Tom Fitzgerald changed everything he could possibly change to get the Devils back to the playoffs. It’s time for the team to do their part.
The New Jersey Devils must make the playoffs next season.
Period. Point blank. Not up for negotiation. Not up for discussion.
That certainly reads like a bold statement coming off the disaster that was the 2023-24 campaign, and GM Tom Fitzgerald more or less confirmed as much when he addressed the media last week. The Devils offseason priority “punch list”, as Fitzgerald not so eloquently put it during his media scrum, confirms that. Ownership greenlighting the Devils spending this offseason and their commitment to the Devils being a cap ceiling team for a third consecutive season confirms that.
The time for what ifs, hypotheticals, and excuses is over. Donezo. Dead.
This Devils team must be playing playoff hockey nine months from now. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
“But what if there are injuries?”
I don’t want to hear it.
Nobody is saying that the Devils didn’t suffer significant injuries to key players last season. And I’m not saying those injuries didn’t make an impact. That said, we’ve seen time and again in the NHL how great teams are able to navigate significant injuries to get to the postseason. Mark Stone has missed time the last two seasons but that hasn’t stopped Vegas from reaching the playoffs. Aaron Ekblad missing 31 games didn’t keep Florida out of the playoffs. Neither has Gabe Landeskog missing the last two YEARS when it comes to the Avalanche. Speaking of the Avs, Artturi Lehkonen missing time last season didn’t keep Colorado out of the dance (never mind Val Nichushkin being in the Player’s Assistance Program). Same goes for Kyle Connor missing 17 games for the Jets or Adam Fox missing 10 games for the Rangers or Jack Eichel, Alex Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore missing 19, 18, and 35 games, respectively, for the Golden Knights. Great teams find a way to navigate bumps and bruises. Last year, the Devils did not. They didn’t come close.
The NHL is a physical league. Guys are going to get hurt. Nobody is going to feel sorry for you if you’re not 100% and nobody is going to give you a break. Yes, the Law of Averages would suggest that the Devils should have some better luck on this front after what they dealt with a year ago. But the Law of Averages also means as much as a fictional, fantasy world like Alderaan, Westeros, or Narnia. This is the real world and the Devils aren’t owed anything by the proverbial Hockey Gods or the so-called Law of Averages. Be better.
“But the goaltending…..”
Again, I don’t want to hear it.
Tom Fitzgerald has spent the better part of his five years as Devils GM trying to fix the goaltending, and while I am giving him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Corey Crawford retiring on the eve of the season and Jonathan Bernier’s body failing him, eventually, we do need to see some results here. Mackenzie Blackwood’s play deteriorated to the point where he was eventually shipped out of town to San Jose, and the same can be said for Vitek Vanecek as well.
I don’t care how the sausage is made (in terms of what’s inside the casing), but I do care that its grilled properly, plump, and delicious when I go to eat it. The NHL is a results-driven business and eventually, we do need so see some actual results, which makes it all the more confounding that Dave Rogalski was retained despite a mountain of evidence that every goaltender the Devils have had has gotten worse under his tutelage.
Now, in fairness to Rogalski, Jacob Markstrom is a more accomplished goalie than anybody he has had to work with in his time in New Jersey. The same could potentially be said for backup goaltender Jake Allen as well. Still, as wrong as this sounds, there’s a part of me that hopes Rogalski is locked in the broom closet, Markstrom and Allen ignore whatever Rogalski had to say and instead do what has made them successful NHL goaltenders elsewhere.
“But the team is so young, you gotta be patient.”
Please don’t make me repeat myself again. I. Don’t. Want. To. Hear. It.
Since the 2012 Stanley Cup run, the final big moment of the Lou/Marty/Elias/championship contender era, the team has had two playoff seasons in the last twelve. As a fanbase that has sat through many years of losing and promises of a better tomorrow, I’ll speak for myself when I say I’ve been patient enough and the time to start winning is now. Particularly when this group has already shown us they can get to the second round of the playoffs.
Yes, the team is young and immaturity is part of the process. But the “team is young” excuse is only valid for so long. Being young might be an acceptable excuse when you’re a toddler learning how to tie your shoes for the first time, but it becomes less and less acceptable when you still don’t know how to tie them five, six, seven years later as a preteen.
“But the defense…..but the top six…..but Palat…..but Jack and Nico…..but they’re too small or too left-handed or weak or selfish or…..”
By now, you get the idea.
No more what ifs. No more hypotheticals. No more half-baked theories. No more agenda-driven narratives. No more BS.
No excuses.
To be clear, I’m not saying that the Devils need to win the Stanley Cup this season. Heck, I’m not even asking them to get to the Cup Final, as awesome as a deep playoff run would actually be for this group. But I do need to see some maturity and progress from this group that we did not see one year ago. I do need to see that they took the failures from 2023-24 to heart, and that starts on Day 1 of training camp. I need to see that that they’re closer to being the team that they were in 2022-23 than the tire fire that was last year. I need confirmation that 2023-24 was a fluke and that’s not who they really are.
