Life after Brodeur: The Devils’ modern identity

Life after Brodeur: The Devils’ modern identity

[paypal_donation_button]Life after Brodeur: The Devils’ modern identity

The New Jersey Devils have been traditionally known for their defensive strength. For the 20 years between 1992 and 2012, the Devils allowed the fewest average goals per game at only 2.44—and that makes sense, because they also allowed the fewest shots per game (an impressively low 26.3). As a result, only the Detroit Redwings won more games through that 20 years, despite New Jersey’s arguably average scoring numbers. Their unparalleled commitment to defensive strength was made possible by the presence of Martin Brodeur in net, who won the Vezina Trophy four times during his career with the Devils and backstopped them through three Stanley Cup wins. Coming in to the 2014-15 NHL season—their first without Brodeur in over 20 years—many questioned whether the Devils could maintain this high defensive level.

The Devils made a smart move in June 2013, anticipating Brodeur’s imminent retirement and bring Cory Schneider onboard from the Vancouver Canucks. Ostensibly brought on as Brodeur’s back-up, he ended up playing more games than Brodeur in the 2013-14 NHL season and arguably played better than the veteran throughout the season, ending up with a 1.97 GAA and a .921 save percentage. Though his performance in the 2014-15 NHL season wasn’t as strong, the failings that led to these poor numbers started well before Cory Schneider joined the team.

The first half of the ‘10s were not New Jersey’s best era. Though they reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 2012 that was their only post-season appearance between 2010-11 and 2014-15. Their goal production was low, as is to be expected. Devils teams of the ‘90s and early 2000s were able to overcome low scoring through their expert use of the neutral zone trap, forcing their opponents to turn over the puck and giving them limited offensive zone opportunities. Through the 2013-14 season, the Devils allowed the fewest shots per game on average in the league, even in this slump period of the early 2010s. In the 2014-15 season, however, the Devils allowed opponents to take an average of 30.7 shots per game (an increase of 5.2 over the previous season’s average of 25.5). They also slipped in their shorthanded success, dropping from a league-leading penalty kill percentage of 86.4 in 2013-14 to 80.6 in 2014-15 (21st in the league for that season). These are factors perhaps more to blame for Cory Schneider’s less impressive statistics in the 2014-15 season; the team in front of him was making him do a lot more work than they asked of Martin Brodeur.

‘Rebuilding years’ is not a term New Jersey Devils fans are necessarily used to hearing, but they were showing all the signs of a regime change in the early 2010s—and though the goaltender change was the most noticeable, changes in other parts of the team may have had more impact on their diminished defensive performance. Ray Shero took over for Lou Lamoriello as the team’s GM and they got a new head coach in John Hynes. Though they maintained the top defensive pairing of Andy Greene and Adam Larsson that was established in 2014-15, much of the rest of their roster shuffled around, moves largely focused on securing some kind of power for their top two lines. Though center Patrik Elias has been a long-time Devil, his best years are arguably behind him; he scored only 13 goals (34 points) in 2014-15, and his last 30 plus goal season was in 2008-09. The addition of veteran winger Mike Cammalleri helped their cause by scoring 27 goals in the 2014-15 season, but wasn’t enough to put them back in post-season contention. This infusion of new blood into an aging team was necessary, certainly, but the lack of familiarity with the old systems—from the top down—prevented the Devils from being the impenetrable wall they seemed to be in the golden years of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.

Though their top defensive pairing of Greene and Larsson looked good in the 2014-15 season, the team’s defensive depth was obviously lacking. Luckily for the Devils, they had the opposite problem with their defensemen in 2014-15 that they did with their forwards. Their forwards were aging veterans who couldn’t quite keep up; their defensemen, on the other hand, were predominantly young players, not yet arrived at their respective primes. The potential demonstrated by young defensemen like Jon Merrill and Eric Gelinas in the 2014-15 season was a glimmer of hope in an otherwise disappointing year. If nothing else, Devils fans can look back at 2014-15 as the year Cory Schneider proved he could stand up strong as the starting netminder—even when the team in front of him wasn’t making his job easy.