Are the Devils Doing More Harm Than Good Long-Term By Playing Better Down the Stretch?

Let’s take a look at a few key stats for the New Jersey Devils since they returned from the Olympic Break late last month.

The Devils have a 8-5-0 record. In terms of quality of opponent, their most impressive wins are over Boston and Los Angeles, two teams fighting for their playoff lives, and last night against one of the best teams in the league on the road in Dallas.

The Devils are averaging 3.54 goals per game in those 12 contests. They now sit 27th in the NHL on the season with 2.65 goals per game. Leading the way has been Jack Hughes with 21 points in 13 games. Timo Meier has six goals since the break, Nico Hischier has 5 goals, and Jesper Bratt has 16 points in 13 games. The Devils best players have been their best players of late.

The Devils are surrendering 2.92 goals per game in that stretch, which if extrapolated over an entire season would be the 9th best in the league. The Devils currently sit 15th in the league with goals allowed per game at 3.03 goals. Jacob Markstrom, who has gotten the bulk of the starts in net since the break, has posted an .891 since the Olympics, which isn’t great but is a slight improvement over his .884 on the season. Jake Allen was at .920 over three appearances before last night’s dud in Dallas, while he is .906 on the season.

Sheldon Keefe has opened up the Devils offense quite a bit since the team returned from the Olympics. They’re generating more attempts off the rush than they were earlier in the season. The Devils are finishing more of those chances. The team has looked probably the best they have looked since the team started out the season 12-4-1.

It would be easy to look at the teams they’ve beaten and not be all that impressed with their body of work. After all, they’ve beaten the Rangers twice. The Rangers stink. They beat a bad Blues and bad Maple Leafs team. They beat a Florida team that clearly isn’t the same Florida team that won the last two Stanley Cups. Meanwhile, the Devils lost to teams heading for the playoffs in Buffalo and Pittsburgh. They got shut out by a Detroit team missing Dylan Larkin. They were lucky to avoid a shutout in Washington when an otherwise meaningless goal by Jesper Bratt in the final minute of regulation saved the Devils from being shutout an eighth time this season. For good measure, they also lost at home to the lowly Flames.

It would also be easy to acknowledge its the dog days of the season, the Devils are very much playing out the string, and any ‘pressure’ that comes with the day-to-day ebbs and flows of the season itself is likely gone now that the results don’t matter a whole heck of a lot.

Still, when you look at the totality of the picture since the Olympic break, the Devils look closer to being the team that Tom Fitzgerald and Sheldon Keefe likely envisioned when they began the season. There’s a saying that you’re never quite as good as you look at your best when everything is going right, nor are you as bad as you are when nothing is going your way. The Devils might not be all that good at the end of the day, but they’re also probably not as bad as they looked throughout December and January when nobody was finishing their chances, they weren’t generating much offensively, and Markstrom was giving them little to no chance of winning more often than not. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle.

I’m not trying to suggest that playing good hockey is a bad thing. I don’t even know that I would go out of my way to call whatever it was we saw last night in Dallas good hockey. I’d rather see this team win games than not win games though and we’re at the point where I don’t really care how the sausage is made. You know if you’ve been reading my work for a long time that I care more about real goals they scored last night than the expected goals they haven’t scored all season.

I’m also not going to suggest that this article and my feelings on the team in general is draft lottery related. I don’t mean any disrespect to Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg as prospects, but I think its better for the team long-term to be playing good hockey, winning some games, and building towards something even if it costs them a few ping pong ball combinations in the lottery at the end of the day. There’s not enough of a difference between having the 4th best odds versus the 11th best odds where I’d want to approach games wanting to lose. Not to mention, if the Devils finish in the bottom 11 in the standings, they’ll still have a shot of moving up to the Top 2 anyways. This is something that happened last year with the Islanders moving up from 10th to 1st and picking Matthew Schaefer and that worked out well for them. However the draft lottery plays out and how it pertains to the Devils will play itself out, and to me, its not worth losing sleep over.

The one thing that does concern me though is that the decision makers in this organization, from David Blitzer to Tom Fitzgerald to Sheldon Keefe and everyone in between, looks at a final 25 game or so stretch of hockey where the Devils didn’t embarrass themselves night in and night out and declare that everything is fine.

What concerns me is that they’ll point to injuries in the middle part of the season and use that as an excuse for why the team was as bad as they were in December and January. That’s not to say that injuries can’t be a reason why the team was middling. Teams are going to be worse without their best players and losing players like Jack Hughes and Brett Pesce are notable losses. But the warning signs persisted when the Devils got Jack Hughes back from his hand injury. They were still there when Brett Pesce returned from his hand injury. Injuries alone don’t tell the whole story of the 2025-26 New Jersey Devils, and blaming your shortcomings on them would be ill-advised.

What concerns me is that once the games mean something again next season, the head coach will revert back to an approach that is too conservative and stifles offense when the Devils current approach fits their roster better. It concerns me that it took until Game 58 or so of the regular season to make any adjustments to Keefe’s system. Had adjustments come 20-25 games earlier, the Devils might still be in the playoff race this season.

What concerns me is that when the games mean something again next season, the players will grip their sticks a little tighter and all of a sudden a 3 game scoreless drought becomes a 15 game scoreless drought. Why? Because it’s something we’ve seen with how streaky this group has been, time and again.

What concerns me is that a GM, who has incorrectly said in the past that offense isn’t a problem with this team, will look at an otherwise meaningless stretch of the schedule where the Devils are pumping in goals left and right, put his feet up, declare the problem to be solved, and disappears to his cottage for the summer while everybody else in a competitive Eastern Conference is making moves to get better.

What concerns me is that ownership will give this general manager yet another opportunity to operate as he sees fit now that the team looks better. It concerns me that they’ll give Fitzgerald, Dennehy, and Castron another draft class to botch. Another offseason for Fitzgerald to dig the proverbial hole deeper. Another offseason of this “will they or won’t they” trade Dougie Hamilton awkwardness. Another offseason of head-scratching quotes from the GM burying a young player like Simon Nemec before trading him away. Another summer of acquiring grinders and playoff-style players instead of addressing the hole in the Top Six that has been there since they traded away Tyler Toffoli two and a half years ago.

What concerns me is that all parties involved, none of which seem inclined to do anything of substance, will look at the 12-4-1 stretch and the post-Olympic stretch, and declare that is what this Devils team is while simultaneously ignoring that stretch in the middle that makes up the other half of the season.

I’m not saying that the Devils current level of play is a mirage or a fluke or fake or anything like that. But I do think the potential is there for the parties that matter to be lulled into a false sense of security that the Devils problems are all of a sudden magically solved. I do think the Devils have had enough prolonged stretches of ineptitude both this season and last year to where I can’t simply write off that prolonged poor play as a fluke. It’s part of who they are, just like the good stretches are part of who they are. It’s why the Devils are a middling team instead of a legitimate contender. It’s why they’re so frustrating to watch day in and day out. Because they show those flashes of just how good they could be, only to follow it up with a five game stretch where it looks like its the first time any of them have ever played the sport of hockey before.

If you were of the mindset that Fitzgerald needed to go, or Keefe needed to go, or everyone needed to go a month ago, is this recent stretch where they’re mostly beating up on bad teams enough to convince you that they should stay? That things should remain status quo going into 2026-27 and beyond?

For me, the answer to that question is a resounding no.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to see the Devils win, even though they have no shot at the playoffs.

I just don’t want them to take the wrong lessons away from playing better down the stretch of a lost season.

Are the Devils Doing More Harm Than Good Long-Term By Playing Better Down the Stretch?

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