If we don’t see that, we’re running out of scapegoats to assign blame to. Fitzgerald already played the coaching change card, and if the Devils don’t make an improvement, he probably doesn’t get a sixth year at the helm, fair or not. Right moves made, or not. Great trades, or not. Brilliant signings, or not. Let’s not forget that Fitzgerald’s predecessor, Ray Shero, made a lot of trades we liked in the moment as well but that didn’t stop the Devils from firing him, in part because you need to win games. Something that the Devils hadn’t done enough of the last time they changed general managers.
Most of the supporting cast has already been moved out for a new, different supporting cast, so at this point, the only people left to point the finger at, aside from the GM, would be the core and whether or not they’re good enough.
With that said, I do believe in this core. I believe in them in large part because they haven’t given me reasons not to believe in them. I’ve seen enough from Jack Hughes to convince me he’s a future Hart Trophy finalist, if not a Hart Trophy winner. I’ve seen enough from Nico Hischier to convince me he’s a great two-way player who can be a key member of a Stanley Cup championship team, not unlike what Sasha Barkov just did for the Florida Panthers in their title run. The jury is still out on players like Luke Hughes, Simon Nemec, and Dawson Mercer, but I’m not betting against Hughes’s bloodlines, Nemec’s pedigree, or Mercer’s brief history of production. Between them, Timo Meier, Jesper Bratt, Dougie Hamilton, and the offseason additions, whether or not this team has enough talent isn’t a question. Frankly, talent was never a question as far as I’m concerned.
What did concern me last season was all of the ‘between-the-ears’ stuff with this team. The fact that the Devils, despite being a handful of points out of a playoff spot for seemingly the entire season, couldn’t stop stepping on rakes long enough to close the gap. If anything, they went out of their way to step on more rakes instead of taking a playoff spot that was very much there for the taking. Add in the work ethic concerns that Fitzgerald alluded to when he said players needed to spend more time in the gym and it reinforces the notion last year’s team didn’t work hard enough off the ice to get the results you want on the ice. That’s certainly a concern, and will be the biggest question for me with this team going into camp.
There’s more to the between the ears stuff than that though. There’s also not having confidence in your teammates knowing your teammates are going to let you down time and time again. Whether that’s goaltenders not getting a save, bad pinches by teammates, or forwards missing assignments, I can understand how those mistakes night after night may take a toll over the course of the 82-game season as losses pile up.
While you can’t eliminate mistakes completely from the game, you can fix the roster in terms of how it is constructed in the first place. Theoretically, all of those roster construction flaws has been fixed. The coach couldn’t get through to the team anymore? Exit Lindy Ruff. Enter Sheldon Keefe, who has consistently won games in the regular season with bluelines and goaltenders that aren’t as talented as what the Devils have now. The Devils can’t get a save? Enter Jacob Markstrom. Enter Jake Allen. Both of which are far more experienced than the goaltenders the Devils entered last season with. The blueline is too inexperienced and/or not good enough defending? Brett Pesce, Brenden Dillon, and Johnathan Kovacevic are in! John Marino, Kevin Bahl, and Brendan Smith are out. The team is too soft? Dillon addresses that, as does Paul Cotter and Stefan Noesen. They even managed to leave enough space to add a middle six winger in Tomas Tatar, while keeping enough flexibility and adding draft capital to have the ability to go out and get another forward at the deadline if they need to. For as valid as the critiques were last season of Tom Fitzgerald being too patient, not doing enough, lacking the foresight to plan ahead, and/or sitting on his hands once everything started falling apart around him, he made the changes that needed to be made. For the most part. I still don’t love the plan at center.
You can only change the roster so much though. The players have to get on board with the right mindset and approach, and the onus now shifts to the players to make sure that this team plays up to expectations. Expectations haven’t gone away with the Devils taking a year off. The Devils are going to be that chic pick to get right back to the playoffs in the media, particularly in a Metropolitan Division that didn’t do a whole lot to get better outside of Washington.
But this was mostly all true last year as well. Fitzgerald said he was confident in the team last year. Nemec wasn’t part of the plan even with the departures of Ryan Graves and Damon Severson. Vitek Vanecek, Akira Schmid, and Nico Daws all taking steps back wasn’t part of the plan. Players regressed. Some of them are no longer here like John Marino. Some are like Dawson Mercer and Jonas Siegenthaler, among others. The Devils needed to make the playoffs last season to build on what they accomplished the year prior, but we know how that story ended. They came up well short and the results were what I wrote back in December. Unacceptable.
The Devils were the sexy pick a year ago only to spit the bit once things got hard. One year later and a bunch of changes later, its on the Devils to prove the pundits, backers, supporters, and fans right. It’s time for the team to take another step forward after taking a big step backwards. It’s time for them to build upon the successes of 2022-23 while having the mental fortitude to see to it that years like 2023-24 never happen again. The Devils need to show they’re a playoff team. Not just now, but going forward.
No excuses.