Sheldon Keefe is jumping into a new coaching role at a pivotal time for the New Jersey Devils. Whereas most coaches get a honeymoon period to prove themselves, the Devils are in win-now mode, and he needs to find success almost immediately.
The other day, Jared wrote a piece about how the New Jersey Devils absolutely must make the playoffs this season, plain and simple. And he is right: after all the promises of a better tomorrow and then after all of the moves Tom Fitzgerald has made, it is win-now mode for this franchise. Today, I wanted to take that talking point and run with it a little in terms of the new head coach, Sheldon Keefe. How does he fit into this sentiment?
Usually, first-year head coaches on new teams get a cushion in this regard. Some fan bases might even be more lenient than that, but even the most critical fanbases usually give a coach one year before putting him on the hot seat. But with this Devils team and everything else that has happened, Keefe is getting dumped into a pretty hot situation right off the bat. I don’t want to say that he will be fired after one season if the Devils miss the playoffs this season, we don’t have Lou Lamoriello running the team anymore. But if the team isn’t playing beyond 82 games, he will be taking a lot of heat, that’s for sure.
In reality, I think Keefe has two things he needs to prove coming into this season as the new Devils head coach. He needs to show that he can replicate the regular season success that he had with Toronto, and he also needs to break the playoff curse he seems to have gained by being the Toronto coach. Let’s look at both of these points for a bit.
1. He needs to replicate his regular season success
Keefe’s greatest hiring point was how successful he was in the regular season as the Toronto head coach. In 349 games with the team, he had a 212-97-40 record. That is incredibly good. In 5 seasons with the team, he never had a season point percentage below .622, and that season still saw the Leafs end up with 102 points. So in his worst regular season, in terms of point%, his team ended with over 100 points. You cannot ask for more in terms of regular season success from a head coach. The Devils, to compare, have had one season over 100 points since 2012, and that was the very good 2022-23 season where they ended with 112, exactly one more point than Toronto’s 111 that year under Keefe.
Now, Keefe needs to show that at least some of that success was on him and his system and not the star players that Toronto has. He needs to replicate his winning ways with Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, and Timo Meier instead of Auston Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares, and Mitch Marner. If he can, and if the Devils finish this year around 100 points or even better, it shows that Sheldon Keefe has something going with his system of hockey and that the Devils found a good one. If the Devils miss the playoffs once again this season, however, and finish under 90 points especially, it shows that maybe he was a poor hire and that his success in Toronto was based on the talent there and not how he coaches or the system he installs. He cannot afford this, especially with expectations being as high as they are for this team already.
2. He needs to win playoff rounds
Keefe’s biggest failure, and the reason Toronto gave him the boot, was his inability to translate regular season success into playoff success. Under his watch, Toronto lost the deciding game of the first round series in the playoffs 4 out of 5 times. The Leafs lost game 7 of the first round in 2021. 2022, and 2024, and they lost the deciding game 5 of the first round in the Covid bubble. That is some serious heartbreak. It isn’t like his teams were getting swept or losing quickly. Each time, Toronto made the deciding game, the rubber match, and lost it. His only success, per se, was in 2023 when Toronto finally managed a playoff series win by beating Tampa in 6 games before being crushed by Florida in 5 games.
That kind of playoff failure in Toronto obviously was not going to fly, which is why he got the boot. But the Devils gave him a chance to show that he can win in pressure situations. And he will need to prove just that here in Newark. Devils fans know what we have in this roster, how gifted the core is, and what they are capable of. They showed a glimpse of it in 2022-23 by making it to the second round, and now Keefe needs to regularly get there and beyond. Fans will be happy with a playoff berth this year, pretty much regardless of what happens after, but he will not have a long leash here beyond that. He needs playoff wins, playoff series wins, and needs them soon.
If he can manage both things, regular season success this year and even a playoff series win this year as well, he will have a long leash to guide this roster to a Stanley Cup. But Devils fans remember the late 2000s as well when the Devils made the playoffs year after year only to do nothing once there. That won’t fly here for too long, just like it didn’t in Toronto. Keefe knows this. Focus on the regular season this year, focus on getting this team on the right track, but then do what you have to do to win playoff series and push for the Cup.