In the last game of the season, the Devils gave home fans many reasons to be thankful the season is over with one of the more sad, lazy, ineffectual performances of 2023/2024.
Key Takeaways (The Summary)
- It’s a day that ends in y, which means that the Devils allowed the first goal of the game. The Islanders capitalized off a bad pinch by Kevin Bahl to spring Pierre Engvall and J.G. Pageau for a two-on-one rush. Pageau one-timed Engvall’s pass to give them the lead on their first shot of the game, then Kyle Palmieri notched a power play goal to put the Islanders up 2-0 before the end of the first.
- Despite two power play opportunities in the second period, the Devils fell behind 3-1 on the scoreboard after Brock Nelson found what four Devils could not: a puck laying on the ice, which he put in the back of the net. Timo Meier did mercifully score a few minutes into the second, but the Devils remained behind 3-1 as they headed toward the final twenty minutes of the season.
- The Devils gave up at the start of the third period. After outshooting the Islanders in every period all night, the Islanders drove the majority of play in the final twenty minutes and were rewarded with one final goal as Kyle MacLean jammed a puck past Allen’s pad, giving the Islanders their 4-1 victory and mercifully putting the Devils out of their misery.
- In the last game of the season, the New Jersey Devils didn’t give their fans a single reason to watch.
Essential Links: The NHL.com Boxscore | The Natural Stat Trick Game Stats | The Game Thread | The Game Preview, by Chris | The Game Highlights via NHL.com
Islanders score, 1-0
This game more than any other feels like I’ve become a broken record. That makes sense: we’ve had 82 of these to get accustomed to this Devils team’s brand of hockey, and shockingly little has changed from start to finish. Veterans or rookies, Lindy Ruff or Travis Green, Vitek Vanecek or Jake Allen, Jack Hughes or no Jack Hughes, the team played exactly the way they have all season, until they stopped playing at all in the third period.
This recap will be brief. The Devils lost in the same way they lost 43 other games this year. Nothing about their performance should surprise you. They’ve been doing this every game.
1-0, not us.
— New Jersey Devils (@NJDevils) April 15, 2024
In the final game of their 2023/2024 campaign, nothing summed up the season more than the Devils surrendering the first goal of the game off a two-on-one, on the Islanders’ first shot. Yes, for the final time, the Devils allowed the first goal, their 57th time out of 82 games. I didn’t do so good in math at school—that’s why I’m a writer—but a quick calculation tells me that they’ve allowed the first goal in 69.5% of games this year. With that percentage in mind, it actually feels like a miracle that their record is as close to .500 as it is.
Look—you don’t need me to tell you that allowing the first goal 70% of the time isn’t a winning formula. That cannot continue next season. Yes, the Devils naturally are one of the league’s leaders in come-from-behind wins. To be a leader in that category, you have to, well, fall behind a lot. Which is why in the space of an offseason, the Devils need to transition towards becoming the opposite: the team that scores first; the team that grabs the lead and chokes the life out of their opponent; the team that never loses when they’re in front.
They did not break the record by the way.
The record (since 1980) is 58 –– set by the 16-17 Avs.
The NHL stat site is dumb and only goes back to 1980, so the real record is actually 60, set by one of the mid-70s Caps teams.@BillSpaulding noted this a few weeks back. https://t.co/yhLfBjX58q
— Ryan Novozinsky (@ryannovo62) April 15, 2024
Right, that’s sports at its most basic. So what needs to change, and why have they allowed the first goal 70% of the time this season? Unfortunately, the first goals are an epidemic that have stemmed from multiple problems they’ll need to correct. To change this heading into next year, the Devils need:
- Better goaltending. During any given game this year, it seems like the Devils have failed in the precise way they needed to lose. Having a great offensive night? Allow seven and lose 7-5. The goaltending is good? Lose 1-0. Nevertheless, a consistent presence in net will lower the defenders’ blood pressures and allow the offense to go about its work without worrying that the first turnover is hitting the back of the net.
- Yeah, a better coaching staff. I think the coach’s role in ‘having the team prepared’ for puck drop is overstated. However, when it’s such a pervasive problem throughout an entire season, it has to have played a factor. Their pre-game process needs re-examined, from their daily routines to the practice they had two days before the game, to the way they watch video and prepare for an opponent. Something is off. The coaches share the responsibility and the blame.
- An attitude adjustment. Part of this could come from a new coaching staff. Earlier this season, it felt like the Devils would fall behind because they just expected to win, and–what’s this? The other team skated and played harder at puck drop? We lost 5-2?! Then, when it was clear the season had gone off the rails, they were just expecting to lose the moment the game began, so why try? They could play their hearts out and the goalie would allow four anyway. So why try? We’ve seen the why try mentality a lot lately, especially tonight. For all the talk of leadership and the positive influences guys like Brendan Smith and Ondrej Palat are supposed to bring behind the scenes, I haven’t seen it translate to the ice. Bring in new coaches and new voices within the locker room if you need to. Some of it has to come from within, however, and that’s Nico Hischier’s leadership group’s responsibility.
- Responsible defending. This is self-explanatory and also stems from coaching, but it comes down to roster construction too. Fitzgerald has work to do on the defense corps. If the goaltender doesn’t have to face a two-on-one nine seconds into the game, they don’t have to make the most difficult stop of the night within the first minute.
Power play woes continue (and end, mercifully)
How many times has a writer had this headline, or something close to it, this year? I imagine it’s popped up at least every third game since Dougie Hamilton went down with his injury. Though they popped three goals on four opportunities against the Maple Leafs, Ilya Samsonov and the Leafs’ penalty killers suck, and—say what you will about the Islanders—Ilya Sorokin does not.
