The New Jersey Devils lost in five games to the Carolina Hurricanes in the playoffs. As they also did in 2023. This post is a list of five lessons that I think the Devils need to learn from this playoff loss in order to be better next season.
The New Jersey Devils were not expected to beat the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round of the 2025 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. Even I did not think they would. I predicted the Devils would lose in five games in the series preview. Unfortunately, I was right. Some of how it happened matched up with the expectations laid out in the series preview. Namely that Carolina’s system would be a Problem and the forward matchups in particular favored the deeper Carolina Hurricanes.
Some of how it happened did not match up at all with expectations. I do not think anyone foresaw Luke Hughes and Brenden Dillon getting injured in Game 1. Or Jonas Siegenthaler being rushed back to the ice. Or Jonathan Kovacevic getting injured in Game 3. And no one expected the Devils power play to go ice cold. A fact that stings harder with the fact that the Devils, somehow, outscored the Canes in 5-on-5 play, 10-9. Most of all and perhaps most heartening was that the Devils made an actual game of it in Games 2 through 5 despite the injuries and the sheer dominance of Carolina in 5-on-5 play (yes, the goals do not tell the tale there). I can understand the People Who Matter who appreciate how the Devils battled and tried to grind out results despite the adversity.
Regardless, the 2024-25 campaign for the New Jersey Devils ended the same way the 2022-23 campaign did: a post-regulation loss in Game 5 in Raleigh, North Carolina. I smirk at the consistency given all of the changes the Devils made since 2023. The Devils will have to make more difficult decisions ahead of next season. What should guide them is to learn what I think are the right lessons to take away from their first round loss. There are five that come to my mind. Some of these echo what Jared wrote about on Wednesday, which makes sense as Jared was right. Please feel free to add more in the comments as you see fit.
Lesson #1. You Need to Have a Gameplan for Carolina’s System
Like it or not, the Carolina Hurricanes are both in the same division and the same conference as the New Jersey Devils. The Devils are going to play them multiple times in the regular season. With the current playoff structure and the fact that Carolina is really good, the Devils are going to continue to see Carolina more often than not in the postseason. This is not to say that the Devils need to blow up their team and intentionally try to build a roster to beat one team. That rarely works anyhow; ask Our Hated Rivals about Tom Wilson. But what they do need is a roster with the quality (more on that later in this post) to beat the Canes, and an actual game plan for how to handle how Carolina plays.
Carolina may have been outscored by one in 5-on-5 play, but they dominated the puck over the five games with the Devils being out-attempted 261 to 334 over the whole five game series. Game 1 and the first overtime period in Game 5 bookended the series with the Canes just owning the puck and forcing the Devils to dump-and-change the game away. The Carolina forecheck is fierce and they come at opponents in waves, pinning teams (Devils) back constantly. Their defensive coverage of man-on-man has been effective, especially against teams who are sloppy on the puck (Devils). Their forwards and defensemen commit at both ends, supporting with pinches and backchecks as needed. At their best, it is 18 skaters playing a 200 foot game knowing full well that one battle, one forced turnover, one mistake, etc. will open up the space for a shot – and the Canes took a lot of shots in this series.
The Devils seemingly figured out how they can beat the system in spots. Game 2 and Game 3 featured plenty of high flips out of the zone. Longer, slower exits to force the Canes to drop back and slow down the pace of their zone entires. Those were effective in giving the Devils some breathing room even at the expense of its offense since those flips were often retrieved by a Hurricane. In overtime of Game 3, parts of Games 2 and 4, and the first period of Game 5, the Devils seemingly figured out that they can beat the forecheck with some patience to draw in the forecheckers and skill to either beat them one-on-one or make a pass to a Devil higher up in their own zone or just past their blueline to catch the Canes back with only two or three skaters. That did help their offense bloom in those times.
The problem was that the Devils struggled to do either consistently. When they faltered, it did not take long for Carolina to take the game over and, in some cases, the score too. The issue with the Canes is that their system is indeed their system and the whole squad buys into it. All four lines do it. All three defensive pairings support it. They have done it for years. You know it is coming. Beating it consistently is a challenge in of itself. But it is necessary. Expecting Carolina to make mistakes or blow opportunities is not something any team can rely on. To beat Carolina means two things and the first is having a gameplan to handle how they play.
