The Matchup: The New Jersey Devils (20-17-2) at the Columbus Blue Jackets (17-15-6)
The Time: 7:00 PM
The Broadcast: TV — MSGSN
Where December Started
The Devils and Blue Jackets met in Newark on December 1 for what was going to be a great night on Brenden Dillon’s 1000th NHL game. During that game, Brenden Dillon got jumped in a fight by the net in what seemed like a rather dangerous play for someone who had just had neck surgery in the offseason. After the Devils got into several further fights with the Blue Jackets, and Jake Allen had a poor game in net, the Devils dropped it 5-3. This kicked off one of the worst stretches of Devils hockey in recent memory, with the Devils getting shut out three times in December, also only scoring one goal three times. Winning four of 14 games is inexcusably bad.
But that game against Columbus is a perfect encapsulation of the “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” issue that I hold against several Devils fans. That is: this team is soft, they won’t defend each other, they won’t stick up for themselves, etc. It may be the most blatantly false take on this team imaginable. To some of these so-called fans, the issue is not with the myriad players doing nothing for a paycheck, but it starts with the team’s Captain, whose teammates and former teammates alike have regularly sung the praises of. Fast forward to last night’s pathetic offensive performance against the Maple Leafs, when said Captain picked a fight with a 230-pound forward. The “Devils don’t defend themselves” crowd gave him no credit, as is typical of them. If you read about the fight from some Twitter accounts, you would think Matthew Knies took an axe and lopped off Nico Hischier’s head, rather than the reality that the two punched each other for about a second before falling to the ice, with neither seeming to actually land a real blow. You know, like most hockey fights.
But Sheldon Keefe correctly identified that his team’s Captain did a captainly thing and it was the rest of the team assembled on the ice that was too weak to respond. He quite literally said:
Do we need some guys to step up and show some emotion and show some balls and play with some urgency and competitiveness and step out of character? Yeah, we need more of that…I like that Nico did it, and hopefully it rubs off on the rest of the group in a positive way. I didn’t think it did in that moment, but you want to talk about gut checks, there’s one captain’s out there taking on a big guy. You know, we’ll see what we have with our group, but we need more guys that are going to show a little bit more.
Is it that other teams have Captains that get into fights, or is it that other teams have bottom six players that put a beating on their opponents while not absolutely tanking the team, whether on the penalty kill or at five-on-five? Is it that other teams never have a top line go a little dry, or is it that other teams have more than a line and a half that can score?
I will agree with others that I think the mentality of this team has been too weak, but I don’t think it’s reflected in the base physicality of the team. I think it’s literally in how they approach the game. When Tim wrote his “Diagnosing the Devils” yesterday, the part I really agreed with was on neutral zone pace. When transitioning to offense, the Devils are playing like they can walk the puck up the ice. Despite this complete lack of speed, they still end up with negatively outnumbered offensive zone entries and overly frequent turnovers, while almost never creating on the rush. They play scared of the rush game, which is a problem considering that Hischier, Bratt, Hughes, and Meier live on the rush. If Sheldon Keefe wants to make a change that positively impacts his team from his end, he needs to free the top six up to do top six things. Stop hamstringing them. Tim’s article eventually turns to defensive approach, too:
What’s interesting, is they are actually a very good neutral zone defensive team. Using the same A3Z micro stat data, they allow the second fewest carries into the zone against, and are seventh in denying chances at the blue line. Basically teams are forced (choose?) to dump the puck in on us. The Devils are middle of the pack on retrievals and botched retrievals, which leads to us being the 12th worst team at retrievals leading to zone exits. So basically, we are good at stopping the rush, but struggle against dump ins, which then leads to poor zone exits and we are back at the D-zone section above.
What I would like for everyone to watch is how quickly the Devils concede about ~100 feet of ice every time the defensemen are asked to defend a transition. I do not think the few carries against are the mark of a necessarily good approach. You’ll see this most with Siegenthaler and Hamilton: they sink so far back, they’ll sometimes be behind the blueline well before the opponent has even reached them. They almost never step up anymore, which was commonplace for Siegenthaler and also part of his bread and butter defense under Lindy Ruff and Ryan McGill. But they are very slow to get from the top of the faceoff circles to the goal line as a result of them sitting so far back (as if it’s 1998 and Siegenthaler is Ken Daneyko and Hamilton is just some scrub scratch box fill-in) that the forwards completely outpace their flat-footed selves. So it’s dump, bump, and turnover instead of challenging the entry and having the moving feet to actually get to the puck on time.
If the Devils actually play a skilled game rather than playing like an ECHL team with no passing ability, they might be able to string some five-on-five offense together. And when they do gain the offensive zone, they need to SHOOT THE PUCK. Don’t play it to the wall. Don’t circle a third forward high. Shoot the puck, activate the defensemen, get aggressive, and play to make plays. Not everyone is Colton White getting into their first NHL action in a couple years: not everyone should be playing to just keep the game in front of them. If they want to make plays, they need to get active and keep their head in it for every second their skates are on the ice.
It’s Columbus. Beat them by putting the puck in the net.