The Devils have not had a great home-ice advantage for nearly half a decade now. But why? This article attempts to diagnose the cause.
Did you know that since the New Jersey Devils drafted Jack Hughes first overall in 2019, they have had a better record on the road than at home in every season except for one?
Since the beginning of the 2019-20 season, the Devils are 81-86-27 in designated home games and 93-86-16 on the road. And two of those home wins didn’t come at the Prudential Center….one of them came back in February during the Stadium Series win over the Flyers at Metlife Stadium while the other came at the beginning of this season against the Sabres in Prague. The only season where the Devils played better in front of the home crowd than on the road was the 2021-22 season that would best be otherwise forgotten seeing as the Devils ran through seven netminders that season.
It’s not entirely surprising that the records are poor, seeing as the Devils only made the playoffs once in that span. And this isn’t an indictment on Hughes as much as it is grabbing a notable sample size that spans several seasons and several iterations of this Devils team. This is a team that was emerging from a rebuild, had one huge season where they set a franchise record for points, took a step back last year, and are now about 25% of the way through the season that is currently in progress.
The Devils have had five different head coaches over that span if we count the interim runs by Alain Nasreddine and Travis Green along with the end of the John Hynes era, the beginning of the Sheldon Keefe era, and the entirety of the Lindy Ruff era.
Sixteen different goaltenders have suited up and played in a home game for the Devils in that span. It’s a not so distinguished list that includes Louis Domingue, Gilles Senn, Andrew Hammond, and Jon Gillies among the many names you would expect. Not included on that list though? Eric Comrie, whose one and only game for the Devils came on the road. So I can’t blame Eric Comrie for this.
And while I could count it up, you get the idea by now. I don’t need to tell you exactly how many forwards and defensemen have played in a home game for the Devils in that span. But the short answer is “a lot”. While there have been a few constants over that stretch like Hughes, Nico Hischier, and Jesper Bratt, there’s been a lot of Fredrik Claesson and Ben Street and Nick Merkley and Christian Jaros types who have made cameos along the way.
The point being….it hasn’t mattered who the coach has been. It hasn’t mattered who the goalie has been or what the rest of the roster looks like. It hasn’t mattered whether or not the Devils have been a good hockey team or not. It hasn’t mattered if attendance was limited and/or non-existent in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers are what they are and the Devils have not been a good home team.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the numbers.
For whatever reason, the Devils are mediocre at Prudential Center and better on the road. And have been for quite some time. They have been average, at best, at home for the better part of half a decade and continue to be so in the early stages of the 2024-25 season.
But why?
In a lot of ways, it just doesn’t make a ton of sense. For starters, home teams in the NHL have the benefit of last change off of stoppages in play, meaning that they can manipulate the matchups to get the specific ones they want. Or at least until the puck is dropped and the opposition can adjust once the puck is cleared out to the neutral zone. It’s a cat and mouse game between NHL coaches, and often is the game within the game.
We can debate all we want about whether or not we think the Devils have been coached well during that time frame. Perhaps there have been instances where the Devils were just flat out wrong going with the matchups they wanted off of stoppages in play and they got beat as a result. But over five plus seasons? For this to be a thing spanning multiple coaches and all sorts of different rosters makes this all the more befuddling.
But this also doesn’t just factor in the fact that the Devils are home in the first place. They are in front of their fans and in a familiar setting. The other team is coming to your building off of travel. The Devils should, in theory, be feeding off of the home crowd and any energy they might provide. It’s called “home field advantage” for a reason. But for whatever reason, they’re not winning as much at home as they are on the road.
Let’s take a look at a few of the potential reasons and theories behind why the Devils have been mediocre at home and see if we can pinpoint it further.
For Whatever Reason, The Goaltending Has Been Better On The Road
Looking at the stats I posted above, I don’t know how much one can really take away from them. The Devils PP has generally been better at home than on the road. When the penalty kill isn’t league-worst, they’re better on the road. The fancy stats are slightly better at home, but it hasn’t translated into goals, which in turn hasn’t translated into wins.
But one area where the Devils have been noticeably better is with their goaltending. When the Devils aren’t getting league-worst goaltending, they are typically better on the road than they are at home.
Of course, I don’t have any theories as to WHY that might be the case other than chalking it up to the randomness of goaltending in general. The Devils have had quality goaltenders in the past play their home games at the Prudential Center between Martin Brodeur and Cory Schneider, so I don’t think its an issue with the arena itself such as sightlines, backdrops or lighting. But in recent years, whoever the Devils have had in net has generally done a better job away from Prudential Center.
Its tough to win in this league without quality goaltending, and while the Devils have not had quality goaltending for most of the last half decade, the numbers are what they are with the goaltenders getting more saves on the road than at home.
The Devils Don’t Have a Great Home-Ice Advantage
Two years ago, I did a review of the Prudential Center with a randomly selected home game. It just so happened to be the game where the Devils 13-game winning streak was snapped against Sheldon Keefe and the Toronto Maple Leafs in controversial fashion.