Lesson #2. You Need to Have Quality Depth
The second thing is to have quality depth and the Devils just did not have it in this series. Particularly at forward. Nico Hischier did his job. Timo Meier did his after getting robbed a heap of times. Jesper Bratt carried Haula and Mercer for five games. The Devils’ bottom six has been a black hole for months and it was a black hole in this series. Here are the final results of the six skaters that ended up following either Nico Hischier’s or Erik Haula’s lines. This is all situations play too:
- Stefan Noesen: 1 goal (tip-in in Game 5), 1 assist (secondary on Hischier’s goal in Game 5), 7 shots, 11 attempts, 82:31 ice time
- Cody Glass: 0 goals, 0 assists, 6 shots, 10 attempts, 70:28 ice time, 1 penalty
- Paul Cotter: 1 assist (primary on Hischier’s goal in Game 5), 5 shots, 11 attempts, 72:06 ice time, 1 penalty
- Tomas Tatar: 0 goals, 0 assists, 3 shots, 4 attempts, 46:52 ice time, 1 penalty
- Justin Dowling: 0 goals, 0 assists, 4 shots, 7 attempts, 56:13 ice time
- Nathan Bastian: 0 goals, 0 assists, 6 shots, 9 attempts, 58:01 ice time, 1 penalty
The combined bottom six: 1 goal, 2 assists, 31 shots, 52 attempts, and 4 penalties in five games. For comparison’s sake: Jesper Bratt alone had 1 goal, 2 assists, 20 shots, and 31 attempts in five games. Do not whine to me about Bratt when the Devils were dragging these six phantoms along in this postseason.
What about Carolina’s bottom six? Logan Stankoven alone outscored all six of the listed Devils forwards and Taylor Hall matched their goal output. The only Canes to end up pointless in the series were Jordan Staal (his thing is matchups anyway) and William Carrier, and only Mark Janikowski had fewer than 10 attempts at the net – and he played in only two games in this series. The Canes did not have nearly as many passengers as the Devils did in this series.
That was all just points and boxscore stuff. It gets worse when you look at the run of play in 5-on-5. I will use raw numbers to make a point:
- Stefan Noesen: 48-68 CF, 23-28 SF, 1.42-2.81 xGF
- Cody Glass: 44-75 CF, 14-32 SF, 1.08-3.47 xGF
- Paul Cotter: 46-92 CF, 21-38 SF, 1.51-4.12 xGF
- Tomas Tatar: 24-49 CF, 9-18 SF, 0.72-1.64 xGF
- Justin Dowling: 32-78 CF, 14-29 SF, 1.33-4.33 xGF
- Nathan Bastian: 40-81 CF, 21-30 SF, 1.63-4.21 xGF
It would be one thing if the Devils’ bottom six was dragging the other team down into a low-event quagmire of hockey. But the five games showed the Devils getting pounded more often than not when they were on the ice. The Corsi (shot attempts) is especially pointed as it can be used as a proxy for possession. Getting out-attempted by 20 or more – even if it is across five games – means the Hurricanes dominated the matchup. It was often worse than that for this sextet of skaters. This meant fewer shifts for them and more shifts for the top six that tried to carry the load and by extension more risk for them as Carolina could focus on stopping the lines centered by Hischier and Haula. This also meant more work for a shorthanded defensive group – which often laid at the skates of Brian Dumoulin and Brett Pesce – and even more work for Jacob Markstrom.
And, mind you, this is to say nothing of the individuals. Glass looked and played like he was Justin Dowling in disguise. Justin Dowling played like he was an AHL veteran in over his head. Noesen showed that his career season was more or less driven by being on the primary power play unit and spending about two months next to Nico Hischier. Paul Cotter played like he had the hockey IQ of a turnip; and his Game 4 performance alone seemingly was an effort to try to lose the Alexander Holtz trade. Tatar did nothing to beat the playoff ghost allegations. Nathan Bastian was the definition of a guy out there. That Curtis Lazar, Daniel Sprong, and any one from Utica could not replace any of these guys speaks loudly of what the coaching staff thinks of them.
