The vibe inside the New Jersey Devils’ locker room was one of pure frustration and disappointment following their lackluster 2023-24 campaign. Amidst plenty of reasons for their shortcomings: poor goaltending, shoddy defense, etc…one cause fell a bit under the radar. Their inability to tie the game in extra-attacker scenarios hindered them immensely.
Crunching the Numbers
The Devils gave up a league-worst 27 empty net goals, which was a whopping 25.9% more than any other team (via Natural Stat Trick). The next closest (St. Louis Blues) gave up 20. A lot of that had to do with a young Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec trying to acclimate themselves to a difficult late-game scenario. But I’d argue it had to do more with the absence of Dougie Hamilton, who is statistically one of the best defensemen in the league at getting shots through to the net.
They only scored eight, meaning they got outscored by 19 in those situations. The average team only got outscored by about seven. Both the Dallas Stars and Los Angeles Kings outscored opponents with their netminder pulled. To make matters worse for the Devils, only one of those eight goals scored actually tied the game; the rest pulled them within one or two goals, all of which they were unable to tie. And it wasn’t even a traditional 6-on-5 goal…it was against the Columbus Blue Jackets when Luke Hughes went end-to-end to score a highlight reel goal by himself.
This means that in total, pulling the goalie led the Devils to a measly two extra points in 82 games. Let’s compare that to the Devils’ franchise record-setting season in 2022-23. In hindsight, they were technically worse, as that team only scored seven times with the extra attacker. But the big difference is that five of those seven tied the game, and the Devils parlayed that into nine total extra points. Nine extra points last season could have slotted the Devils in or around the third wild card position. Despite the myriad of issues, they still could have been a playoff team.
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That 2022-23 Devils team only gave up 11 goals in those situations, compared to their 27 in the 2023-24 season. With Hamilton, they were controlling the pace and gaining momentum, even if they didn’t always ultimately come up with the tally to knot things up. The advanced numbers coupled with the simpler ones prove that this was the case.
Luke Hughes was on the ice for 22 of the 27 goals against, yet only factored in on five. His expected goals-for percentage (xGF%) was 24.99%. For contrast, 2022-23 Dougie Hamilton factored in on all seven (!!) goals they scored, but was only on the ice for eight against. He was almost a dead-even player despite the opposition having their net wide open. Hamilton’s xGF% of 34.75% then is leaps and bounds better than Hughes’.
Moving Forward
The Devils still garner some credit from people for being near the top of the league in comeback wins in 2023-24, but that speaks more towards their tendency to give up the first goal and then immediately answer back. That certainly is no indication of their ability with the extra attacker.
Hamilton’s absence was felt in more ways than one, and obviously hurt the Devils aside from just extra attacker situations. He spoke to The Hockey Writers about his torn pectoral muscle: “I knew something was wrong, I didn’t really know what. I never felt that before, so I knew it wasn’t great. When you look up timelines and what the injury was and stuff, it kind of hits you hard.” General manager Tom Fitzgerald recently confirmed that Hamilton is now 100 percent healthy. He even made an appearance at the team’s Development Camp recently, to a chorus of cheers from the crowd.
The Devils have brought in plenty of reinforcements this offseason, but the most important one has a six-letter name: health. If they can stay away from the injury bug, the rest of the dominoes have a much better chance of falling into place. Hamilton has factored in on 25 extra-attacker goals in his career, and with Hughes and Nemec maturing, the Devils have a chance to escape with a lot of points to give them a standings cushion in 2024-25.
