The New Jersey Devils have struggled in 2025 with not just defending leads, but playing strong defense in general. What exactly has gone wrong with the team that started out the season much stronger than this?
Turning the puck over. Not clearing the zone when the opportunity is present. Allowing late goals in any period. The inability to hold onto a lead and close out a game.
Any of these seem familiar?
For anyone who has watched the New Jersey Devils at least semi-regularly since the turn of the calendar year, I’m sure the answer is yes. The team seemed to be firing on all cylinders at the end of December, but 2025 has brought not only a slew of bad luck, but also bad play to go along with it. So what’s different? What exactly is going wrong?
I’m not sure there’s one easy answer here; if there was, the Devils probably would have figured it out and corrected the matter by now. Obviously losing a top center in Jack Hughes and two regular defenders in Jonas Siegenthaler and Dougie Hamilton has played a role in the decline of the team’s defending abilities. All three of those players were major minute eaters for the Devils, and Siegenthaler in particular had been instrumental in playing strong defense earlier in the year. Yet even his absence can’t be the sole reason for the drop off, as he played a full month in 2025 before he was lost for the regular season with injury. Jack’s defense has improved to the point that he’s a regular on the penalty kill, but even after he got hurt, that group has still been good, so him being out also isn’t the entire problem.
Maybe the fact is that the Devils defensemen just aren’t that good without the two who are missing. Perhaps Johnny Kovacevic overachieved, or was carried by Siegs. Maybe Luke Hughes is still a bit too green. Could Brenden Dillon be slowing down too much to be effective due to the mileage on him from his career? There’s some truth to most of the above possibilities, with the exception of Luke, because he has turned his game up as of late. Even Brett Pesce, who was solid as a rock and making plays the other defenders didn’t this season has seen some struggles as of late with his play. So perhaps most of the blame should lay with the guys who have the word “defense” in their position title.
Even with their being some blame to lay on the defenders, I don’t think it’s entirely their fault. One aspect of why I believe the team is struggling is their speed, or lack thereof. GM Tom Fitzgerald went out this summer and brought in some heavier upgrades at the cost of the speed that had defined the team over the last half a decade or so. I don’t want to pick on Ondrej Palat (or maybe I do at this point), as he wasn’t one of those summer signings, but he provided a prime example of the effect the decreased speed is having on the team’s overall ability to defend. Here’s the Vancouver game tying goal from Monday’s game:
Around three to four seconds into that clip, you can see the move from the Canucks player that begins to leave Palat in the dust. It’s not unlike something that Luke Hughes does in games, using his speed to create a shooting lane; whereas some teams would have players out there who could stick with the shooter, the Devils instead had Palat. You can certainly assign some blame to the Devils in front of the net for not clearing the puck away. You can also assign some to Jacob Markstrom, who has been unable to stop a beach ball since returning from injury. The fact of the matter is that if the team had a faster player on the ice who could have stuck with Vancouver player, maybe then that puck doesn’t get anywhere close to the net. Instead, maybe it gets blocked or poke checked out to the neutral zone, or deflected out of play. How many times when the Devils net is empty do other teams use their speed and skill to strip the puck at the blue line and put it in at the other end?
We all know the NHL is a balance of different abilities: skill, size, speed, strength and more. The Devils perhaps needed some course correction after their 2023 playoff exit, and with how disappointing 2023-24 was. Fitzgerald may have overcorrected and pushed the team too far away from its original identity. Too much speed was sacrificed for strength, toughness and grit; why else would Kurtis MacDermid get three seasons? Now the team is a disjointed unit of some players who can play a fast game, and others who can’t either due to not thinking the game that fast, not being able to move that fast, or both. You could also attribute some of this issues to why the team has trouble scoring in some games.
The supporting cast to the core also has not gotten the job done this season, and some of that will likely change this summer regardless of how far the Devils go in this campaign. Hopefully, people in positions of power related to the Devils are taking notice that the pendulum needs to swing in the other direction. Today’s NHL is a game that requires speed, and in my eyes, the Devils need some more quickness to be able to effectively defend and prevent late game collapses.
What are your thoughts on the Devils and their struggles on defense; do you think it’s more about the personnel? Are you also under the impression that the loss of speed in the lineup is attributing to the struggles? Do you think the goaltending is more the concern? Is it something else entirely in your mind? Leave any and all comments down below and thanks as always for reading!