2023-24 New Jersey Devils: What Went Wrong?

Every facet of the team suffered from marked inconsistency. Special teams and goaltending may be the best examples. The Devils led the NHL in power-play percentage for most of the season’s first six weeks. Shortly after, Hamilton was injured, and the power play began to dip. Missing Jack Hughes, Hischier, and Meier for long stretches diminished the potency of the unit.

Rookie Luke Hughes struggled for a time as quarterback of the power play, but without a suitable replacement or a decision to go to five forwards, he was forced to push through. That decision will benefit the team in the long run but probably cost them games in the short run. Finishing tenth in the NHL in power-play percentage is reasonable, and up three spots from last season, but the team’s 5v5 play was not at last season’s level, so the man advantage was essential. The inability to right that ship is a large part of what cost them the playoffs.

Scoring was not supposed to be an issue on a team as talented as the Devils. Last season, they finished fourth in the NHL in goals per game. This season, they sit in 13th place. The plan coming into the campaign was to cover up an inexperienced defense with the ability to outscore opponents. That plan never fully materialized. The team scored 25 fewer goals than last season and 20 fewer at 5v5. Last season, the team was second in goal differential with a +58. This season, they finished -25 overall and -26 on home ice, which ranks 26th in the league.

The team was plagued with inconsistent goaltending from the start. After being dominated by the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2023 Playoffs, the Devils doubled down on goaltenders Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid. Vanecek never regained his prolific form from the 2022-23 regular season when he made timely saves and kept the Devils comfortable on the attack.

Losing Hamilton and other veteran defensemen put too big a burden on the goaltender for Vanecek to handle. Schmid and fellow rookie Nico Daws alternated between returning to their heroic efforts and demonstrating expected inconsistency largely due to their youth and inexperience. Of 69 goalies who played at least 900 NHL minutes this season, Vanecek ranked 61st in save percentage, 54th in goals-against average, and 69th in high-danger save percentage. Through the trade deadline, the Devils were 31st in save percentage and 32 in high-danger save percentage as a team.

Inaction by the General Manager

The delay in taking action to address the immediately obvious problems had a big hand in costing the Devils an opportunity to compete for a playoff spot during the last few weeks of the season. Instead, management was patient to a fault, seeming to forego the opportunity for improvement by seeking only large-scale change or being steadfast that their play would improve. It did not, and the failure to make early waiver claims and take calculated risks on free agents or early trades left the team without the necessary reinforcements to weather the perfect storm of injuries, inconsistency, and youth.

Two seasons ago, when goalies were dropping like flies, Fitzgerald kept adding netminders to find a fit, remarking that he felt the locker room deserved to be given a chance based on their play. This season, despite nearly $9 million in available cap space following Hamilton’s injury, general manager Tom Fitzgerald chose to wait until the trade deadline before making any significant moves. At the deadline, the team added two goaltenders while trading away their leading scorer, sending a mixed message to the locker room. Selling off Toffoli was correct, even if they could not gain a first-round draft pick. However, there is no reason they did not add players like Anthony Duclair or Jason Zucker earlier or cheaply at the deadline.

Making a coaching change is never an easy decision. Making a change mid-season with a team that, when healthy, had a returning core that finished third overall in the NHL last season is even more fraught. Ruff’s job was not extinguished due to one final act or one particular game; it was an accumulation of the diminishing standards and level of play over time. If the Devils wanted a chance to reap the benefits of a coaching change, they should have done it after the home loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning as the team was heading to the West Coast.

They spent a week in California with games against the San Jose Sharks and the Anaheim Ducks, finishing on national television with the Los Angeles Kings. Sending a new coach on the road with an opportunity to install a new system, bond with the team, and start his tenure against lesser opponents would have set Travis Green up for success.

Instead, Ruff was hastily fired after returning to New Jersey following the loss to the Kings, and Green was thrust into the head coaching role with one day to prepare for the Florida Panthers and less than a week until the trade deadline. Even that extra week would have allowed Fitzgerald to evaluate the team under Green and see whether they should be buyers or sellers. Instead, by hedging his bet and waiting, then promoting the associate coach rather than hiring a coach from outside, the Devils never got a bump from change behind the bench like the Islanders did and settled right back into a mediocrity that festered all season.

Combined, the Devils’ failure to weaponize the long-term injured reserve cap space, make a coaching change to give a new coach runway, and add inexpensive rentals at the deadline or earlier doomed the team to be unable to escape the downward spiral they were plunging into. The organization has to hope that management has taken to heart that patience is not always a virtue, especially when it crosses the line into indecision and paralyzes a team with time running out.

Faith in the Future

The Devils have to hope it’s always darkest before dawn because the Prudential Center has been a dreary place the last few weeks. The team failed to find a path out of an early hole and despite an infusion of youth, a new coach, and the return to health of most of their star players, the Devils never found a way to get on a run and vault themselves into playoff contention.

Unlike several teams that didn’t make the postseason, the Devils are still on an upswing. The rest of the league envies the team’s young core of Hughes, Hischier, Bratt, Meier, Hughes, and Nemec – the first four signed long-term to (somewhat) team-friendly deals, the latter two still on entry-level contracts.

The team has decisions to make in goal and needs to shore up their defense and add a top-six winger or two who can complement and bring out the best in Hughes. Fortunately, the team will have approximately $21 million in cap space this off-season without any big-ticket unrestricted free agents to re-sign.

The biggest contract up for review will be Dawson Mercer, a pending restricted free agent, and after a down season, he is likely to sign a short-term prove-it deal where he can earn a bigger contract through his play. Decisions will have to be made on the futures of Graeme Clarke, Nolan Foote, and Brian Halonen among other prospects on the cusp of becoming NHL regulars.

Last season, one of the biggest stories from the exit interviews was the team’s belief that it was a make-or-break summer for Alexander Holtz. Multiple members of the organization expressed rare public frustration with him throughout the season. Much will depend on how a new coach chooses to deploy Holtz, but as he enters the last season of his entry-level contract, the team needs to decide on his future.

The key to the off-season will be the type of team Fitzgerald wants to ice next season. He will have the money to bring back role players like Kurtis MacDermid, Brendan Smith, Nick DeSimone, Chris Tierney, and Tomas Nosek, but does he feel he has better options internally or externally? It will be a difficult free-agent market as the confluence of a few high-end players mixed with a jump in the salary cap should make it a prime time for mid-level free agents to score inflated contracts.

The better plan may be to upgrade via trade. While Fitzgerald has promised to go “big-game” hunting for a goalie this off-season, he would be wise to fill out his top six with a player like Brady Tkachuk, Pavel Buchnevich, or Lawson Crouse. Any of the three would be a perfect fit as a linemate for Hughes, capable of winning board scrums and finishing the open shots Hughes regularly delivers.

The Devils must learn from their off-ice mistakes in planning and construction, and their maddening inconsistency on the ice if they are to get the team back to the trajectory it began last season. Their window is wide open, but it will close quickly if they can’t collectively improve and find consistency in their game.