I have been to roughly 100 hockey games at Prudential Center since it opened and with the exception of Game 6 of the 2012 Eastern Conference Final, I’m not sure the building was ever louder than I heard in the closing minutes of that game. And it makes sense, it was the perfect combination of being the night before Thanksgiving, a young fanbase home for the holidays enjoying a few drinks at the game, a big name opponent, a sold out crowd, and a home crowd that wanted to see a historic winning streak continue.
That, more often than not, is the exception and not the norm.
Now, this isn’t a critique of Devils fans themselves. My general belief is that if you’re attending a game, you can cheer and boo as much as you want and the onus is on the team to give you a reason to cheer. If the fans are getting restless because the Devils continue to pass up point blank shots in an attempt to find the ‘perfect’ shot, and those fans start chanting “Shoot the Puck” in response like they did the other night, the fans aren’t wrong to call the team out on their nonsense.
Still, if you’ve attended a typical home game at Prudential Center, you can see that the crowd isn’t nearly as vociferous as the one from the aforementioned Thanksgiving Eve game.
Most people don’t go to every home game, even season ticket holders. People have lives outside of hockey. Ticket reselling exists. Not every seat is going to be filled every single night. The Devils play in the shadow of New York City so they are a destination for some visiting fans. People come to New York City and the surrounding areas at all times of the year. Most people don’t say “I have a week off in February, let’s go to Winnipeg”. And in hockey-crazy markets like Toronto, most visiting fans aren’t going to pay whatever the price they’re charging to sit in the nosebleeds, so you’ll likely have home fans in those seats.
Also, don’t get me started if we are talking about a game against that team across the river where they make up 40% of the crowd because its cheaper and easier for them to come to the Rock than to go to the World’s Most Overrated Arena.
The Devils don’t have the rich history like Montreal does. They don’t have Original Six clout like Boston, Toronto, or Detroit do. It’s not that Prudential Center is a bad place to see a game or that the Devils don’t have good fans. I think The Rock is a great place to see a game and diehard Devils fans are as passionate and loyal as any other fanbase. But it’s just different comparing playing in New Jersey to playing in Montreal or Boston or heck, even some of the newer venues like Vegas that have a distinct and sometimes even intimidating home-ice advantage.
The Ice Itself at Prudential Center Stinks
This is completely subjective and there’s no real way to quantify this other than what do the players think.
Who has the best ice in the league? Who has the worst ice? These are questions that the players have answered themselves in an NHLPA survey, but we don’t really have a definitive answer one way or the other where the Devils rank other than they’re somewhere in the middle of the pack. Much has been written on this topic. But what makes for good ice? What makes ice bad? Do the Devils have worse ice than other teams and is that the reason why they seem to be better on the road?
I do think it goes noted that in the most recent NHLPA poll, not only are the Top 4 arenas in cold-weather cities but they’re in arenas that don’t regularly share the building with a basketball team. But the #5 team in that poll is Vegas, who are playing in one of the newest buildings in the league and is regarded as the best. They also play in the middle of a desert. What makes their ice special that its noteworthy? Is it because its a newer building with state of the art technology specifically designed to maintain the ice quality holds up in the Vegas heat? Is it because their crew is working harder to maintain that ice quality than the Devils? I’m not in the building so I don’t have the answers to that question. But it would stand to reason you need that level of attention to detail in Vegas for the ice to be as good as it is there, especially when they have a propensity to play hockey well into May and June in Nevada.
About 1⁄3 of the league, or 11 cities, have shared NBA/NHL arenas. Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Washington DC, Toronto, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Utah. The Devils share an arena with Seton Hall basketball. There are other teams in the league that share an arena with a college basketball team (the Hurricanes and NC State share Lenovo Center in Raleigh, for example). I do think there might be something to the idea that the ice is worse when there is a quick turnaround from basketball to hockey, but with the Devils in the same boat as most of the league, I’m not so sure they’re at a distinct disadvantage here and this is a potential reason why their home record is bad.
My uneducated opinion is that the Devils have average ice that is better on some days that others depending upon outside factors (the local weather and whether or not Seton Hall played in that building within the previous 12 hours). I’m also not going to hazard a guess as to whether or not when a player loses an edge, is it because of bad ice or is it because we’re talking about world class athletes skating on thin razor blades at 22+ MPH and turning on a dime and wipeouts just happen from time to time?
The Devils Play Too Many Back-to-Backs, and Usually, One if Not Both Games Are At Home
One of the best aspects of being a New Jersey Devil, and something that has been a selling point for Tom Fitzgerald in his recruiting pitch to free agents, is that the Devils have the best travel in the league.
It’s a great point, as the Devils play within 100 miles of three additional NHL teams aside from themselves and geographically, the Eastern Conference teams are more condensed than their Western counterparts. In addition to that, Newark International Airport is a major transportation hub that is relatively close to the Prudential Center. Not only are the Devils hopping on fewer flights than most teams, most of those flights are shorter than half the league.
