The 2024-25 New Jersey Devils have experienced quite a strange season thus far. They currently sit in a Metropolitan Division playoff spot with a respectable 18-10-3 record, but their offense has dried up on multiple occasions. They’ve been shut out five times, already surpassing their total from all of last season (four) when they missed the playoffs. That’s 231% more frequently.
All of those shutouts have come since Nov. 1, cumulating to 152 shots without a goal in those losses. It’s pretty clear at this point what the common denominator is, and that’s an inability to succeed off the rush.
Head coach Sheldon Keefe is as aware as anybody: “You can’t be (just) a rush team and succeed. You can be a team that succeeds on the rush, but if that’s your primary focus, you’re going to be frustrated,” he said.
Keefe has certainly brought the best out of the Devils’ rush game, which has enabled them to find success on most nights. At even strength, their 2.74 expected goals per 60 minutes (xGF/60) ranks fourth in the entire NHL (via Natural Stat Trick). But when they don’t have their rush game, it all dries up.
So what do they have to do when their rush game isn’t working? Defenseman Johnathan Kovacevic outlined that plan: “(We need to be) chipping pucks behind them, finding a stick, getting pucks in behind them, and let’s establish our O-zone. I think maybe we could (get) some more shots. That’s something Sheldon talked about from the D-men…we can get guys to the inside, shoot our way in, then things start to open up.”
Devils Still Have Work to Do
It’s great that the team is aware of it and working on it. But they’ll need guys who aren’t regular scorers to step up and score a gritty goal now and then, which will also help open up that part of their game. Tomas Tatar has one goal in his last 16 games. Ondrej Palat has one in his last 12. Paul Cotter has one in 18 and Erik Haula has one in 19.
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That’s simply not good enough, and it’s not really fair to the key players – Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, etc. – that if they have a collective off night, there’s not much help otherwise.
Sometimes, the shot counter misconstrues that they might’ve dominated. Take their contest versus the San Jose Sharks for example, when Mackenzie Blackwood stopped all 44 shots. A majority of their chances were from the outside; the Devils’ high-danger chance-to-shot ratio was 0.20, whereas the Sharks’ was 0.41. In total, the Devils had two fewer high-danger chances despite having 17 more shots.
Captain Nico Hischier said, “We’ve gotta learn from it that (when) teams take our rush away, we got to find ways to create something in the O-zone. Be hard on pucks, playing simple, hard hockey low to high, pucks to the net, movement with the puck so they get out of their D-zone structure.”
Teams seem to be aware of this by now, so the opposition is comfortably sitting back when they have a late lead. In six of the Devils’ last seven losses, they haven’t scored a single goal in the third period.
The good news for the Devils is that they’ve been able to bounce back and revert poor trends relatively quickly under Keefe. You would also think that guys like Palat, Tatar, Haula and Cotter aren’t going to collectively play at four-to-five goal paces for the rest of the season.
With guys like Bratt and J. Hughes in the mix, they’re still able to create a ton of offense on most nights because their rush game typically succeeds well. Assuming this team stays healthy and makes the playoffs, they still have over 50 games to iron it out.