Many of the People Who Matter lamented this group of six’s existence. Even Sheldon Keefe stated after Game 4 that to “expect (depth guys) to come out and dominate (offensively) is probably not realistic.” Forget dominating. The group looked like replacement-level NHL players. Not getting dominated would have been a huge step forward. They could not even do that. This was a big reason why the series went the way it did. If the Devils want to prevail in the future, they need upgrades at this end of the lineup. I can argue that Hischier, Meier, and Bratt may be better than almost all of the Canes forwards individually. I cannot argue that the Devils are better off with a twoish line team going up against a team that has four effective lines.
What about the defense? What about it? The Devils lost three defensemen due to injury. Forget the strength and conditioning staff, that is just rotten luck. Simon Nemec stepped up and ended up being one of the better Devils of the entire series on top of ensuring they would not get swept. Dennis Cholowski may be slow as a snail but he was somehow not crushed. Seamus Casey deserved more than the 5:43 he played in the series at 5-on-5. Even so, expecting your #8 or #9 defenseman to fill in the spots for #2-#4 (or #3-#5, whatever) is asking a lot. Can the Devils look to find a more trustworthy player that deep on the defenseman chart? Sure. But the bigger problem was half of the forward lineup that played throughout this whole series. There was no material difference between the #7 forward and the #15 forward sitting in the scratch suite. That needs to change for 2025-26, period. Even getting consistently competent NHL players for the bottom six would give the Devils more of the quality they need to beat the Carolinas of the league.
Lesson #3. You Need to Have Adjustments for the Power Play
This one was the shocking part of the matchup and arguably the biggest difference maker in this series at a high-level. The Devils lost the series despite outscoring Carolina 10-9 in 5-on-5 because Carolina out-scored them 5-0 on the power play. 6-0 if you add in their shorthanded goal in Game 2. The Devils’ power play was one of the best in the league this season. Even without The Big Deal and Dougie Hamilton, the Devils’ power play scored 15 goals out of 46 situations for a success rate of 32.6% – the best in the NHL from March 4 to April 17. They were certainly capable of performing – even against a great penalty killing team in Carolina. In spite of the questionable refereeing in the series, the Devils received 15 opportunities on the power play over five games.
They got nothing. Zero goals out of fifteen opportunities. Worse, they gave up a back-breaking shorthanded goal in Game 2 so the power play ended in the red. A net -1 for the whole series. Even one power play goal could have tied up a game (Game 2, Game 4) or put them ahead (Game 3 in regulation, Game 5). They could not even get that.
Believe it or not, it is even worse than that. The Devils not only failed to score on the power play in this series. They also failed at generating offense. Which is significant given that the Canes controlled the play in 5-on-5, especially against the weak-sauce bottom six put out by the Devils. It would be one thing if the power play was shutout because Frederik Andersen or Pytor Kochetov was fantastic. That was not the case. The Devils generated the following on-ice rates with their power play in the postseason; a massive drop off from their regular season.
- Shooting Attempts: Playoffs: 76.77 CF/60, Season: 120.32 CF/60
- Shots on Net: Playoffs: 40.4 SF/60, Season: 63.23 SF/60
- Scoring Chances: Playoffs: 46.46 SCF/60, Season: 76.89 SCF/60
- High Danger Chances: Playoffs: 26.26 HDCF/60, Season: 33.63 HDCF/60
- Expected Goals: Playoffs: Playoffs: 6.65 xGF/60, Season: 10.84 xGF/60
These drop offs from the season are huge. Enough to demonstrate how the power play was not generating much offense in the playoffs. Which would have at least tilted the ice for a bit and provide some respite. Nope!
It is true that not having The Big Deal or Luke Hughes hurt this power play. It is also true that Carolina’s penalty kill was great in the season and clearly great in this series. It is further true that the Devils just did not perform as they have been on the power play. The rotation they had in their 1-3-1 formation was their secret sauce in the recipe all season. Somewhere, I think Game 3, the Devils reverted to being static at positions as if Mark Recchi was coaching the power play. The Canes managed to isolate the puck carrier and force poor passes or poor reads to kill offensive situations. Setting up was a challenge as well, contributing further to lack of an attack.
