The New Jersey Devils 2021-22 Regular Season Thread

[Fansinz88]

If either trade is possible would you rather get Keller or garland? 

[SterioDesign]

20 minutes ago, Fansinz88 said:

If either trade is possible would you rather get Keller or garland? 

I'd rather get Keller for sure. Younger, higher ceiling in my opinion. Not watching him much but i also saw that he's up there in the takeaway leaders. 

[mfitz804]

24 minutes ago, SterioDesign said:

I'd rather get Keller for sure. Younger, higher ceiling in my opinion. Not watching him much but i also saw that he's up there in the takeaway leaders. 

So you’re Saying if it was Keller instead of Garland…then maybe…

[DevsMan84]

lol I just looked and saw that Garland was a 5th round pick in the same draft as Zacha and has a better career ppg.

LMFAO.

[mfitz804]

1 minute ago, DevsMan84 said:

lol I just looked and saw that Garland was a 5th round pick in the same draft as Zacha and has a better career ppg.

LMFAO.

You aren’t looking at the APPG, Almost Points Per Game. Guaranteed Zacha is almost better. 

[Fansinz88]

I don’t think they will do any trade of that caliber in season though. Most likely in my opinion if zacha goes it will be to a contender that will use him as a 3rd line role player. And return from a contender won’t be much more than a pick and another depth player. You can throw in our first round pick this year but from what I gather of this years draft it’s not the greatest. I could be wrong. 

[DevsMan84]

4 minutes ago, mfitz804 said:

You aren’t looking at the APPG, Almost Points Per Game. Guaranteed Zacha is almost better. 

Incoming Cordell, Turturo and all the other Devils stat nerds with graphs like these to convince me that Zacha is a secretly good player.

[SterioDesign]

10 minutes ago, DevsMan84 said:

lol I just looked and saw that Garland was a 5th round pick in the same draft as Zacha and has a better career ppg.

LMFAO.

Yeah Garland played here in Moncton in his draft year and he was a scoring beast. Lead the league in scoring, finished ahead of the 2nd scorer by almost 30 pts. The next year he lead the league again, same thing, wide gap before the second scorer. He was 19 then though.

The knock on him was that he was not backchecking much and working as hard as he should. But he sure could score. He outscored guys like Dubois, Beauvillier, Ehlers, Barbashev, etc etc

So during the draft i was really hoping we'd take a chance on him. Really the kind of guy you should take a chance on with later picks

[Nicomo]

54 minutes ago, DevsMan84 said:

Incoming Cordell, Turturo and all the other Devils stat nerds with graphs like these to convince me that Zacha is a secretly good player.

Zacha actually has pretty terrible advanced stats. 

[Devilsfan118]

On 2/14/2022 at 12:16 PM, Nicomo said:

Zacha actually has pretty terrible advanced stats. 

Faith in advanced stats confirmed.

No but seriously, fire Zacha off into the sun.  Done with him.

[jagknife]

Oh it’s Ruff’s birthday.

so that secures his job for another month cause Fitz protects failure… (yes, I’m salty, oh well)

[Nicomo]

1 minute ago, jagknife said:

Oh it’s Ruff’s birthday.

so that secures his job for another month cause Fitz protects failure… (yes, I’m salty, oh well)

I’m trying to convince myself the only reason Kevin Dineen isn’t already with the big club is due to the Comets having a good shot a Cup run. Maybe Fitz doesn’t want to screw them over just to bring Dineen up during a lost season. 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

45 minutes ago, Nicomo said:

I’m trying to convince myself the only reason Kevin Dineen isn’t already with the big club is due to the Comets having a good shot a Cup run. Maybe Fitz doesn’t want to screw them over just to bring Dineen up during a lost season. 

I'm trying to convince myself that Dineen has pretty much been tabbed internally to take over next year, and that Fitz doesn't see any point in canning anyone with less than half the season left (especially if it leads to another nASS interim gig).  Every day that nASS is here is another day that I wonder how the fvck he managed to stick around here as long as he has, but I guess if I know he's gone come the offseason, I'll just suck it up for now.  

