While it’s hard to fully judge this 25′-26′ Devils team based on the injuries to key pieces, would I be wrong to start believing it’s built like Ikea furniture? With some major components being Swedish and underperforming(especially Bratt) and the team collapsing while missing a few ultra important cam bolts(Jack and Pesce), is this team not as good as it appears in photos online? Also similar to Ikea furniture is the way this team makes me want to pull my hair out and or beat my wife(don’t worry I’d never get married, or hit a woman, unless her name was Sean Avery). Even when we go through the painstakingly hard process of contacting customer service, and receiving the pieces missing(ETA sometime after the New Year for Pesce, Jack and Kovacevic), will we be able to screw them back into place and restore structural integrity to this piece of furniture that was so promising at the start? Or will one of our neighbors waltz in in early April, lean on us and and our pressed wood walls we collapse again? There’s no shortcuts in building these, but did Tom Fitzgerald overlook some pages in the manual and skip a step or two?
The cam bolts I speak of
Let’s take a look at what the issues have been, and how they can potentially be fixed…
At this point it’s comical. Three straight years of the injury bug haunting the Devils. The silver lining in this one could be that we got them out of the way early. This is much more ideal than it happening in March or April. The Devils had built a solid 12-4-1 start when Jack went out, and if they can hover around .500 til the team gets healthy, that should be good enough for them to easily secure a spot in the spring slate.
These injuries have also given us a better glimpse at what we have and who we can rely on. It’s clear that Jesper Bratt is not a 1B option. Bratt who we all expected to step up in the absence of 86, has 0 goals in 10 games since Hughes’ departure. While he continues to produce at a point a game clip, only five of his 21 assists this season are primaries. In addition, Bratt has shown that he’s nowhere near the creator of offense we may have thought and without Hughes or shall I say Hughes-less, he has been close to useless. While Nico and Timo have stepped up to keep the Devils afloat, we can only hope Bratt awakens soon. If he doesn’t it will be a Blue Christmas without Hughes…
Similar to last season, the Devils have received nearly nothing from their third and fourth lines. Palat, Noesen, Cotter, Lammikko, and Luke Glendenning have not chipped in on the score sheet, or even generated much offense at all. Connor Brown and Cody Glass have been good, while Evgeni Dadonov’s inability to stay in the lineup, and look alive when in it have hamstrung the Devils.
While the Devils have one of the deepest D-corps in hockey, with two lock down D on IR, Dennis Cholowski has been forced into action. In addition the absence of Brett Pesce on Luke Hughes’ right side has hurt the 22 year old’s game. Luke and Simon Nemec are logging major minutes and have definitely had their defensive growing pains. Asking young D men to log 25+ minutes against teams top players is a big ask which would expose any young player’s flaws.
The Markstrom/Allen tandem has been inconsistent.There have been very few games where Devils goaltending outperformed that of the opposition thus far this season, one that immediately comes to mind is Nico Daws 4-1 win vs Minnesota and the black Friday Beatdown of Buffalo by Jake…
I didn’t love bringing back Jake Allen, but at the price in which they did I wasn’t mad about it. However, Jake seems to continue to struggle playing the puck, controlling rebounds, eliminating early goals and demoralizing stretches of quick goals in succession, and carrying one game’s success on to the next. His Jake’Al, and Hyde goaltending bi-polarity has prohibited the Devils from any prolonged positives since the end of October.
Since being seemingly rushed back from injury to action in Colorado to give up 8 goals, Markstrom has also been inconsistent. Giving up three or more goals in 8 of 10 since his return, Markstrom is yet to re-establish his groove.
Daws, who in his only appearance, a 4-1 W against Minnesota, carried a shutout halfway into the third, giving the Devils a chance to build a three goal lead. Buying the team time to score has been a problem for both Markstrom and Allen this season and yet another reason I would have liked to see Daws receive more opportunity and Markstrom, who appeared still injured upon return, heal up further. While his AHL numbers aren’t great, I wouldn’t read much into it as Utica is abysmal. With Markstrom and Allen jamming the twine, will we ever see Daws again? It’s a shame but he hasn’t received a fair shake at winning a job with NJ in my eyes.
Given the injuries, the Devils need outside help if they’re going to do better than barely survive this next month. With that said, not many teams are willing to make difference making deals this early in the season. Tom Fitzgerald should be hammering the phone lines as we speak. Names rumored to be available Ryan O’Reilly, Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, Brayden Schenn and Kiefer Sherwood, all would be upgrades if deals could be worked out. Salary cap is an issue I know, but Jersey has the picks and prospects to sweeten the deal in addition for cap retention by trade partners. The addition by subtraction method is always dangerous as well, yet shipping out Ondrej Palat and his $6m cap hit is an easy example of such method. Dougie Hamilton’s $9m is also intriguing to shed, even though his play has been streaky at best he still does provide value for NJ due to the Pesce and Kovacevic vacancies.
So what can the Devils do here? Do we sit tight and hope the magic returns with a healthy lineup? Or is it officially panic mode in Newark?