What the Devils needed was some kind of adjustment or two to how they carry out their power plays. No, not a slingshot pass on a breakout. An actual adjustment beyond swapping Noesen for Dawson Mercer for a few situations. This could have been an instruction to have three Devils crash the net every time Hamilton is set up. Or an instruction to have Timo Meier or Jesper Bratt attempt a rush entry just to keep Carolina’s defense honest. Or just yell at the guys to keep moving. Whether these individual ideas would have work or not misses the larger point: that what the Devils tried to stick to was not working. Something had to change and it did not over all 15 situations in the series. And it was a big contributing factor to this series loss. For the future, the coaches and the players have to have some modifications to put in place when the original power play plan of attack is not working out.
Lesson #4. You Need to Play Like You Actually Know Better
One of my big frustrations throughout the last four months of Devils hockey is how a team made to be older and more experienced could be this stupid on the ice. Whether it was from the slow starts to not reacting well to certain game situations to some of the just plain dumb penalties they would take to other things. I get that mistakes happen. Brainfarts are a thing. Lack of focus is another. I just did not – and still do not – understand how a team full of veterans and coached by one can have so many of them so often. This was another factor in why this was a five-game series loss.
While the officials certainly did not have a good series themselves, most of the calls on the Devils were both legitimate and groan-worthy. From the three calls on Dougie Hamilton to Brett Pesce clearing a puck over the glass in Game 3 to Erik Haula’s absolutely brain-dead trip during a penalty kill in Game 5, the Devils were guilty of some really needless penalties. And the Canes punished enough of them to get back into games or take leads in them. It was somewhat poetic that it all ended with Dawson Mercer whacking Jesperi Kotkaniemi in the face. Even if it could be argued as a follow through, it was not at all smart from the guy with over 300 NHL games and played in the 2023 postseason.
The vaunted playoff experience of some of the Devils only appeared to be a real benefit in the forms of Brian Dumoulin and Brett Pesce. As much as I hated the trade, Dumoulin was a bright spot on the defense. While often pinned back, the Devils managed to only get outshot by 3 with him on the ice. That was impressive. As was Pesce, who absolutely justified Less impressive were several other veterans on the squad. Playoff Palat looked a whole lot like the Ondrej Palat we struggled to watch for 82 games this season. Erik Haula was not awful as he was, say, two months ago. Yet, Erik Haula’s performance still had the caveat of him being Erik Haula on and off the puck (I am still salty about that trip in Game 5, Erik). Hamilton definitely could have had a better series. I already covered the bottom six that included vets in Noesen, Tatar, and Dowling. Even Jacob Markstrom had absolutely bizarre decisions in how he played the puck – which burned him big time in Game 4 – and conceded some truly soft goals. This was most apparent in the team’s final game. He managed to play like he deserved to be pulled in Game 5 and drag the team to double overtime single-handedly. The duality of goaltending and man. I am still left wondering how the series could have gone if all of these experienced players played like they had the wisdom you would expect from people who have played at this level for at least five seasons or more.
This is also extended to the coaching staff. Sheldon Keefe correctly pointed out how bad the forward depth was after Game 4. Why did he decide to make zero changes to the forwards for Game 5, then? Did he expect something else for some reason? The team came out very poorly in Game 1 and Game 4 and that contributed to those losses. Was his pre-game talk that bad? Was the preparation that poor? Likewise, what did he say in Game 5 when the 3-0 lead went up in smoke? At least he took a timeout in the middle of that choke job. Keefe also weirdly chose Cholowski over Casey in Game 4, switched that in Game 5, and then gave them so few minutes as a clearly not 100% defensive group of Jonas Siegenthaler, Pesce, and Hamilton took on huge minutes. Then there’s the inconsistency of the gameplan against Carolina in 5-on-5 plus the lack of adjustments on the power play. All told, Keefe and his staff performed as the players did on the ice: not good enough in comparison to Rod Brind’Amour and his staff. I have a lot of respect for Keefe and I believe he has the skills, but his choices and non-choices left something to be desired in this series.
The lesson is not that the Devils now need to go in the total opposite direction and get younger. Or necessarily get less experienced. It is that the Devils need to find players who actually play smart hockey instead of only having the experience that suggests that they have some smarts. It would also help if Keefe and his staff coached as if they knew better too, but I have more faith in him figuring that out than some of the skaters, who are very much who they are at their points in their careers.
