Not Good Enough: Why the Devils Are Trailing 2-0 to the Hurricanes

The Devils have dug themselves a hole against the Carolina Hurricanes, for a variety of reasons, but ultimately, it’s really just one reason. They haven’t been good enough.

The New Jersey Devils haven’t been good enough to beat the Carolina Hurricanes.

I can’t really say that’s a surprise. I can’t say that I’m shocked that the Carolina Hurricanes have jumped out to a 2-0 series lead. I didn’t think the Devils were going to win the series and judging from the comments in the series preview post John wrote, neither did most of you. Through two games, the results are what they are for the Devils.

Not good enough.

The Devils had their chances to maybe steal a Game 2 on the road. Chris broke it all down in his game recap and I don’t have much else to add aside from what I’m about to say. The Devils, a team that has struggled to finish throughout large portions of this season, failed to finish on several key opportunities late in the game when they had a chance to tie it. As a result, they lost the game.

I think there are other things you can point to as to why the Devils are down in this series though. The problem is that they all ultimately boil down to the same three-word sentence I’m going to repeat numerous times throughout this article.

Not good enough.

The Devils Are Always A Step Behind

The one big takeaway from me in regards to the Devils and this particular matchup against Carolina’s forecheck isn’t so much how Carolina’s forecheck is dominating them or smothering them.

It’s how slow, deliberate, and reactionary the Devils look trying to counter it.

This falls under the umbrella of “the little things” and isn’t easily tracked but how many foot races to loose pucks has Carolina won this series? How many have the Devils won?

How many board battles are the Canes winning vs. the Devils, as opposed to the other way around? How many times are the Canes pinching and taking a Devils forechecker out of the play to give the next guy a chance to come up with the puck, and vice versa?

How many times were the Canes able to just get a stick or body in the lane to break up a scoring chance? How many plays did they make simply from moving their legs?

I don’t have the number in front of me but its certainly a lot more than New Jersey have made through two games.

It’s the type of thing that is difficult to articulate but you know it when you see it. You saw how much the Devils struggled throughout most of Game 1. You saw how slow and indecisive they looked, both with and without the puck. You saw the extended shifts in the defensive end with third and fourth liners who shouldn’t be on the ice where there was too much puck watching and settling for blocks rather than pressuring the puck handler. You saw the Devils getting hemmed in their own zone and having to settle for icings. You’re seeing in real time how much the Devils miss Jack and Luke Hughes, two of the better skaters on the team and two players capable of pushing the pace and making some plays.

Yes, the Devils adjusted going into Game 2 and the effort was much better. The Devils did a better job of moving their feet, using their physicality correctly, getting in on the forecheck, and creating chances off of said forecheck. But there’s no such thing as moral victories in the playoffs. You either win, or you lose and go home.

Carolina adjusted to what the Devils did early in the game, the game turned in the second period, and the Canes never looked back. Good enough for Carolina to jump out to a commanding 2-0 series lead? For the Devils….

Not good enough.

You Can’t Make Self-Inflicted Mistakes And Expect To Win

I pointed this out in the postgame thread after Game One the other day but it bears repeating.

By my count, the Devils committed their 7th “Too Many Men” penalty of the season in Game One.

They also committed their 10th penalty for a “delay of game” due to a puck over the glass in the defensive zone this season in the same game.

Carolina doesn’t have a lethal power play by any means. They ranked 25th over the course of the regular season at 18.7%. Among all of the playoff teams, only the LA Kings were worse in terms of converting with the man advantage.

That said, Carolina did convert on a power play in Game 1, which only made the hole the Devils were trying to dig out of even deeper. And it was a power play goal scored off of one of those self-inflicted mistakes.

Penalties are going to happen. I generally don’t mind some of the hooking, grabbing, and tripping penalties because often enough, the alternative is a clean scoring chance the other way. Sometimes there are good penalties to take. Penalties you need to take.

These aren’t those.

The margin for error is small, especially when you’re outmatched like the Devils appear to be. You can’t afford to make things even harder on yourselves by playing dumb hockey.

Speaking of self-inflicted mistakes, I don’t really know where else to talk about this so I’ll bring it up here. I don’t know what Timo Meier was doing on the power play where Jordan Martinook scored shorthanded in Game 2. I don’t know what possessed him to pinch in that situation when he had to have seen three Devils players tied up in the faceoff circle, knowing he was leaving Martinook daylight in front of him. But Meier did enough to take himself out of the play and turn a Devils power play into a 3-on-1 odd man rush the other way that Carolina converted on shorthanded. I would expect that type of mistake from a rookie. I can’t have that type of mistake from a seasoned veteran like Meier in this type of a spot.

Not good enough.

The Power Play Picked a Bad Time To Not Show Up

I wrote last week that the Devils had no chance against Carolina if their power play wasn’t converting. Unfortunately, I have to report that it appears once again that I was right. At least through the first two games anyways.

Two Games. 0-5 with the man advantage. And worst of all, the power play is officially a net negative thanks to the aforementioned Jordan Martinook shorthanded goal in Game 2 that ultimately proved to be the game winner.

Yes, Carolina is the top penalty killing team in the league. Yes, they’re going to make things very difficult for you. Yes, I get that the Devils did not have Luke Hughes in Game 2 and he’s been a big part of the power play. And yes, the referees missed some egregious calls, perhaps none bigger than the Brent Burns headbutt at the end of the second period that went uncalled. I acknowledge all that, as well as the final power play against Carolina that was certainly dangerous, but still ultimately goalless as the Devils failed to score. Again, moral victories aren’t actual victories.

