Welcome to the 2023-2024 NHL season. True to form, I am a late here getting a season preview posted.
As a result, this is a two-fer drop! Please see my other post from today for thoughts on the Devils first three games. In this one let’s talk about the 2023-2024 New Jersey Devils, expectations, and all that fun stuff.
Feel free to reference the bolded section titles to skip around.
A New Season
What a difference a year makes.
One year ago, the New Jersey Devils were being talked about as a team that looked like they could take another step, and that step might be battling for a playoff spot or at least showing signs of life after many, many years of rebuilding.
Fast forward to this season, and the New Jersey Devils are being heralded as a top Stanley Cup contender, the favorite to win the Metropolitan division, having leapfrogged many Eastern conference incumbent contenders like the Tampa Bay Lightning, Boston Bruins, and New York Rangers.
After finishing 3rd overall in the NHL last year, taking the Rangers down in the first round of the playoffs, and following that up with a near-perfect off-season, expectations are SKY HIGH.
Recapping The Offseason
Speaking of that near-perfect off-season, let’s recap Tommy Fitzgerald’s masterful work over the summer, and look at why the Devils appear to be one of the darlings of the NHL both this season and for the foreseeable future.
The Devils were able to retain both Timo Meier & Jesper Bratt, who were RFAs set for a raise. Tommy Fitz locked up both players to mostly team-friendly deals for 8 more years at $8.8M and $7.875M for Meier and Bratt, respectively – nothing short of remarkable. In doing so, Fitzy has locked his remaining core players into deals that arguably pay them less than their fair market value, thus creating an environment everyone is bought into.
Players are willing to sacrifice some of their earnings for long-term, sustainable success, which is a near-impossible feat to pull off in salary-cap constrained pro sports, and follows a similar blueprint to long-term contending franchises like the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning.
Fitzgerald continued his clinical work by trading for former Stanley Cup Champ, rugged scoring winger Tyler Toffoli, fresh off a career-high 34 goal, 73 point campaign with the Calgary Flames. The Devils parted ways with promising but inconsistent scorer Yegor Sharangovich, but seemed like a move that confirmed the Devils’ plans to begin seriously contending for a Stanley Cup right now.
Some meaningful turnover saw long-term Devils Damon Severson & Miles Wood depart for more lucrative contacts, along with more recent contributors in Tomas Tatar & Ryan Graves. Mackenzie Blackwood was the victim of his own troubles and general unavailability over the past few seasons.
The Devils retained the rest of their roster, while looking to fill a few gaps most notably left by the departures of Graves and Severson. They brought in veteran defender Colin Miller to provide depth, who had stints with the Stars and Golden Knights as well as Cal Foote, the brother of current Devil’s forward prospect Nolan.
They also signed Tomas Nosek, another veteran forward with winning pedigree, who played for the Bruins and Golden Knights in recent years.
Training Camp
Fast forward to training camp and the Devils did have a few roster spots up for grabs – most notably a wing spot in the top nine and a couple of spots on the back end.
The team gave top prospects Luke Hughes, Alex Holtz, and Simon Nemec every opportunity to seize those three spots, which is where things got a little interesting.
The younger Hughes was all but guaranteed, but rather there was a question of where he would slot in and with what partner.
Beyond Hughes – there was and is still plenty of jockeying to be done for the final 1-2 dman positions between Nemec/Brendan Smith/Colin Miller. When all was said and done for the final 23-man roster, Lindy Ruff and his staff chose the steady veterans over the young and exciting, high-end prospect in Nemec, who was returned to Utica to start the season.
Simon Nemec
I thought Nemec had a good camp. He looks NHL ready now but I understand the thought process here – if Nemec sticks with the big club, he likely plays 14-17 minutes per night, limited special teams time, and is generally sheltered a bit. Instead, he’ll be the #1 guy in Utica, 20+ minutes per night in all situations. With that said, I think the fan base was excited to see the young defenseman in the fold to start the year.
It’s a long season, however, and I would guess we will see Simon in the NHL again at some point.
Alex Holtz
The most polarizing prospect in the Devils organization, Alex Holtz, on the other hand, made the team after a mostly impressive pre-season playing alongside Nico Hischier & Timo Meier.
In classic Lindy Ruff fashion however, as soon as the regular season opened, Holtz was ