Game Preview #31: New Jersey Devils vs. Toronto Maple Leafs

Coming off yet another shutout loss on Sunday, the Devils look to bounce back against a strong Maple Leafs team

The Matchup: New Jersey Devils (18-10-2) vs. Toronto Maple Leafs (16-9-2)

The Time: 7:00pm ET

The Broadcast: ESPN+, Hulu, Devils Radio Network

Last Devils Game

The Devils last played on Sunday, when they got shut out by the Colorado Avalanche, 4-0. It was the fifth shutout loss New Jersey has suffered this season.

Last Maple Leafs Game

Toronto was last in action on Saturday, and they suffered a 5-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The usual suspects, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, each registered two points to lead the offense in defeat.

Last Devils-Maple Leafs Game

It was the North American home opener exactly two months ago, and it was a bad 4-2 loss. Jacob Markstrom had an awful game, and the offense couldn’t do enough to bail him out.

The Ring Of Honor Gets A New Member

Yesterday, the Devils organization announced the newest member of their Ring of Honor: Hockey Hall of Famer Jacques Lemaire. You can watch the Devils’ official announcement video here:

Lemaire becomes the third person to be inducted, following former owner John McMullen and three-time Stanley Cup champion Sergei Brylin.

Lemaire coached the Devils for parts of seven seasons spanning three different stints with the organization. His first run with the club from 1993-94 to 1997-98 of course produced New Jersey’s first Stanley Cup title during the 1994-95 season. He returned for brief tenures in 2009-10 and 2010-11. You may notice those are consecutive seasons, yet that was not one continuous reign. The infamous John MacLean coaching experiment got in the way of that.

Lemaire is the franchise’s all-time leader in wins as a head coach, and it’s not particularly close. His 276 victories dwarfs second-place John Hynes’ (yes, Hynes is second) 150. Lemaire is 8th all-time among Devils coaches with a .608 points percentage. However that ranking is much more impressive than it sounds. Here are the names ahead of him, with the number of seasons they coached the Devils:

1. Kevin Constantine – .694 (1 season…31 games to be exact)
2. Lou Lamoriello himself – .689 (53 games over 2 seasons)
3. Claude Julien – .646 (1 season, fired after 79 games)
4. Robbie Ftorek – .641 (2 seasons, fired toward the very end of his 2nd year)
5. Pat Burns – .634 (2 seasons)
6. Sheldon Keefe – .633 (Still going strong!)
7. Brent Sutter – .625 (2 seasons)

Lemaire coached 509 games with the Devils, also a franchise record. None of the seven names in front of him are even close, with Burns and Sutter tied for second at exactly two seasons’ worth of games, 164.

Lemaire and his 90’s Devils teams are credited (blamed?) for the neutral zone trap, though Lemaire didn’t actually invent it. He just perfected it. Lemaire is a franchise legend, clearly the greatest coach in Scouts/Rockies/Devils history, and a much-deserving selection to be added to the Ring of Honor. His induction will take place on January 22nd prior to the Devils hosting the Boston Bruins. Congratulations to Lemaire and his family.

Back To The Wing

On Sunday, head coach Sheldon Keefe shifted Dawson Mercer to center, flipping him with Erik Haula on the third line. Mercer was drafted as a center, and he’s been tried there a few different times since reaching the NHL. But the young forward has never been able to stick down the middle, playing predominantly on the wing during his career.

Well after one game, Keefe apparently saw enough. Mercer is not only back on the wing, but off the third line entirely. He’ll move back up to Nico Hischier’s line tonight, at least if practice yesterday is any indication:

Stefan Noesen moves back down to the third line, Paul Cotter gets bumped there too, and Tomas Tatar finds himself back on the fourth line. The defensive pairs remain the same.

The Timo Meier-Nico Hischier-Stefan Noesen line worked fabulously while they were together. According to Moneypuck, over the course of 108 minutes of 5-on-5 play together, that trio registered a 69.5% Expected Goals For%, the 9th-best mark in the league among lines who have played at least 50 minutes together. Mercer had gotten a lot of time with Hischier and Meier earlier this season, though it didn’t go particularly well. In 141 5-on-5 minutes, that line combined for an xGF% of 49.6%. Certainly not a trainwreck, but not exactly driving play either. Meanwhile the Cotter-Haula-Noesen line fared even worse, coming in at 44.4% over 114 minutes together.

So these newly constituted lines are actually Keefe just going back to the well with combos from earlier this season. Combos that didn’t have much success either. Will it work this time around? Who knows, but clearly Keefe felt he needed to switch things up after yet another shutout loss. We’ve seen Keefe tinker with his lines a few times thus far, though not nearly as frequently as old coach Lindy Ruff used to. And correct me in the comments if I’m wrong, but aside from injury or penalty situations, I can’t remember a time when Keefe juggled his lines in-game. When he decides on line combos, he generally sticks with them through an entire game. Let’s hope this time is the charm for these trios.

Allen On The Shelf?

Jake Allen started on Sunday, allowing three goals in the loss. Well he might have also been injured in that game too:

I don’t recall any moment in the game on Sunday in which Allen might have hurt himself. If anyone out there has an idea, feel free to let me know in the comments.

I wish I had more to tell you about Allen’s injury and status. But once again, the Devils’ organizational Omerta surrounding injuries is impenetrable. All we can do is wait and see.