It’s a relatively unfair advantage when compared to the rest of the league, so to counterbalance that, the league typically has their Eastern Conference teams play more back-to-backs than teams out west. This isn’t always the case, but for this reason, the Devils are typically among the league leaders with back-to-backs.
Some of this might simply come down to scheduling, and just because the Devils don’t share an arena with an NBA team doesn’t mean they’re not impacted when, say, the LA Kings come to town and the options at the other local arenas like MSG or Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia are limited. But the general rule of thumb is that teams don’t quite have their legs in the second half of a back-to-back, and the matter is only exasperated if the team has to travel between games. And while back-to-backs aren’t exclusively home-and-home….it could be two home games or two road games, more often than not, at least one of those games on either end is in your home arena.
It’s a sound theory except for one thing….it doesn’t seem to be impacting other teams that play a lot of back-to-backs.
The Devils played more back-to-backs last season than anyone. The next closest teams were Carolina and Washington, who both had perfectly fine home marks. Those teams were better than the Devils last year. Next up was Minnesota and Ottawa, two teams that are closer to where the Devils were a year ago. One better in Minnesota. One worse in Ottawa. Both also having better home marks than the Devils.
I don’t think the excessive number of back-to-backs is helping matters, but I don’t think its a reason why the Devils are average at best at home. This is another one of those things that every team deals with to some extent and other teams have typically done a better job of managing than the Devils.
The Devils Get a Little “Too Cute” At Home / Are In Their Own Heads
This is the entertainment business, after all. And while I’m not saying the Devils are channeling their inner Harlem Globetrotter to put on a show in front of their home fans and they are taking a more workman-like approach when they’re on the road, I do think with some of the players that there is a tendency to get too cute at times. I think sometimes the players can be unselfish to a fault and make an extra, unnecessary pass. For the 5% of the time that extra pass gets through, its not fumbled, the defenseman is fooled, and whoever is on the receiving end actually beats the goalie and scores, it’s a highlight reel goal. For the other 95% of the time, its an intercepted pass or the puck is poked away, the defenseman adjusts to get a stick on it or block the shot, or the goalie reads the play the entire way and makes a great save.
I don’t think that the Devils necessarily play a different style at home vs. on the road. I don’t think they’re trying to only score highlight reel goals at home vs. on the road. But I do think that one thing can lead to another and things can potentially snowball when things aren’t going well. And when you’re not scoring and the fans start jeering, the players start gripping the sticks a little tighter and try to make stuff happen instead of it happening organically. While all of this is going on, the fans are getting even more vocal, both in person and on social media, and all of a sudden you just want that next goal so take a weight and burden off your shoulders.
This leads me to my final point.
There Are Fewer Distractions On the Road
The players are human, after all.
They have families. They have whatever is going on in their personal lives outside of hockey and on non-game days that isn’t any of our business. There are distractions. Life goes on.
I’m not saying they’re taking their personal business to the rink or doing a poor job compartmentalizing and leaving what is going on at home at home. But I do think once you get out on the road and you’re away from all that, we’re talking about professionals here. They fly out. They go to the rink for their morning skate, they grab a quick bite, they take their pregame nap at the hotel, they catch the team bus and they go to the rink for the game that night. And then after the game is over, it’s on to the next city. Maybe they have a team dinner on an off-day on the road or some sort of team-bonding exercise, but for the most part, when you’re on the road, these are business trips.
I don’t know if players are more focused on the task at hand when they’re not dealing with outside noise and distractions going on from hundreds or thousands of miles away and can just focus on the game itself. If they were, I think a lot more teams than just the Devils would be better on the road than at home consistently. Perhaps THIS particular group of Devils is well-suited to have that structure on the road and get into that routine, but I don’t think the Devils are particularly special in this regard when compared to the rest of the league, nor do I think there’s any tangible reason why this would be reflected in the win-loss record.
Final Thoughts
I don’t know that there’s any one specific reason why the Devils have consistently had a better record on the road, but I do think part of the maturation process for this group will be raising their level of play at home. It shouldn’t matter where the Devils play when their style of play theoretically plays anywhere. Quality goaltending, solid defense, a good forecheck, and timely offense plays anywhere. This season is young enough that once we start getting a larger sample size in 2024-25, things might stabilize and the Devils might be just fine at home as opposed to prior years.
Perhaps there is a more tangible, on ice reason for why the Devils have been better on the road that one can point to other than “the goalies just play better on the road”. But for the most part, all of the other reasons I listed aren’t necessarily exclusive to the Devils. Every team plays 41 games on the road. For the most part, the schedule is the same for everyone in that everyone plays everyone. Most teams have dual-use arenas like the Devils do. There doesn’t appear to be anything particularly special about the arena or the ice itself in Newark versus other parts of North America.
Maybe the late, great Yogi Berra was on to something when he said “Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical” and there is some sort of mental roadblock that the Devils will need to eventually overcome to get to where they want to be. This is a team that has been mentally weak in their recent past, after all.
That’s how I view things on this matter. Perhaps you view things differently. Please feel free to leave a comment and thanks for reading.