All professional sports leagues are full of copycats. Once a team finds an innovation that works, other teams immediately begin trying to replicate and improve on the concept. The teams that adapt most quickly are often the teams that win the most consistently. This season, the New Jersey Devils’ failure to adapt and innovate in the face of clear opponent adjustments amid significant injuries cost them an opportunity to return to the playoffs. Here is a look at what lesson the Devils can take from the playoff teams when looking to evolve to make a run next season.
Hire a Coach Who Wins, Not a Coach Who Has Won
Quite possibly, the most important decision of general manager Tom Fitzgerald’s tenure with the Devils is selecting the team’s next head coach. Many names have been bandied about in the media. Fitzgerald indicated at exit interviews what characteristics he was looking for in the new head coach. The main attributes were communication with every organization member, the ability to work collaboratively, and the need for accountability. He emphasized finding “a coach that will keep every player, not just a handful of guys, accountable. If you don’t have accountability, you don’t have the building blocks for a championship-caliber team.” The search for that coach must not be restricted to only coaches who have previously won a Stanley Cup.
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Since Scotty Bowman lifted the Cup with the Penguins in 1993, no other coach has won a Cup with more than one franchise. Several coaches have made the trip to a Cup Final with a second team, but none have won. Does that mean the Devils should cross coaches like Craig Berube off their list simply because he has previously led a team to a championship? No, but it does mean that Fitzgerald should not limit his search or prioritize coaches based on winning a Cup in their career. Having identified the criteria he believes his team needs in a leader, Fitzgerald must cast a wide net to find the coach to bring the Devils fully into their championship window.
What Fitzgerald should take from teams like the Tampa Bay Lightning, Colorado Avalanche, and even the Washington Capitals is that success at a lower level is still a success and that a coach in their first NHL job can, and often does, win at this level. Jared Bednar led teams to championships in both the ECHL and the American Hockey League (AHL) before being hired by Colorado, where he became the first coach to win a Stanley Cup after capturing both minor league titles. Before leading the Lightning to multiple Cups, Jon Cooper began his coaching career while finishing law school in Michigan. He was eventually hired by Tampa Bay to coach its AHL team, where he won the Calder Cup, set a record for the league’s longest winning streak, and was named Coach of the Year before being promoted to head coach of the Lightning. Neither man had NHL head coaching experience before being hired, yet they have won three of the last four championships.
This season, the Washington Capitals made significant progress after hiring a coach who has won at the AHL level but has not yet been an NHL coach. Spencer Carbery, a former AHL Coach of the Year, took over in Washington, guided a team in transition through a difficult regular season, and outlasted several division rivals, including New Jersey, on the path to securing the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Carbery commanded the room and got a team to play a style and system conducive to winning, ultimately producing results. Similarly, the Edmonton Oilers hired Kris Knoblauch from the AHL a month into this season, and he piloted the team to the playoffs, erasing a difficult start. The blueprint exists for Fitzgerald; he should not limit himself to only coaches with NHL experience; history has shown that the path is not always the most direct to a Stanley Cup.
LTIR: Use it or Lose it
When defenseman Dougie Hamilton went down six weeks into the season with a torn pectoral muscle that would surely cost him the remainder of the regular season, it was a huge blow to the Devils’ chances of recreating the magic of the 2022-23 season. The one silver lining for New Jersey should have been the potential for additional cap space that putting your highest-paid player on Long Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) provides. Once it was certain that Hamilton was unlikely to return until at least the start of the playoffs, the Devils could go up to $9 million over the salary cap once Hamilton was put on LTIR.
For a team with several gaping holes, including defense and goaltending, this newfound money should have solved the team’s personnel issues. The Devils should have moved quickly earlier in the season when it was clear that reinforcements were needed on the back end. Instead, the team chose to largely not touch the money earmarked for LTIR and only added backup goaltending at the trade deadline. Failing to weaponize LTIR likely cost them an opportunity to make the playoffs.
