The Devils still have plenty of work to do but they’ve passed the first test of this young season.
With the amount of changes that were made this past offseason, it was imperative that the New Jersey Devils got off to a good start this season. If for no other reason, to remove any lingering bad tastes remaining from last year from their mouths, but also to put themselves in a position to make the playoffs when there were no excuses remaining heading into the season, and going into a year where I said flat out the Devils had to make the playoffs, point blank, period.
They got off to a good start.
Through 21 games and roughly 1⁄4 of the season, the Devils sit one point out of the Metropolitan Division leading Washington Capitals with a 12-7-2 record. Good for 26 points and a pace of roughly 104-105 points when extrapolated over the course of a full 82 game season.
I’m not saying one should give flowers to the Devils for not immediately tripping and falling over the first hurdle out of the gate that they came across this season. It would be accurate, but extremely cynical to point out that these Devils have only played 21 games and haven’t accomplished anything yet. They’re not in first place in the division despite having played more games than any other team, nor is their playoff spot seemingly as secure as it was two years ago at this time when the Devils were in the midst of a 13-game winning streak.
But you do have to start somewhere. You do have to walk before you can run. And over the first quarter of the season, the Devils have done what they needed to do.
The Devils took care of business in Prague against the Buffalo Sabres to begin the season. After a disappointing home opener back in New Jersey against Toronto, they got a win over the aforementioned Capitals (and three out of four points in their two matchups thus far). They got three out of four points against an Islanders team that might not be all that great, but they’ve been good enough to be in the playoffs the last few years. Add in impressive road wins in Vancouver, Edmonton (albeit without Connor McDavid), and two in Florida against the defending Cup champs and there’s been more good than bad in the early portion of the campaign.
Has it been perfect? Far from it. It’s one thing to lose to Tampa twice. It’s another to get goalie’d by Mackenzie Blackwood and the Sharks.
For the most part though, the Devils have answered most of the lingering questions surrounding this team going into the season. Would the new goaltending tandem of Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen be good enough to win games? Could their core players stay healthy? Would there be a semblance of defense played by this team under a new coaching system and revamped blueline? And through 21 games, the answer to those questions has been a resounding yes.
Markstrom (.907) and Allen (.916) have been more than adequate, and there’s room for improvement in the former’s case as he’s currently -1.3 goals saved above expected.
Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, and Nico Hischier are all either above or just below a PPG pace on the season. Dougie Hamilton isn’t too far off either despite the fact he’s shooting 1.5% on the season. Eventually, those Dougie blasts are going to start going in. And while I’m holding my breath that this recent back spasm issue with Timo Meier isn’t anything serious, he’s been off to a fine start with 7 goals and 7 assists through 21 games. All in all, 13 skaters have appeared in every game for the Devils thus far.
Most importantly, the Devils have been much better defensively than they were a season ago. Jonas Siegenthaler looks like a completely different player than the injury-riddled mess that he was last year and his pairing with Johnathan Kovacevic has been a revelation. Brett Pesce and Luke Hughes have been a great pairing since they both returned from the injured list. When your worst pairing is Brenden Dillon and Dougie Hamilton, you’re doing ok in that respect.
Add in a good forecheck and a willingness to engage physically, thanks in part to new additions Stefan Noesen and Paul Cotter and you can see that rub off on the rest of the team. Through a quarter of the season, the Devils are passing the eye test despite being middle of the pack with the fancy stats.
Now, keep doing it.
The next 20 games will be a little tougher, as this is the time of the year where the actual playoff teams in this league begin to separate themselves from the pretenders. There’s a reason why American Thanksgiving is looked at as a sort of measuring stick date on the calendar. There’s a reason I wrote about this very topic one season ago when the Devils were on the outside looking in.
Yes, the Devils are hanging on to a playoff spot for now, and yes, they have more games played than almost everybody. But as the season continues to roll on, it gets tougher and tougher to make up deficits in the standings. Having a game in hand doesn’t mean a lot when you have to leapfrog multiple teams in front of you. Teams play three point games in this league all the time where the overtime loser gets a Bettman point to keep them in the mix. It’s a system designed to create the illusion that teams are closer to contention than they actually are so inept GMs can point out to their billionaire owners that they’re “only three points out with games in hand” in an effort to keep their jobs another year.
The Devils will officially be at the midway point of the season when they visit the Los Angeles Kings on New Year’s Day. But between now and then, they have three games against a Carolina Hurricanes team that has given them fits for years and won the only matchup between the teams this season convincingly. They have two more games against a Washington Capitals team that is always a handful to play with their heavy style. The Devils might be catching a break that Alexander Ovechkin is week-to-week with a lower body injury, but I don’t think anyone would call them easy games. And of course, the Devils have their first two matchups of the season against a New York Rangers team that humbled and humiliated them at every opportunity last season.
Seven of the next 20 games against the top three teams in the division other than them. Seven games against teams where the Devils need to make adjustments and show that they’re capable of beating their so-called rivals.
Unless the NHL changed their playoff format rules and I’m unaware of it, the Devils will need to go through some combination of Carolina/Washington/New York in the playoffs if they finish Top 3 in the division. And while regular season success against any of those teams individually doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot, the games themselves will likely serve as an indicator of what exactly the Devils need to get through those teams come the trade deadline. The Devils should be able to win their share of those contests, but if they’re serious about actually contending, they’re probably going to need to make a move or two to lengthen their lineup and match up better with the opposition. Their makeshift fourth line isn’t going to cut it come playoff time.
These are the teams that the Devils will need to find a way to get through in April and May before they can even begin to think about getting past the best teams in the league en route to a championship. Perhaps a team like Toronto, who the Devils will see again (and a team the Devils have already lost to once on home ice this season), is one of those teams. Perhaps the offseason champion Nashville Predators, or a Colorado Avalanche team that is getting healthier and actually knows what it takes to win a championship are another. And to bring this full circle, perhaps an LA Kings team that is a perennial playoff team (and one the Devils see twice in this stretch) is that team.
The Devils will see all those teams too before the New Year.
Hopefully, the Devils are making the most out of their mini-bye week here between the rest and the practice time that they haven’t really had all that much of due to the accelerated start to the season. They’re going to need it.
How the Devils navigate these next few weeks will tell us a lot about who they are as a team and what they might need for the stretch run. The Devils will surely be looking to add at the trade deadline as they’ve been trying to accrue as much cap space as possible before injuries necessitated a rash of recalls earlier this week. But the cap is fake and you can always make a move if you’re creative enough. Point being, the core of the team is here right now and healthy right now. It’s on them to earn the right for Tom Fitzgerald to sign off on trades to bring in reinforcements.
The Devils did enough over the first 21 games to put themselves in a position to keep going. Over the next 20 games, they need to do more to show that they are indeed for real and should be taken seriously as a contender in the Eastern Conference. There will be challenges along the way but if they can hold their own through the upcoming gauntlet and maintain their position in the standings, they’ll be in a spot where they can spend most of the second half of the season tinkering around the edges and rounding into form for what should be the next most important game on the schedule.
Game 83. Better known as Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals.