Hall of Famer Scott Stevens sat in the Prudential Center stands during Saturday’s matinee against Anaheim watching New Jersey drop its third straight game, 3-2.
As the Devils limped into its nine-day bye week tied for the fewest points in the Eastern Conference (43), I wondered whether they could use the time to figure out a way to extract the snarl from their former captain and inject it into some of the current crop.
For if you believe Devils coach John Hynes, that’s all that separates this underachieving group from the one that surprised the hockey world by capturing a playoff berth last season.
“I just think that when you look at our team in the first half going into this break, when you don’t win on the road as much as we have not (5-17-3), there is a hardness that you have to have to your team,” Hynes said. “A mental toughness, a hardness, to play in those environments and we didn’t have it in the first half and we need to build it more, whether it’s at home or on the road. I think when you look at our team, we do lots of good things, but when push comes to shove, we get shoved.”
There’s no question that the Devils have lost more than their share of battles this season in the hard areas of the ice, particularly in front of their own net. Just a day after a targeted practice in which Hynes emphasized net-front coverage, the Devils yielded two goals in which a Ducks player was left all alone in a high-danger scoring area following a defensive zone turnover.
At least it was only a 2-1 deficit after one period against the Ducks, as opposed to the 3-0 holes the Devils fell into in their previous two games in Columbus and on Long Island. Again, it was the failure to control their net-front area that doomed the Devils.
Hynes wouldn’t provide names, but he was clearly referring to the defense pairing of captain Andy Greene and Damon Severson when he called out “certain individuals” who didn’t show up ready to play in Columbus on Tuesday. They were on the ice for the first two goals against, neither of which goalie Keith Kinkaid had a chance to save.
“I think it really comes down to some of our guys, there needs to be a personal accountability to understand that that’s a big part of the game if want to be able to win games and not get behind—you have to be strong around your net front, you have to take pride in it and you have to have attention to detail,” Hynes said in his pregame media scrum on Saturday.
To be clear, Hynes wasn’t just faulting his six defensemen, though the group continues to struggle with all aspects of their job, from puck management to simply ending plays in their zone. On one shift in the second period (the stanza with the long change) against the Islanders on Thursday, defensemen Andy Greene and Sami Vatanen were on the ice for over three minutes, a mind-numbing exercise.
“It’s really a combination of D and forwards, but the players in those situations and roles have to do a better job,” Hynes said. “It’s even simple, little things. If you’re playing a guy on the half-wall and the puck moves low to high, we’re allowing players to go from being pinned on the wall to beating us back to the net front.”
Lichtenstein: With Playoffs Out Of Reach, Devils Fans Must Embrace Another Tank
I can’t disagree with any of Hynes’ analysis, except for when he was asked why this season has gone so differently when the vast majority of the team was brought back. John Moore was the only defenseman who departed, and while his skating has been missed, especially in three-on-three overtimes, he was more of a liability when it came to defending hard areas. When at full strength, the Devils returned at least 75 percent of their forwards, including eight of their top nine. And let’s not forget that New Jersey also lagged near the conference basement this season when reigning Hart Trophy winner Taylor Hall, Miles Wood, and Stefan Noesen were all healthy.
Yet, Hynes said, “you do have returning players, but it’s a different team. What I said at the end of last year, ‘Last year’s playoff was going to have no impact on this season.’ Every year is its own entity. And this particular group so far this year, we just haven’t had the hardness, the mental fortitude, the consistency, the attention to detail that you need to play with to win regularly in this league.”
For those looking to blame Hynes for this mess—the Devils have a 0.7 percent of making the playoffs, per sportsclubstats.com—the fan base anger is misplaced, in my opinion. General manager Ray Shero has left Hynes out in the cold to bear the wrath for Shero’s mistakes in personnel judgment. As I noted in a prior post, there’s just way too little high-end talent for this team to compete. They snuck in last season because Hall was otherworldly and Kinkaid got hot down the stretch. Moreover, Shero has not adequately explained how this season’s precipitous drop is part of his plan, other than to say some version of how progress is not always linear in a rebuild.
In Shero’s bid to remake the Devils into a team of speed skaters, the roster was downsized in terms of height and weight. Fans are getting tired of seeing their favorites like sophomore star-in-the-making Nico Hischier get bludgeoned by opponents without retribution, and I’m not just talking about the quick skirmishes that typically ensue. When their boys get shoved in routine play, fans don’t just expect a push back, they want the Devils to knock them down on their behinds.
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