Another Year, Another Slow March To The Postseason

In the Auston Matthews era, the Maple Leafs have been a playoff machine. Toronto has made the playoffs every single year of Matthews’ career, which began in the 2016-17 season. That’s eight straight playoff appearances in case you’re scoring at home. The Leafs famously have only made it out of the first round once in that span. Mike Babcock couldn’t get the job done, and his successor, current Devils’ coach Sheldon Keefe, was only able to do it during the 2022-23 season. But while playoff success has been elusive, regular season success clearly has not.

Well surprise, surprise, the Maple Leafs are chugging along toward yet another postseason appearance. Toronto enters this game with 34 points in 27 games, good for a .630 points%. They currently sit second in the Atlantic Division in both raw point total and points%, behind the Florida Panthers in both categories. It’s been a while since the Devils saw this Maple Leafs squad, but they’re pretty much the same as they were in October: A very good team that has it’s flaws but clearly sits in the upper echelon of the league. The beat goes on in Toronto.

The Shaken Superstar

Auston Matthews is not only the best player on the Maple Leafs, he’s on the shortlist for best non-Connor McDavid player on the planet. The 2021-22 league MVP and three-time Rocket Richard trophy winner has been a machine since he entered the league.

But the machine broke down a little over a month ago, and he missed almost all of November with a nebulous “upper-body injury”. He ended up missing nine games, during which time he took a trip to Germany to receive some sort of treatment for whatever was ailing him.

Even before his injury, Matthews wasn’t looking quite like himself. Prior to his time out of the lineup, Matthews had played 13 games, scoring five times and tallying 11 total points. Since he returned to the lineup on November 30th, he’s picked up the pace a little bit. In five games since returning from injury, Matthews has notched three goals and seven total points. He’s only been held off the scoresheet in one of those games. Meanwhile his territorial dominance hasn’t been up to his usual standards either. According to Natural Stat Trick, at 5-on-5 Matthews is rocking an Expected Goals For% of 51.11%. That’s obviously still a fine rate, but not quite as dominant as we’re used to seeing him. For context, last year Matthews held a 56.41% xGF% at 5-on-5, a fantastic rate.

Whether it’s injuries or otherwise, Matthews is having a bit of a down year. But make no mistake, this is still an incredibly dangerous player. Even in a “down” year, he’s still producing a point per game (eight goals and 18 points in 18 contests), and he’s still winning the Expected Goals battle. As is always the case when New Jersey plays Toronto, the game plan has to start with stopping Matthews. If the Devils do that, their chances of winning increase dramatically.

The Elite Supporting Cast

You’re not going to believe this, but the rest of the Maple Leafs’ core four are having pretty darn good seasons themselves. Mitch Marner leads the team in scoring, with 10 goals and 38 points in 27 games, an elite 1.41 ppg rate. Elsewhere, William Nylander paces the club with 17 goals, which is just two off the league lead. And former captain John Tavares enters with 12 goals and 23 points in 26 games. The Maple Leafs might not have much of a supporting cast, but when their core players are as good as this, they can carry a team by themselves.

It’s not just the point totals that make these players special either. Under the hood, they’re controlling the run of play as well. Per NST, Tavares enters with a 5-on-5 xGF% just over 55%, Nylander is at 53.5%, and Marner is just a hair under 52%. Like Matthews, perhaps these players aren’t dominating puck possession quite as well as they’re used to (although Tavares is probably right in line with what you expect out of him), but they are still winning their matchups.

Toronto’s new head coach, Craig Berube, has generally kept Marner with Matthews, and Nylander with Tavares this season. These are pairings that the Leafs have used for a while now, and they’ve worked quite well over the years. In fact, these two teams sort of mirror each other, with a top-6 that looks downright terrifying, and a bottom-6 that appears quite vulnerable. This game may very well come down to which team’s star players shine just a little brighter.

You Shall Not Pass

During his time in Toronto, Sheldon Keefe squeezed a lot of defensive juice out of his clubs. That might seem a little hard to believe considering the Leafs’ reputation as a team with a high-flying offense, but once Keefe took over, the Maple Leafs enjoyed a lot of defensive success. A lot of this could be attributed to Matthews and Marner developing into some of the top defensive forwards in the game, as both have a third-place Selke trophy finish on their resumes, as well as numerous other years receiving votes for the award.

But the one thing Keefe never really had was a reliable shutdown defense pairing. Morgan Reilly has been Toronto’s top blueliner for a long time now, but he’s more known for his offensive prowess than his shutdown ability. Defensemen like Jake Muzzin have provided some semblance of shutdown ability in recent years, but the Leafs haven’t had that one rock steady duo on the backend in a long time.

Well that’s all changed this season. Toronto signed Chris Tanev to a long term deal in the offseason, and they paired him with Jake McCabe as a matchup unit. Through roughly one-third of the season, that pair is thriving. According to Moneypuck, the Tanev-McCabe combo has allowed 1.3 Expected Goals Against per 60. That’s the 6th-best rate among defensive pairings that have played at least 50 5-on-5 minutes together. But of the six pairs ahead of them, the highest minute total is Boston’s Parker Wotherspoon-Brandon Carlo duo at 77 minutes. Tanev and McCabe have played a whopping 221 minutes together. That means that if we bump the minimum up to a mere 80 minutes, there is not a better shutdown pair in the entire NHL.

McCabe averages 21:20 minutes per night, second on the club behind Marner, and Tanev averages 19:26 TOI. Those aren’t huge minute totals, but given their success this year, the Devils better get ready for a healthy dose of the McCabe-Tanev pairing against one of their top two lines. That matchup will be key this evening.

Your Take

What do you make of tonight’s game? Who on the Devils do you expect to step up? Who on the Maple Leafs will you be watching closely? As always, thanks for reading!