Lesson #5. You Always Need More Scoring
The playoffs are a time where team management is not in a position to really do much of anything. It is like a test for them. Did the front office build a successful hockey team? Did they win or lose because of how they were put together?
In the case of the Devils, the respective answers are not enough and they lost partially (or mostly?) because of how they were put together. The Devils did succeed in 2024-25 in that they made the playoffs. After missing it in 2023-24, making it in the following season was the primary goal of this past season. The Devils did that. This combined with the injuries that beset the Devils in March and April will likely be more than enough for the front office and the coaching staff to remain in place.
It was a flawed achievement. The Devils’ 2024-25 season was driven by an awesome first half of the season as the Devils treaded water throughout the second half of the season. When Jack Hughes or Jesper Bratt were not on the ice, the Devils scored just 110 goals and allowed 140. Or, using rates, the Devils scored 2.11 goals per 60 and allowed 2.68 goals per 60. With either, the GF/60 rate shot up above 3. With the two together, the Devils scored goals at a rate of 5.17 per 60 minutes and allowed 2.52 per 60. In other words: this team was leaning heavily on The Big Deal and Bratt. They needed offensive help. An issue more apparent as the muddling continued in January and February. An issue even more obvious when The Big Deal was injured in Las Vegas on March 2.
However, offensive help would not come. Why? Simply put, management did not think they needed it. On December 16, 2024, General Manager Tom Fitzgerald had a media availability prior to the Christmas break. In response to a question about the off-season, the GM said this as transcribed on the Devils site (If you prefer video, there’s this video of the session.)
We had boxes to check in the summer. We did that. We really like our D. We feel we addressed the goaltending to give ourselves a chance to be in games every day. We knew we could score. That was never a concern. More depth. More physicality. We did that. The ebbs and flows of a season and the ebbs and flows of production from certain players, it comes and goes. We’d like to see more of it coming to take some pressure off some other guys. We’re just a one-day-at-a-time team. That’s it.
This quote ran through my mind when the Devils were shaking the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes late on Tuesday night.
This quote was, in retrospect, a sign of what would come for the trade deadline. Fitzgerald said it himself: scoring was not a concern. Not when the team was struggling to get regular production outside of 86, 63, and 13. Not when the ebbs and flows of a season were blocked by rocks. Not when the team was flailing in games against opponents they should be beating. Not when the team lost second place in the division to Carolina in the standings; or when they came close to losing third place to Columbus in the standings. It was not a concern to the front office. Scoring was not a concern to GM. And that was all true before The Big Deal was injured in Las Vegas. The injury to Jack Hughes, somehow, did not make this concern any more of one to the entire front office of the New Jersey Devils. If it did, you would not know about it since they did not do anything about it.
With this context, the 2024 NHL Trade Deadline makes more sense for the Devils. Scoring was not a concern to management. So they went out and got Brian Dumoulin, Cody Glass, Daniel Sprong, a bunch of retained salary for Edmonton to get Trent Frederic, a new contract for Jonathan Kovacevic, Shane LaChance, and Dennis Cholowski. Bodies? Yes. Competition for a truly bad bottom end of the roster? Sure. Offensive help? Not at all. (Aside: And I again acknowledge that Dumoulin played really well in the series.) It was not a concern to management. What could have helped the Devils in this series where it was a one-goal game for large stretches of Games 2 through 5? Or a power play gone cold? Offensive help. Go read Lessons #2 and #3 again as to where it could have really helped a lot. You know, where it was an actual, real-deal concern for the Devils.
Since the Devils were eliminated by Carolina in 2023 and missed the playoffs in 2023-24, Fitzgerald decided that the real issue with New Jersey was a lack of grit, a lack of defensive depth, and a lack of experience. He fixed that to a point where it was clearly an overcorrection. And, again, did not choose to bring in offensive help even when it was warranted. No, Jack Hughes could not be replaced. I fail to see how that meant an upgrade over Cotter, Tatar, Dowling, or Bastian could not be done.
