Earlier this offseason, the New Jersey Devils announced the hiring of Brad Shaw as an assistant coach, taking over defensive responsibilities from Ryan McGill.
It’s an interesting hire for a variety of reasons, but perhaps one of the biggest reasons is that the 2024-25 Devils already made big strides defensively as a team without Shaw. In the first year of the Sheldon Keefe era, the Devils went from allowing 281 goals as a team in 2023-24 to 220 last season, shaving 61 goals off of that total. That mark was good for 5th best in the league last season. The Devils also took a leap with their penalty kill going from the 10th ranked unit to the 2nd ranked unit. In short, defense was one of the strengths of last year’s team.
Part of the credit for that turnaround can simply go to having better goaltending than the year before, as Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen combined for 21.8 goals saved above expected. Part of the credit also goes towards having a better blueline overall than the previous season. I think it would also be appropriate to credit the players for buying into Sheldon Keefe’s system right off the bat in Year 1 and playing a more defensively responsible brand of hockey than what we saw under the previous regime. But I can also understand Tom Fitzgerald and Sheldon Keefe taking a step back after last season and while being pleased with said improvements, wanting to see if they could take this to another level.
It’s not a coincidence that the perennial playoff teams in this league are the ones that consistently keep the puck out of their own net. Now, there are different ways to achieve the same goal. Winnipeg is a team that employs the best goaltender on the planet, at least until the playoff games start. Teams like Vegas, Florida, and Tampa Bay have built perennial playoff teams off of a foundation of strong defensive play. A team like Carolina might not have the best goaltending but they make up for it with their forecheck and their dedication to playing their system. The Devils might have made the playoffs in two of the last three seasons, but they’re still in the process of building the framework of having that level of consistency year in and year out.
Enter Brad Shaw and in terms of assistant coaches, he has one of the more impressive resumes out there. A John Tortorella disciple, Shaw has built a reputation for turning promising young defensemen into great players and making notoriously criticized defensemen like Rasmus Ristolainen passable. From Alex Pietrangelo and Colton Parayko in St. Louis, to Zach Werenski and Seth Jones in Columbus, to Quinn Hughes for a year in Vancouver and to Travis Sanheim in Philadelphia, Shaw has had a direct hand in helping these players develop and reach their potential.
It’s fortunate timing that Shaw was available after the Flyers passed him over for their head coaching vacancy, going with a more experienced head coach in Rick Tocchet. I say fortunate because the Devils currently have two former high lottery picks on their NHL blueline in Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec. They’ll likely have another lottery pick joining them in the next year or so if and when Anton Silayev comes over from the KHL. Add in an interesting mix with two defensive defensemen who already have good reputations in that aspect of their game in Brett Pesce and Jonas Siegenthaler, another young defenseman trying to establish himself as an NHL regular in Seamus Casey, and experienced veterans like Dougie Hamilton, Brenden Dillon, and Johnathan Kovacevic, and it’ll be interesting to see what Shaw can do with this group as a collective whole.
Critics might be quick to point to the Flyers and their lack of ability to keep the puck out of the net the last few years despite Tortorella and Shaw’s tutelage. But I think its important to remember that this is a Flyers team that has been very open about the fact they’ve been in a rebuild the last few years. They’re a team that has worked in a variety of younger players as they’ve turned over their roster, to varying results. This is also a Flyers team that hasn’t had any quality goaltending the last few years aside from what Carter Hart provided when he was in Philadelphia, and he is no longer on the team. I won’t go as far as to say recent results don’t matter, just maybe take them with a grain of salt. And even then, the Flyers went from surrendering 294 goals the year before Shaw arrived to 276, 231, and 283 the three years he was there. The one year the Flyers managed to keep the puck out of the net was the year they managed to stick around in the playoff race for the majority of the 2023-24 season until they fell out of the race in the final weeks of the season. While Tortorella deserves credit for squeezing every point he can out of a flawed Flyers roster that, frankly, might have 1/3 of the talent the Devils have had, it should be mentioned that Shaw had a hand in that ‘success’, for lack of a better term, as well.
Still, there’s more to being good defensively than having good individual players. Florida is an example of a team that plays great team defense, regardless of personnel on the ice. But that does get lost in the shuffle a little bit because being good defensively doesn’t quite pop visually like Florida’s overwhelming physicality and forecheck might.
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in X’s and O’s and what Shaw will specifically bring to the table in terms of positioning, stick work, shutting down passing lanes, and using the body to make plays defensively. But I do think there’s a difference between being a good defensive team and being a championship-caliber defensive team, and while the Devils made improvements, they’re not quite on that Panthers level of playing elite-level team defense. I think that’s that next step that Fitzgerald and Keefe are trying to get out of this group and part of the reason why they made the change from McGill to Shaw.
Last year’s Devils showed flashes of brilliant defensive play. They had a stretch last December where they were dominant defensively and picked up wins over the Kings, Rangers, Blackhawks, and Penguins. They were still good defensively even when everything else regressed after the Christmas break, but I’d be hard pressed to say the Devils reached the levels of what they showed during that pre-Christmas stretch. I think if one were to ask Keefe, he’d want to see more consistency in that area.
But like I just said, there’s a difference between that and being smothering defensively in the most important games. There’s a difference between that and being relentless to win those 50/50 puck battles. There’s a difference between that and outskating the other team to spots on the ice.
Shaw’s defenses in St. Louis were excellent, but the Blues also didn’t breakthrough and win a championship until after he left to join Tortorella in Columbus. I don’t know how much I should blame Shaw, an assistant coach, for St. Louis’s inability to break through against the Blackhawks and Kings in the early 2010s when those teams were winning championships, but its not like Shaw has had zero success either. The Blues did win some playoff series under his watch. Shaw was a part of Columbus pulling off one of the greatest upsets in playoff history with a first round sweep of the Lightning in 2019. The Blue Jackets did beat the Toronto Maple Leafs in the bubble. I know its easy to dunk on the Maple Leafs for losing a series, given their track record, but it did happen.
Let’s not get things twisted. Shaw’s top priority should be to find a way to help Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec gain additional levels to their game, given their importance to the franchise long-term. But at some point, the Devils are going to get into a best-of-seven playoff series and they’re going to have to raise their game defensively to keep the opposition off of the scoreboard and give the Devils a chance to win. Time will tell whether or not Shaw will be able to get the team, collectively, to achieve that. Given his history elsewhere and his ability to work with all sorts of defensemen with varying skill sets, I think an argument could be made that he was the most important addition the Devils made this offseason.