But when you’re struggling to score as much at 5v5 as you are, and when you are as reliant on the power play as the Devils are (something I pointed out way back in the fall), you have to deliver when you get those opportunities. You have to cash in on those opportunities. Winning on special teams has been the bread and butter for the Devils all season. They’re not winning there now in the most important games of the season, which is a big part of the reason why they’re two games away from elimination.

Not good enough.

The Devils Are Failing To Hit the Net

Even with all of that, its not like the Devils haven’t had their chances to score. But my biggest takeaway from Game 2 was simply this.

Can we please hit the net? Please?

I’m not just talking about getting bodies to the net and creating chaos, although that would be nice too. I’m talking about getting the puck on net.

In the latest example of “sometimes, the charts are misleading”, ponder this.

I get that this chart doesn’t strictly measure shot metrics, and I get that Bratt and Pesce did indeed have good games. I get that you would see this and assume Dougie Hamilton had a strong game. And he did….to an extent. He certainly fired the puck on net plenty of times.

The problem? He only hit the net once.

You would see the grade A chances that the Devils blew in the third period because they couldn’t hit the net. And yeah, its one thing for a career fourth liner in Nathan Bastian to not hit the net. He’s not very good. It’s another thing for Timo Meier, the highest paid forward on the team, to not do so on a critical late power play. Yes, the puck took a bounce on him. That happens. You gotta find a way to bury it.

Yes, a lot of this is a credit to how Carolina is playing. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about winning races to spots. They get bodies in the way. They get sticks in the way to redirect pucks elsewhere. They make it tough on the opposition. But they’re not unbeatable. Maybe for the Devils they are, but its also not like they’re doing anything particularly unique. They’re playing good, sound, positional hockey, and the Devils haven’t been able to hit the net as a result.

If you’re looking for why the Devils lost Game 2, you don’t need to look a whole lot further than that.

Not good enough.

Tom Fitzgerald Didn’t Do Enough At the Deadline to Give the Devils a Chance Against Carolina

Let’s turn the clock back to almost two months ago to the day when I wrote what wound up being the final article in a series of “trade targets” articles in the lead up to the NHL Trade Deadline.

I ended that article with this after saying the #1 priority for the Devils needed to be adding a third line center, which they technically did with Cody Glass although I didn’t foresee Jack Hughes suffering a season-ending injury a week later when I wrote that.

But what was my next biggest priority? Getting players to match up better against Carolina.

From that article….

“The #1A priority for me is adding forwards who can help them better matchup against Carolina in a playoff series. Why? Because the Devils are probably going to face Carolina and Carolina’s structure can create problems for them, particularly when the Devils do not have last change. Can the Devils add the right mix of players to put them in a better chance to succeed should they meet in a seven game series? If they can’t, the Devils will be a one-and-done playoff team and will have to try again this summer.”

Two games into said playoff series against Carolina, and yes, that certainly appears to indeed be the case. The Devils are on their way to a playoff series loss, with the only question being “In how many games?”.

I’m not going to go as far as to call Tom Fitzgerald ‘soft’ as John did when he recapped the trade deadline, but did he do enough to help the Devils match up against a Carolina team that they knew they’d see in the playoffs for months? No. Not nearly enough.

Cody Glass has been fine. I’ll give him that. I’ll also give him Brian Dumoulin, who has been pretty good as a Devil. I hate to think of the status of the blueline without him at the moment and overall, he’s played pretty well. I would not be opposed to either player coming back next season. Glass probably should be back as he’s an RFA. We’ll see on Dumoulin.

But the Devils had an opportunity at the deadline to reshape a bottom six that has been completely ineffective all season. Daniel Sprong has predictably been shown the bench after a rough outing in Game 1. That shouldn’t be surprising as Sprong has a way of finding himself in the coaches doghouse at every stop he’s ever been in. All the while, the Devils have continued to run some combination of Sprong, Nathan Bastian, Tomas Tatar, Paul Cotter, Justin Dowling, and/or Curtis Lazar out there.

In other words, the Devils third and fourth lines have been bad all season, and the best Fitzgerald could come up with was Cody Glass and Daniel Sprong? The best the Devils could come up with was to keep doing what hasn’t been working all along?

What exactly is Sheldon Keefe supposed to do with this hodgepodge of nothingness he has to work with? It’s no wonder he used words like “overwhelmed” after the Game 1 loss. Fitzgerald made Rod Brind’Amour’s job way too easy in regards to who to match up against and who you can more or less ignore because the Canes know the Devils bottom six is going to do nothing against them. They know its a very winnable matchup for them.

If you want to tell me in the comments that prices were too high at the deadline, as evidenced by the trades we did see, and that none of it matters anyways since Jack Hughes was hurt….ok, I guess. Those are excuses though for a GM who didn’t do enough to help his team. Losers make excuses. Losers lose games. The cap wasn’t an issue once Hughes went on LTIR and the Devils left all that LTIR money unspent for a second consecutive season. And the cost of depth pieces isn’t that extravagant anyways. The Devils should be trading any and every non-top 100 pick if it makes the team better now. Spare me any excuses in regards to Fitzgerald and how tough his job supposedly is. I don’t want to hear them.

Not good enough.