[SterioDesign]

21 minutes ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

I'm trying to convince myself that Dineen has pretty much been tabbed internally to take over next year, and that Fitz doesn't see any point in canning anyone with less than half the season left (especially if it leads to another nASS interim gig).  Every day that nASS is here is another day that I wonder how the fvck he managed to stick around here as long as he has, but I guess if I know he's gone come the offseason, I'll just suck it up for now.  

did you see my post about Nas results actually?

[Crisis]

4 minutes ago, SterioDesign said:

did you see my post about Nas results actually?

PK results.  Isn't he responsible for the defensive systems too?  At least that's what I read on this board.

[mfitz804]

12 minutes ago, Crisis said:

PK results.  Isn't he responsible for the defensive systems too?  At least that's what I read on this board.

Our PK is presently 7th in the league, so that argument is kind of outdated now lol. 

 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

1 hour ago, SterioDesign said:

did you see my post about Nas results actually?

I did, and responded...you had one major error...the Devils ranked dead last in the NHL last season on the PK...barely finished above 70%.  But your post was otherwise accurate, in that the PK under nASS has been Top 10 in a number of seasons.

The 5-on-5 D play is just brutal though, and not showing any signs of improving.  That's why I'm still done with nASS, even if the PK has largely been better than we think under him.

 

Speaking of the PK, hard to believe (especially since the Devils are still hemorrhaging goals most nights), but the Devils have killed 91.3% of their PK attempts since 12/18 (42-for-46), and 88% since 11/9 (88%, 81-for-92).  Of course, going 12-25-3 since 11/9 has a way of completely burying that.  

Edited February 17, 2022 by Colorado Rockies 1976

[SterioDesign]

31 minutes ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

I did, and responded...you had one major error...the Devils ranked dead last in the NHL last season on the PK...barely finished above 70%.  But your post was otherwise accurate, in that the PK under nASS has been Top 10 in a number of seasons.

The 5-on-5 D play is just brutal though, and not showing any signs of improving.  That's why I'm still done with nASS, even if the PK has largely been better than we think under him.

 

Speaking of the PK, hard to believe (especially since the Devils are still hemorrhaging goals most nights), but the Devils are have killed 91.3% of their PK attempts since 12/18 (42-for-46), and 88% since 11/9 (88%, 81-for-92).  Of course, going 12-25-3 since 11/9 has a way of completely burying that.  

oh sh!t you're right. I'll correct this. I certainly dont want to give him any credits he doesnt deserve.

Probably why i was under the impression too

[SterioDesign]

43 minutes ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

I did, and responded...you had one major error...the Devils ranked dead last in the NHL last season on the PK...barely finished above 70%.  But your post was otherwise accurate, in that the PK under nASS has been Top 10 in a number of seasons.

The 5-on-5 D play is just brutal though, and not showing any signs of improving.  That's why I'm still done with nASS, even if the PK has largely been better than we think under him.

 

Speaking of the PK, hard to believe (especially since the Devils are still hemorrhaging goals most nights), but the Devils have killed 91.3% of their PK attempts since 12/18 (42-for-46), and 88% since 11/9 (88%, 81-for-92).  Of course, going 12-25-3 since 11/9 has a way of completely burying that.  

Adding to this.

The point is that post is mostly to say that overall i was convinced our PK was never good at all with him so they had absolutely nothing to go on about keeping him.

Now looking at the overall numbers. I obviously still want him gone. But if im honest (and not that i agree) BUT i can see how someone looking at numbers go "Well Nas finished with really good PK numbers and he's above .500 as a headcoach. And he did all that with a bad roster, so he should get better with better players. Also that last year is an outlier"

Again, i dont support that. But it can understand that they may think that and can rationalize that thought. 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

The head coach "success" thing can be explained away pretty easily...Blackwood played his best hockey to date during that run...Nas enjoyed fine goaltending from just about everyone once he took over.  That was the big difference between Hynes' and Nas' results that year.  The team didn't really play much better under Nas.  

