The injuries hitting the Devils down the stretch are deadly, and with both Jack Hughes and Dougie Hamilton gone, the offense is going to struggle to adapt.
The New Jersey Devils have clearly done something to anger the hockey gods, and the injuries have piled on hard as a result. Losing Jack Hughes, Dougie Hamilton, and Jonas Siegenthaler to long-term injured reserve is devastating to a team with aspirations beyond simply a playoff berth. Now, debates will be raging about whether a playoff berth is even worth it, considering the loss of such talent from this roster will likely doom them to an early exit.
Rather than hash out that debate and argue the point of the rest of the season, I wanted to highlight one way that shows the significance of these losses, and that revolves around offensive impact. And when discussing offensive impact, this really comes down to Hughes and Hamilton. Siegenthaler has had a resurgence this season after a down year last season, but he is not an offensive dynamo. The Devils will have trouble replacing his presence on the blue line, but it is less relevant for a discussion about offense.
One way to show the offensive impact of Hughes and Hamilton is a graph comparing Corsi and expected goals. Check out this graph, thanks to MoneyPuck:
The way the graph works, the higher up on the graph, the better the player is at Corsi, and the further right a player is, the better they are at expected goals. So, players at the top right are the pinnacle of offense in terms of possession and expected goals, which is what we want. And when we talk about the Devils this season, that means three guys for sure and a fourth sneaking in there. Jack, Dougie, and Timo Meier have been the offensive gurus in these two areas, with Jesper Bratt lagging a little behind them but still posting very good numbers overall. There are a plethora of Devils who have good expected goal metrics but worse Corsi numbers, which are at the bottom right of the chart. They mostly comprise the rest of the blue line, and includes the aforementioned Jonas Siegenthaler. But for expected goals AND strong possession, it really has been Meier, Hughes, and Hamilton. And now, two of them are out.
It really is difficult to overstate just how much the offense will miss these two. To highlight it another way, here are both of their player cards from Rono at the time of their injuries:
The offensive impact is really apparent. Both are in the mid-90s on their player cards, which is as good as it gets in this league. Hamilton was not playing good defense this year, but he was making up for it with his play in the offensive zone. Jack Hughes was playing at an MVP level, playing quality defense but having some of the best offensive numbers in the league based on these player cards. It really will be impossible to replace the offensive production that both of these players bring to the lineup. They might be fine defensively, or at least as good as they were beforehand if others step up, but the team’s offense will be worse, and not minimally.
It will be really interesting to see how the Devils do on offense for the remainder of the year. They managed 3 goals and a scrappy win against Edmonton on Thursday, so they have shown that they will not be entirely crippled without these two. But will that hold true over more than 1 game? Let’s find out.