I hope everyone watched the prospect tournament that was apparently filmed on a Motorola flip phone. I guess that’s all they could bring on the bus – Stay humble kids.
You will see a lot of the standouts pop up in our ongoing prospect series. It looks like Utica will be much more competitive this upcoming season.
I thought I would touch on some more under the radar things that we need to happen to be successful this season. There is a wide range of outcomes for this Devils team and the downside seems to be driving a lot of doomerism across the fanbase. I’m not going to talk about health, or Luke, or put together a multi-page click through list – this is more me emptying the notebook before the season starts.
What is Depth Scoring?
The two guys who came out the gates hot last season, Cotter and Noesen, need to be more consistent. Cotter scored 6 of his 16 goals in October, then his scoring flattened out as the season went on. He also was limited in the playmaking department, putting up a Cy Young worthy 16g-6a stat line. Cotter is such an intriguing and somewhat frustrating player at the same time. He has all the tools: His skating is strong, he has outrageous hands, and has an excellent shot. What holds him back is ability to process when to attack himself and when to utilize his teammates and falls into over handling the puck or trying to do too much.
The first thing I’d like to see is for Cotter to just flat out shoot more. The guy can absolutely rip the puck, but he was only 9th amongst regular Devils forwards in shots per 60. He also had a 17% shooting percentage, and shot about 4 goals over expected, which will likely fall back to earth. Shooting more will help mitigate some of that normalization.
I mean… Look at this thing, even better LISTEN to this thing (and Bob Wishcusen):
Here he is showing off the wheels, one of my favorite goals of the year:
The second thing I’d like to see is better playmaking – and less do-it-all-by-myself plays that die on his stick. He definitely has it in him, remember this no-look pass to Nico against Carolina:
We also need similar consistency from Stefan Noesen this year, who was on a torrid pace through December, but fell off a cliff in January. He had 16 goals through December. 16! That’s a 33 goal pace. The bulk of that production came on the Power Play, that I wrote about here and a lot of his production for 25-26 could depend on whether they keep him on the 1st unit or swap in Mercer (edit: Mercer will likely be on that 1st unit to start the season).
If he isn’t on that 1st unit when he comes back, then there will be more emphasis for him to produce more at 5v5 where he was ranked 289th amongst all NHL forwards (not great, Bob). Some of that could get better naturally as his shooting rates were 5th on the team at 5v5 but his shooting percentage was 3rd worst. So if he continues to stay a bald and goated netfront god he should balance out his production more.
Here he is doing his thing:
(NOTE: most of the above was written before his injury announcement)
Part of me wonders if Noesen’s injury was part of his decline, his boots were never great to begin with and a groin injury can be devastating for skating. If I was a gambling man (wait I am a gambling man), I would hammer the over for Mercer goals, he should get that PP1 netfront spot and first crack at top six minutes. He scored 6 goals in March/April after he replaced Noesen on PP1, which is a 25 goal pace.
My Name is Jonas
The Devils had one of the best defensive groups in the league last season, ranking 5th in goals against per game (2.68) and 6th in shots against per game (26.4). I’m sure everyone remembers that glorious run in December allowing less than 20 shots per game. Take me back.
We are still some scoring talent short so we absolutely need this to happen again. And the lynchpin is Jonas Siegenthaler and his B-movie villain goatee. He has turned into one of the best bargains in the league and an absolute menace – if you look back at the tape from early last season, he was in the middle of nearly every scrum. However, the “always hurt” focus tends to be on Dougie and Jack, meanwhile Jonas has only cracked 70 games twice, and the past two seasons he has played 57 and 55 games respectively. Further, he has had alternated between good season and bad season during his Devils tenure, which would set him up for a bad season in 25-26. Needless to say That CANNOT happen, he is our defensive shutdown anchor. Even only playing 55 games, our Swiss secret assassin was ranked 6th in cumulative defensive game score. His defensive partner, Kovacevic, was ranked 12th and Pesce was ranked 44th (For context, only a handful of teams had 3 or more guys in the top 50 defensemen). As we all know Kovacevic was a revelation, but he’s out until at least January – so now whomever makes the team between Nemec and Casey need to step up their game.
I touched on scoring in an earlier blog, but we need more production from this group. We need Dougie to play a full season and put a few more in, we need Luke (when employed) to continue growing, Nemo to step up.. you get the point. Here’s a recycled chart from my Dougie love letter showing just how dire our goal scoring from the D Corps was:
I am excited to see what Brad Shaw can do from an individual development perspective as well as a systems perspective to continue our defensive prowess and extract some more offense out of these guys.
Speaking of Coaching
I wanted to see if Keefe put all the pieces together about what happened in January, but he didn’t really get into specifics in his press conference. The national media continues to point to injuries, but we all saw this team lose its mojo and never get it back after New Year’s. Keefe more or less said it was a consistency issue which, It my humble opinion, it is a blend of several things, some of which had been brewing all season that finally spilled over:
- I’ve beaten this subject to death, but the 5v5 and depth scoring dried up (see here about scoring and above)
- We stopped being violent. The Devils led the league in fights through December, then just kinda stopped
- The PP got a little cold and was 20% in January when you exclude a 3 for 7 against Boston on 1/22
- The PP was 17% in February
I think we have a good team, my friends. Is it a top 3 favorite? No, but we weren’t in 95 either. Time for these guys to take a step and I think they will.
Any other little nuances you guys think I missed?
Season mode activated.
LGD