingly have a ton of roster spots up for grabs, the injury to Luke Hughes and lengthy rehabilitation process for Brett Pesce has presented a “next man up” opportunity for somebody to take those spots in the interim.

The games mean something to Sheldon Keefe, as he is working to implement his system. But perhaps more importantly, the Devils are trying to establish what their identity is going to be for this upcoming season. Who and what are the Devils trying to be as a team this season? That’s why preseason matters, at least to some extent.

After last night’s game in Montreal, the Devils now have two preseason games under their belts, with most of their expected NHL regulars seeing playing time in at least one of those games (Jack Hughes, Timo Meier, Dawson Mercer, and Erik Haula are among those who have yet to make their preseason debut). And while the win-loss results don’t really mean a whole lot, I think there are at least a few themes from both of the games that, theoretically, could and perhaps should carry over once the puck drops in Prague and the games count for real.

The Pace Has Seemingly Picked Up

Sheldon Keefe mentioned in his season opening press conference that the reason why they started camp with a sprinting drill was to ultimately be a reflection of how they wanted to play as a team.

It might be an oversimplification, and you might roll your eyes as most teams start training camp with a conditioning or skating drill of some sort. But it does make sense. If you’re consistently sprinting to spots, you are winning those races. And winning those races leads to puck retrievals. It leads to possession. It leads to creating enough space to put yourself in a scoring position if your linemate can execute the pass. There was far too much puck watching, standing around, and floating through games last year for my liking, so hopefully, that’s one of the big changes we ultimately see moving forward.

Is it perfect through two preseason games? Absolutely not. Nor would I expect it to be. It takes time to implement a new system, even if this one might share some similarities to the previous one. And while there is a noticeable energy now, we’re talking about one after a handful of training camp practices and preseason games after not playing hockey for the last five months. Time will tell if that same pace and energy will be there once we get to the middle of the season and the day-to-day monotony of the regular season settles in.

But keeping the players engaged is a middle of the season problem and we’ll worry about that if and when its a thing when we get there. For now, the idea is getting the players to buy in. To play with that pace and energy now. And for the most part, I think we are seeing it.

It might be cliche, and it might be tiring to hear Bill Spaulding and Ken Daneyko wax poetic talking about sprinting to spots while watching the games. But I think this is going to be a consistent theme early in the season, so I’d say get used to hearing it.

The Intensity Has Also Picked Up

This has been a big theme of mine since last year when I called the Devils out for being a soft team that was way too easy to play against. The #1 thing I wanted to see from this team this year were steps to correct that.

The Devils, in my opinion, have taken steps to correct that.

Sure, part of that is “putting guys in the glass” as the MSG broadcast put it, with Brenden Dillon’s hit on Alex Jefferies on Sunday being one that stood out. But part of it is also the Paul Cotter-Curtis Lazar-Nathan Bastian line playing with that level of tenacity and energy that also counts as “tough to play against”.

Generally speaking, I think naming lines is silly, particularly lines that have played two (2) whole preseason games together. But I do think the Cotter-Lazar-Bastian line has the makings of a “make it happen” line. I think they have the potential to embody what Keefe is talking about when he talks about playing with pace, but they can also lay the wood and create something out of nothing. It’s an element to the Devils that they sorely lacked last year when their fourth line was as inefficient as it was, and is a nice callback to the year prior when they had a fourth line that could make it happen.

I do need to see more, but as Cotter said during media day, it’s not hard to finish your checks. Which is music to my ears after watching last year’s team do a whole lot of not finishing checks.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Speaking of finishing checks, one thing that I have found noticeable through two games is the forechecking in the neutral zone in an attempt to disrupt clean zone entries to the opposition.

We’ll see how the rest of the league ultimately adjusts if this is something the Devils will be doing consistently in-games, but generally speaking, pressuring opposing puckhandlers into making a decision can be beneficial. Whether its separating the player from the puck or forcing them into make a panic decision, I view this as a good thing to add to the repertoire.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that it seems the Devils are getting a lot more bodies towards the front of the net to clean up potential rebound opportunities the first few games. And while the Devils haven’t found the back of the net in that particular situation, crashing the net and scoring “playoff-style” goals is something that this team is going to need to be able to do if they’re going to get where they want to be. It can’t just be flashy high-level skill plays all the time. The greasy goals count the same.

Pucks to the net. Bodies to the net. Finishing your checks. For as advanced and highly skilled today’s players are, the core tenets of what the game is are still fairly simple.

