What Happened to The Devils?

[GlitchMarner]

Last season they were good and looked to be trending in the right direction. This season I kept thinking they may make a push for a playoff spot at some point, but now it seems like they're almost certainly going to miss the post season in 2024.

What are the reasons they fell so hard, and will they rebound next year?

Click to read more...

 

[LOFIN]

Andrew Brunette left

 

[TheDawnOfANewTage]

A lot of it is goaltending, the rest is bad coaching.

 

[doublechili]

It's relatively easy to stink for a while and compile draft picks and prospects and rise to the top of the organizational prospect pipeline rankings. And it's also pretty easy to then improve on the ice and make the playoffs.

It's the next couple of steps that are tricky.

And sometimes mistakes are made, or things that are expected to happen don't happen, and teams regress. The question is whether they bounce back or not.

 

[ijuka]

When you are trading for .892 and .895 goalies to try and improve your goaltending, you know the situation is rather dire.

 

[NVious]

Goaltending, if you put a sub 900 goalie on any top team (never mind all 3 of your goalies being sub 900), all of them wouldn't do great

 

[SwissFan12]

A lot of injuries, no goal tending, questionnable coaching

Basically, everything that could go wrong finally went wrong, just not their year...

 

[chizzler]

They went for it too fast. Last year was great, they should’ve continued to develope and then o for that missing piece this year.

 

[bringbacktheskate604]

Goaltending, if you put a sub 900 goalie on any top team (never mind all 3 of your goalies being sub 900), all of them wouldn't do great

I get the goaltending sucked but it's the same tandem as last season, behind a much shittier defense.
Most devil fans claimed that losing Severson and Graves being replaced by Hughes and Nemec would be an upgrade, it wasn't.

As a nucks fan I've seen bad defense and the devils are sharks level easy to play against. It seems that fans of teams with shitty defense always lay the blame on goaltending because it's harder to fix a dcore than a goalie.

And if we're being brutally honest, the forwards are mostly below average defensively and last year was a fluke.

 

[Raspewtin]

injuries, coaching, goaltending

 

[crashthenet]

They have given up the first goal in about 45 games. Goalies have been bad and Graves left. Hamilton injury compounds it. Young D men offensively competent but not experienced enough on D. Tough to blame Ruff.

 

[TGWL]

Bad coaching. Bad defense. Bad goaltending. Unfortunate injuries never allowing them to fully gel together. I'm not sure I view it as a big step back but more of an unfortunate throw away year due to circumstances that took place. It happens. They have decisions to make for sure this offseason. They need to be confident in their goaltending heading into the 2024-2025 season, and a defensive player on the back end wouldn't hurt.

 

[Mandar]

One year seems to be an outlier.

 

[HugeInTheShire]

I get the goaltending sucked but it's the same tandem as last season, behind a much shittier defense.
Most devil fans claimed that losing Severson and Graves being replaced by Hughes and Nemec would be an upgrade, it wasn't.

As a nucks fan I've seen bad defense and the devils are sharks level easy to play against. It seems that fans of teams with shitty defense always lay the blame on goaltending because it's harder to fix a dcore than a goalie.

And if we're being brutally honest, the forwards are mostly below average defensively and last year was a fluke.

Nemec wasn’t supposed to be in the NHL this year, Hamilton’s injury forced it. Devil fans in the off-season weren’t saying breaking in both would be an upgrade, that having Hughes graduate to the NHL plus Miller replacing Severson on the 3rd pair would be okay.

Had they known they were going to be losing Severson, Graves and Hamilton it would have been a different story, but people here tend to take what they know now and apply it to the past. Unless you think people somehow knew Hamilton would only play like 20 games and be done for the season.

 

[Dirty Dog]

The Curse of Timo Meier

 

[WaitingForThatCab]

Everybody wants to blame goalies but nobody wants to admit the team is soft as shit.

Think some of that might be immaturity, but some of it is definitely just a lack of ornery individuals.

 

[SeanMoneyHands]

NJ came back down to earth this season. Last year they overachieved.

 

[Carlzner]

The spreadsheet got accidentally deleted

 

[MakoSlade]

I am surprised no one mentioned losing Severson and Graves yet. That was the worst time to have two prime UFAs come up. There was no smart way to sign either due to term and $$$, that wasn't really an option. So 40 minutes a night we gone, and I think that rippled through the entire defense. Marino and Sieg have been pedestrian this year, and losing Dougie for the year hurts. 5 out of 6 of last year's top defensemen were compromised for a big part of the season.

Couple that with shady goaltending and the entire team was deflated. I expect things will be very different next season.

 

[NVious]

The Curse of Timo Meier

You can't win with Swiss players, give me a good old Austrian or Slovenian boy any day of the week

 

[Osakahaus]

injuries are the biggest reason why this Devils team sucks. Lets be real.

 

[justHypnos]

All offense team that lost its 70 point defenseman early on. When Hughes isn't putting up 3+ points they have no win condition.

 

[StickShift]

Injuries
Goaltending
Coaching

And ultimately not enough experience/leadership to deal with those bumps in the road.

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

They lost 2 of their better dmen to free agency, then lost Hamilton, didn't address their goaltending, didn't address the softness of the team and then injuries.

 

[Drake1588]

They didn't replace the veteran losses of Severson and Graves on defense in the offseason, and then suffered a key injury at the same position when their clear No. 1 in Hamilton went down. Their goaltending wasn't great on paper, but Akira Schmid was surprisingly good in the playoffs and they decided to let it ride. Combined, bad goaltending and a defense shredded of most of its experience really hurt that team this year.

Brunette left for a HC position in Nashville and the coaching suffered after his departure, but management didn't add defense or goaltending well after it became clear that they needed help at both positions to salvage the year. Lindy Ruff takes all the blame and falls on his sword, when the management probably should share in the culpability.

You could also make a case that last year, they were ahead of schedule and they shouldn't make rash moves today that cost them key futures.