Contrast that with Carolina. Carolina did not win the Cup in 2023 and were bounced early in 2024, but they largely stayed the course. Same system. Same coaching staff. Holes in the lineup were filled with players they figured could fit in their system. And even they did not settle with their offense. Hurricanes GM Dr. Eric Tulsky swung big to bring in Mikko Rantanen and Taylor Hall and even sent a part of their core away in Martin Necas to make it work. When that did not work out and Rantanen made it clear he was not going stay, the Canes sent him to Dallas for Logan Stankoven. They even added a depth piece in Mark Janikowski. The recently-extended Taylor Hall and Stankoven each made big impacts in this series, Janikowksi was a fourth line scoring dynamo in the season and chipped in a bit in the two games he played in the first round. This is all while maintaining their system of play, which again, controlled a lot of the series against the Devils. It remains to be seen if they will win it all in 2025, but the Canes did not think their scoring was enough. If anything, Tulsky demonstrated that he is willing to take a ‘L’ and not let his ego get in the way of making team better with the Stankoven trade. And the Canes have reaped some reward from it as they are going to play playoff hockey in May.
We saw this with other teams by the trade deadline too. Not every contending or playoff-hopeful team does it, but a lot of them did this year. Colorado (Necas, Nelson, Coyle), Los Angeles (Kuzmenko), Tampa Bay (Bjorkstrand, Gourde), Ottawa (Cozens), Dallas (Rantanen), and Florida (Marchand) all made additions to their roster like Carolina that would, in theory, help their offense. Whether or not they were all successful is beside the point. Their teams went for more scoring knowing full well that getting that one extra goal can mean a lot in the postseason. A big part of what I call Fitzgerald’s softness comes from the fact that these other organizations found a way to make these moves happen or took advantage when they could while Fitzgerald openly said he came in second place and left a ton of LTIR room on the table for a second straight season.
How Tulsky built this team is a big reason why Carolina performed as they did in this series and why they are moving on after five games as the Devils are not. Now the attention goes back to Fitzgerald. I have called him Soft Tom since the deadline because he was unwilling to pay major prices for a trade to help his team beyond Dumoulin. He needed to be bold to spark his own roster. Instead, they meandered to the end of the season and were often overmatched against a deeper Canes team. Remember, Game 1 happened before the defense was cut down by injuries and that was one of the more dominant playoff performances you would see from a team in recent memory. Questions are correctly being raised about how the Devils can improve their team for next season. Undoubtedly correct about the bottom six, big contracts (Palat, Hamilton), and more. The underlying question to those is whether Soft Tom is willing to look past his own ego and make those improvements. My concern is that he is not. He built this team that just lost to Carolina in the first round. Fixing it requires admitting he got it wrong to a degree. If can not do that, the Devils will be worse for it and his seat in Newark will to get a lot hotter and a lot faster than you may want in 2025-26.
His own big lesson from this series is that his changes from 2023 and 2024 absolutely did not succeed at making the Devils better. He went for physicality and it meant diddly squat over the five playoff games. As it usually does, much to the chagrin of Ken Daneyko and those raised on Don Cherry tapes. He went for experience and it changed zero things about this series. He went for defensive guys and did nothing when offense became the more immediate need. I honestly do think the Devils roster is correctable to turn them into a contender very quickly. They very much played like one for 40 games in this season. But to do that, Soft Tom Fitzgerald, Dan MacKinnon, Kate Madigan, Chuck Fletcher, Martin Brodeur, Andy Greene, Matt Cane, and the rest of the Devils front office needs to learn and accept this simple lesson about today’s NHL:
YOU ALWAYS NEED MORE SCORING
As a suggestion: I can think of a player who can help with that. Go get him and go from there.
Your Take
As a postscript: faceoffs. In total: Hischier won 89 out of 164, Haula won 31 out of 52, and even Glass won 27 out of 52. Only Dowling (22 out 48) and Mercer (8 for 28, who did not center his line) finished below 50%. Sure, get centers, Devils, but this was not the issue you feel it was.
Feelings and facts are what we have left as the litigation, criticism, and recommendations for what the New Jersey Devils should do next can run from May through to the start of next season in October. For this post, I would like to keep it to the lessons the Devils should learn from this playoff series loss. You know the five I think the Devils need to learn. What other lessons do you think the Devils need to learn? Why do you think they need to learn them? Related: Do you think the organization will actually learn them? I can only hope they do, but they did not learn all the right lessons from 2023 and so here we are. Please leave your own lessons for the team to learn and why they do in the comments. Thank you for reading.