Of course, you might’ve hoped that the Devils would’ve scored a power play goal against the League’s worst-ranked penalty killing team. That’s right. The Islanders kill just 71.8% of their penalties, good for about three goals against on every ten penalties. The Devils had three opportunities to beat the worst penalty killers available in the NHL, and a pretty good goaltender. But they barely tested Sorokin. Their first two power plays failed to gain the offensive zone multiple times, and while their third power play did eventually set up a cycle, it was so static that they couldn’t pull apart the Islanders’ defensive system to open a lane.
Contrast that with New York—the 21st ranked power play converting on just 19.4% of chances—who managed to at least get a puck through traffic and on net, which bounced off Brendan Smith and Kyle Palmieri to give the Islanders their 2-0 lead in the first.
Special teams, special plays, special players. pic.twitter.com/NAcduLsqVF
— New York Islanders (@NYIslanders) April 15, 2024
Pick a vowel, complete the word: B_D GO_LTENDING
Jake Allen was doing his best Vitek Vanecek impression out there. This, after I voted for him as the Devils best goaltender of the year (a low, low bar, clearly). He stopped just 14 shots on 18 total. Two were not entirely his fault, but a big save might’ve shifted the momentum back in the Devils favor. Two goals were entirely his fault—the third and fourth. That’s probably why Money Puck has him at -1.22 goals saved above expected. They estimated that the Islanders earned about 2.8 goals in their 18 shots to the Devils 2.4 expected from their 24 shots.
Allen played badly. But even if he had played exactly as Money Puck would expect, the Devils still would’ve lost. Though they outshot the Islanders 24-18, those shots primarily came from low-danger areas of the ice, and they were one-off attempts without follow-up.
Allen didn’t help their cause. You also usually need to score more than one goal to win.
Timo Meier will be all right
Timo Meier has struggled as a Devil. From scoring 14 points in 21 games after the trade deadline last year and just four in 11 during the playoffs, to the first half of his campaign this season, Meier’s start as a Devil has looked rocky to say the least. He’s also rarely been healthy in black and red. Last year, he wasn’t available immediately after the trade due to an injury, and this year he’s been in and out of the lineup with first a lower-body injury and then what the coaching staff described oddly as a ‘medium-body’ injury. Whatever that was supposed to mean. In the games he did play, he was clearly not well: Meier relies on his speed to open space and give him the time necessary to generate offense, and his legs lagged a step behind his usual pace.
Of course, as we all know, Meier is back. Since April, Meier’s scored 17 goals and 26 points, and he’s looked every bit the winger they acquired last trade deadline. He scored the Devils’ goal tonight, remarkable only in that it was the lone one, but whether a goal is scored via a between-the-legs deke or jammed past the goalie, it counts the same.
If Timo Meier can stay healthy next season, and if their next coach isn’t a complete numbskull, he will be an important piece in a Stanley Cup winning team. They have seven more years to take advantage. A lot of time, but the clock is always ticking.
Looking to the future (or I would’ve liked to)
They say that if you expect nothing, you’ll never be disappointed. That may become my mantra moving forward.
I wanted to take this section to briefly mention something we did not see against the Islanders. Or rather, someone: Graeme Clarke.
Yeah, Clarke didn’t play well against Toronto. He barely played against Philadelphia, but didn’t generate much in that time. I still would’ve liked to see him against the Islanders. For a team that’s struggled to score and whose season is over, I would’ve thought they’d use the last couple games to evaluate prospects like Clarke more completely. I mean, c’mon. Did you really see anything you weren’t expecting from Shane Bowers in his seven minutes of ice time? Did Chris Tierney make a difference in the same amount? No? Then why not play Clarke. The season was over. They lost anyway. You might as well give the kid another shot.
Is it that big of a deal? No. And yeah, it is. It’s a big deal because I just don’t understand the thought process behind the decision. Before 2023/2024, I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of what the Devils management team had going on in their heads. Maybe I didn’t always agree with them (but more often than not I did), but I thought that Fitzgerald and his staff went about their work with cool, level-headed logic.
Lately, it seems like their decision-making is driven by vibes, by voodoo, and by emotion. (The Lindy Ruff firing the most evident of the latter, as Fitzgerald spoke on and on about how difficult it was to part ways with his friend.) There’s still a good manager in Fitzgerald. I just hope he hasn’t learned the wrong lessons here.
Give Clarke a shot. See what Hatakka could’ve brought to the table. Hell, give Isaac Poulter a go in net. The season’s over, you can do whatever you want. But instead of giving hungry guys the opportunity to showcase their talents—succeed or fail—they decided to give us five minutes of MacDermid, seven of Tierney, eight of Bowers, and 15 of Tomas Nosek, resulting in one of the most boring, apathetic conclusions to a season of hockey I have witnessed in my 24 years as a Devils fan.
Your Thoughts
Well, that’s it folks. All she wrote. It’s the end of another season of hockey. Not the one that any of us imagined, but time comes and goes regardless, and before we know it the 2024/2025 season will be upon us. Hopefully the Devils look very different than the ones we had the poor luck to witness this season, but I’m not convinced. I hope their management team proves me wrong in a good way next year.
So, what do you think? Were you happy to see this game end? What do you think the Devils need to change for next season, and do you think Tom Fitzgerald is the one to do it? Who is on your free agent and trade target wish list? And who will you root for in the playoffs? (Will you watch at all?)
Let us know in the comments below.
As always, thank you for reading. For the last time this season:
Onward.