Getting Dougie Hamilton Back is Everything

Dougie Hamilton is entering his 13th season as an NHL player, so it would be naive to expect the light bulb to come on and expect him to become a defensive dynamo when he’s always been an offensive defenseman.

Hamilton is a #1 defenseman because of what be brings to the table offensively, with whatever he provides defensively secondary. The Devils knew what they were getting into when they targeted him in free agency three summers ago. And believe me, the Devils sorely missed what Hamilton brought to the table offensively last season when he wound up missing the final five months of the season with a torn pectoral muscle.

So to see Hamilton tee off with five shots on net and 10 shot attempts, even though none of them wound up going in, was encouraging.

The Devils best players need to be their best players, and in order for them to be at their best, they need to be able to do what they do best. Hamilton’s best attribute is his shot and his ability to create offense and it was sorely missed last season after he went down. It needs to be respected and accounted for by the opposition, and getting that back alone fixes a lot of issues. Not to mention that the best defense is a good offense and Hamilton’s efforts firing away towards the other team’s net shouldn’t go unnoticed.

What if the Devils power play goes on a lengthy mid-season rut again? It probably won’t be that long of a rut if Hamilton is blasting away from the point. Even if the Devils power play doesn’t look aesthetically pleasing, Hamilton’s shot is good enough where he’ll score every so often. Nobody is going to care how poorly the power play might look over the first 60 seconds of it if the puck ultimately goes in the back of the net because of a blast by Hamilton (or a blast by anyone, for that matter). And even if he’s not putting it in the net himself, the Devils newfound emphasis of crashing the net should lead to other guys being in a position to clean up on potential rebound opportunities.

Having Competent Goaltending In Net Is Also Everything

I’d be lying if I said I thought the Devils put on a defensive clinic through two preseason games. Chalk it up to missing players, new pairings, and learning a new system. That said, goaltending is the last line of defense, and if you can’t see the difference between having Markstrom and Allen versus what the Devils have had for the better part of the last half decade, I can’t help you.

Look no further than the first period of the Islanders game and the sequence where J.G. Pageau and Simon Holmstrom got behind the defense to get a couple high-danger shots on net. In previous years, one of those shots is going in the net, if not both.

Markstrom has a reputation for being very good with the high-danger scoring chances, and that likely goes hand-in-hand with the fact he’s not giving up big, juicy rebounds like Devils goaltenders of years past would have. And while the stats say he gave up two goals on 19 shots in two periods, the eye test would be quick to point out one of them was with Anders Lee using Hamilton as a partial screen and the other was on a 3-on-1 that was all too reminiscent of how the Devils have played the last few years.

I thought we saw a lot of the same with Jake Allen last night in Montreal as well. I don’t know that the goal that he gave up was the greatest goal to give up. Maybe it was redirected, maybe it wasn’t. But for the most part, I thought he limited second chance opportunities and did what he needed to in terms of tracking the puck.

Keep in mind when it comes to goaltending, I’m setting a very low bar. I’m not asking for Igor Shesterkin elite level play. I’m asking for good, competent goaltending. I’m looking for….dare I say…..the Devils, if they had league average goaltending. Not only do I think Markstrom and Allen can clear that low bar, I think they have a chance of being pretty good as a tandem.

The Importance of Scoring First

The Devils might not always have sent a “1-0, them” tweet when they fell behind in games, but they could have 57 times last season and it would have been a factual, accurate statement. After all, that’s almost 70% of their games.

There’s a lot of factors at play here….poor goaltending, poor defense, a coaching staff that consistently didn’t have the team ready to play, and bad luck being among them. But its tough to win games when you are consistently playing from behind and that’s something the Devils did too many times last season. When you’re always trailing, you’re always chasing the game, which means you’re likely taking more risks, which means those risks can blow up in your face and make a 1-0 deficit a 2-0 game fairly quickly. Any way you want to slice it, its completely unacceptable to consistently be falling behind in these contests.

There have been various studies that suggest the team that scores first in a hockey game wins roughly 66% of the time, with that number skewing higher should the first goal come later in the game. And while this is an incomplete list from this past season from Reddit, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most of the teams that scored first in over 50% of their games wound up playing postseason hockey.

It’s one of those things that seems like a little thing, but when I talk about how your best players needing to be your best players, it was nice to see Nico Hischier score the first goal in the first game of the preseason. You want your leaders to set the tone that this year is going to be different than last year. And even though the Devils didn’t win the game, they need to be much closer to middle of the pack in this respect in 2024-25.

And no, the Devils didn’t score first in Montreal. They didn’t score at all. But is that all that surprising with the lineup that skated?