By Antoine Mathieu, Staff Writer, All Habs Hockey Magazine
QUEBEC CITY, QC. — In today’s article, I’m choosing a team that wasn’t part of the playoffs last season. The Devils haven’t made the playoffs since 2012 where they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals. They suffered the same fate as another New York based team and lost to the Los Angeles Kings. I have them finishing seventh next season.
2014-15 EASTERN CONFERENCE predicted standings
- Tampa Bay Lightning
- Columbus Blue Jackets
- Boston Bruins
- Pittsburgh Penguins
- New York Rangers
- Montreal Canadiens
- New Jersey Devils
2013-’14 summary: New Jersey Devils
Regular season record of 35 – 29 – 18, 88 points, 10th East, missed the playoffs.
I strongly believe that the Devils will still be playing hockey next spring. They added scoring and got rid of the dead weight on their team.
Last season, New Jersey suffered a lot from what I would call ‘puck luck’. They could have easily made the playoffs if Lady Luck was on their side. They were 0-18 in overtime (including 0-13 in shootouts.) If the Devils would have won just five of those eighteen games, they would have earned a wild card spot in the playoffs.
I think it’d be hard for any team to repeat what New Jersey did last season. They only managed to score four goals in those thirteen shootouts! That’s an 8.9 shooting percentage. Hopefully with the added scoring this off-season, they won’t have to go through as many shootouts next season!
As I’ve mentioned, the Devils have added some scoring to a team that desperately needed it: they were one of the four teams who scored less than 200 goals last season. They added Mike Cammalleri who’s one of the best snipers in the game today and also signed Martin Havlat. Havlat is a low-risk high-reward type of signing (1 year, $1,500,000.) The Czech has been injury prone since the start of his career (I’m surprised he didn’t get injured signing his contract) but he can’t be any worse than Damien Brunner who’s been disappointing to say the least.
Mike Cammalleri should add some scoring touch to a team who only had two 20 goal scorers last season. Cammalleri has five seasons with more than 20 goals under his belt and he will help their power play. Can you picture Cammalleri on the same unit as Patrik Elias and Jaromir Jagr? Let me get the popcorn ready!
The Devils also made the acquisition of Tuomo Ruutu last season who fits perfectly with their grinding style of play. Ruutu along with Ryane Clowe and Dainius Zubrus, give the Devils players that can clog up the neutral zone and score dirty goals. That’s without mentioning the presence two- way players like Travis Zajac and Adam Henrique.
I expect Adam Henrique to have a breakout season next season; in his last 17 games, the Ontario native had 14 points. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hits the 60 points plateau next year. He’s just entering his prime at 24 years old and will most likely play with Ryan Clowe and Mike Cammalleri next season which should be a solid second line for the Devils.
New Jersey will be a better team by the subtractions of Martin Brodeur and Anton Volchenkov from the team. At 42, Brodeur is not the goalie he once was and hurt his team more than anything last season. He started 39 games and surprisingly won 19 of them by getting tremendous goal support from his team. It was a similar situation to the Carey Price and Jaroslav Halak debacle back in 2010, when Halak was getting a lot more goal support than Price.
The thing is, Brodeur’s save percentage was .901, which is ridiculously low for a starting goalie. In comparison, on the exact same team, Schneider had a .921 save percentage. That’s a pretty huge gap and I can’t comprehend why the American goaltender wasn’t given more games last season. Just by starting Schneider 55 games instead of 45, the Devils will have a much better chance of making the playoffs this season.
The Devils also bought out Anton Volchenkov who has become more of a nuisance on the ice than anything due to his broken down body. Also, with the loss of Mark Fayne who signed with the Edmonton Oilers, the Devils should have more room for some of their young defenseman to play. Adam Larsson, Jon Merrill and Eric Gelinas have all shown in their own ways that they’re NHL caliber.
Many fans wanted their coach, Peter Deboer, to be fired due to how long it took him to finally realize that Brodeur wasn’t starting material anymore. Add on top of that his unwillingness to play the kids and his love for players like Anton Volchenkov and Peter Harrold and you have a team that should be much better next season if Deboer learned his lesson.
One concern I have about their team is that Jaromir Jagr and Patrik Elias who are not getting any younger. I wonder if they have enough gas in the tank to offer the same production that they did last season. We saw a different Jagr last season than the one we’d seen with the Bruins and Stars the season before. Elias has also dealt with injuries in last year and considering he’s 38 years old, it’s not unreasonable to expect the Czech to have a season under 50 points.
The Devils in my opinion have a playoff caliber roster. They have a top 10 goalie, some great veterans on defense like Andy Greene and Marek Zidlicky. They also have a good group of forwards consisting of Jagr, Elias, Henrique, Zajac, Ryder, Cammalleri, Zubrus, Ruutu and Clowe. Just don’t let that group go to a shootout and everything should be fine!
Before I conclude this article, I’d like to say one final thing: Brodeur, please retire. No teams want you and there’s a good reason for that: you’re not the goalie who once broke a bunch of NHL records. Just retire as a Devil instead of tarnishing your legacy.
Quick facts about New Jersey:
They finished sixth in goals against last year, it’s not ridiculous to suggest that with a full season with Schneider as starter, they’ll finish in the top three.
Jaromir Jagr is 26 goals away from tying Marcel Dionne in all-time scoring; will he climb his way up to fourth?
Schneider has never played more than 45 games at the NHL level, can he handle the workload?