[jagknife]

@SterioDesign work got in the way and now I’m out of gas to do research, but I’m curious about his 5 on 5 numbers. 
 

before I went to work this morning I used the timeline of when Nas was brought in to today and we’re 4th or 5th worst in goals against. Poor goaltending is absolutely part to blame, but an easily exploitable system where players look lost is also a factor. That falls, too, on nASS. He’s a PK specialist, awesome. Too bad we don’t play a man down I guess.

[SterioDesign]

19 minutes ago, jagknife said:

@SterioDesign work got in the way and now I’m out of gas to do research, but I’m curious about his 5 on 5 numbers. 
 

before I went to work this morning I used the timeline of when Nas was brought in to today and we’re 4th or 5th worst in goals against. Poor goaltending is absolutely part to blame, but an easily exploitable system where players look lost is also a factor. That falls, too, on nASS. He’s a PK specialist, awesome. Too bad we don’t play a man down I guess.

Mehhh i'm also out of gas to do research lol worst thing is i was doing research to prove why he should definitely be gone lol

To me it's so very clear that 5 on 5 the guys are not doing well. I mean, how many goals were scored against us with guys all by themselves in front of the net. I can understand that it will happen every once in awhile on a broken play or something. But it's constantly happening to us in almost a systematic way.

Anyway at this point that he's a decent coach or not is almost irrelevant. They need a new voice. Coaches has been fired in the past for way way less

 

[Devs3cups]

8 minutes ago, MB3 said:

How bad, exactly, has our goaltending been this season? Blurb courtesy of the Athletic    
  
“Between those six goalies, the Devils have conceded a collective 34.5 more goals than expected in all situations. That equates to around six wins on the season. Flipping six regulation losses to wins brings this team up to a 23-22-5 record and 51 points on the season. It would move them four teams ahead in the Metropolitan, and slide them into ninth in the conference, behind the Bruins.” 

Before you say anything about the defense, goals above expected metric takes into consideration strength of defense and only looks at goals that “should’ve been saved” by an NHL goaltender. 

It is not hyperbole to say that even in an injury riddled season that saw their best two players (Hughes & Dougie) miss significant stretches, the Devils would be a bubble team trying to make a playoff push if they’d gotten AVERAGE output from their trash goalies. And again, we’re talking about average for our goalies skill level, not even “nhl average”. 

Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. As I said in the TBL @ NJ GDT, this team's biggest issue is ABSOLUTELY goaltending this season. It's incredibly bad, and Schneider's last stint here is incredible compared to what we've gotten. Sub .900% SV% is absolutely insane. The Goals above expected is also laughable. They simply can't stop a beachball. Jon Gillies has given up 3 or more goals in 10 of his 12 starts with us. Even with below average defence, that shouldn't happen. That's what happens when you're 2 goalies get injured and you have to play a ECHLer and 2 young AHLers who are very promising, but who were playing in Germany and the USHL last season. 

[Devil Dan 56]

16 hours ago, SterioDesign said:

Mehhh i'm also out of gas to do research lol worst thing is i was doing research to prove why he should definitely be gone lol

To me it's so very clear that 5 on 5 the guys are not doing well. I mean, how many goals were scored against us with guys all by themselves in front of the net. I can understand that it will happen every once in awhile on a broken play or something. But it's constantly happening to us in almost a systematic way.

Anyway at this point that he's a decent coach or not is almost irrelevant. They need a new voice. Coaches has been fired in the past for way way less

 

I looked it up.  5 on 5 goals against and rank:

2013-2014: 134  7th

2014-2015: 124 3rd

NAS HIRED

2015-2016: 132 12th

2016-2017: 149 16th

2017-2018: 167 22nd

2018-2019: 184 26th

2019-2020: 156 27th

2020-2021: 152 24th

2021-2022: 134 32nd

 

[Devs3cups]

1 minute ago, MB3 said:

I mean, Blackwood played 23 games this season. The Devils needed him to be way, way, way, way better -- even before the injury. 

No matter who was in net this season, it's been horrendously bad. 

Absolutely agreed. From what we've heard, looks like Mac's heel was still injured when he played this season, so I'm willing to give him some slack. Let's hope he can comeback strong next year after some much needed rest. I also hope Bernier will be able to come back.