The postseason is full of teams who used LTIR to their advantage, stocking up on complimentary players to fill needs while others rehabbed injuries. The most prominent team to weaponize LTIR this season is the Vegas Golden Knights, who, after placing captain Mark Stone on LTIR, went shopping at the trade deadline and added Tomas Hertl and Anthony Mantha to bolster an already formidable forward group. In recent years, eventual Cup winner Tampa Bay employed similar tactics when stars Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos were out with long-term injuries. The efficacy of LTIR can be debated, but teams who fail to utilize this legitimate loophole in the rules do so at their peril, and this season, the failure to take advantage cost the Devils dearly.
A Change Will Do You Good
The Devils must look no further than across the Hudson River to see how much and quickly a team can benefit from a style and system change. Last season under Gerard Gallant, the New York Rangers played loose; they were dominant on special teams but got caved in at 5v5. This season, with nearly the same personnel, the team is playing more structured and connected and finding ways to close out games with defense. Much of that should be attributed to the 1-3-1 defensive system installed by New head coach Peter Laviolette. Gone are the days of the team forsaking defense when leading in the third period and allowing multiple goals comebacks. This season’s version of the Rangers grinds out games in the third period, making it difficult to erase deficits.
Like the Rangers, the Winnipeg Jets also made small but effective changes. Amid rumors of a bad locker room and issues on the team, the general manager shipped out cornerstone players to improve his team’s depth. These moves demonstrated to his best players that he was building a team to compete now, and then signed those players to long-term contracts and gave head coach Rick Bowness a full season. With those small but impactful changes, the Jets often played like the best team in the NHL and entered the playoffs as one of the favorites.
The Devils should learn from these teams, to be honest with themselves. Immaturity was a common mantra throughout the second half of the season. Fitzgerald needs to ascertain if there are bigger issues, remove the problems from the locker room, and find a system that best fits his talent and a coach who will implement the system with the buy-in of his best players. Fortune favors the bold, and with the Devils teetering on the precipice of success, it is time for Fitzgerald to be bold.
Home Ice Advantage
One unfortunate Hallmark of the Lindy Ruff era in New Jersey was the inability to be dominant at home. Far too often, especially this season, less talented teams found ways to escape Newark with points. Ruff often said the team played a simpler game on the road and tried to put on a show for the fans at home, sometimes to their detriment. One needs only look back at the raucous atmosphere in the Prudential Center last April and May to see that there is no issue with the building or fans; there is support. The next coach needs to figure out how to get the team to own its building in a way like the Rangers or Carolina Hurricanes have in this year’s playoffs.
All facets of game production in the arena should be reviewed and considered to determine how they assist with the team’s success at home. It may be time to update or begin new traditions with the fan base. The fans have shown up and proven that if New Jersey is a competitive team, they will fill the building and provide energy; the team now must feed off that energy and find a way to be more dominant at home. The goal differential at home was a staggering -20 while being +3 on the road. Only one other team had a negative goal differential larger at home than on the road, the Minnesota Wild, and the split was two goals, not 17. If the Devils had played even at home, they are in the playoffs. With this being the second straight season where the road goal differential is better than the home differential, the organization should spend time rethinking and remodeling.
Loser Points Matter
One Hallmark of a team learning to win is finding a way into overtime to accumulate at least the one point a team gets for an overtime or shootout loss. This “loser point” is why the New York Islanders played beyond game 82, and the Devils did not. Far too many times this season, the Devils found themselves in close games as the clock wound down in the third period, needing either to maintain a tie or score a goal to tie, and were unable to finish the game with at least one point. More maddening is that the Devils are built for overtime. Their combination of speed and skill makes them dominant at 3v3 play and often is enough to secure that second point once the first is in the bag.
The Devils finished the season with more regulation wins than either the New York Islanders or the Capitals, both teams who made the playoffs ahead of them. The Islanders gained a staggering 16 points from losses, the Capitals 11. Had the Devils taken one more game a month into overtime, they would have been ahead of both teams and in the playoffs. Not to be overlooked is that the Islanders and Capitals are veteran teams with significant playoff experience and understand the importance of a point in October, perhaps more than the young Devils. After this season, that has to change. The excuse of youthful inexperience can no longer be tolerated if the club wants to take the next step.
Missing the playoffs this season was a massive disappointment for the Devils. Fortunately, they are not far away from a return to the postseason. They have the talent in the dressing room to compete for titles over the next decade, but they must make adjustments and learn from the successful teams if they want to vindicate their potential.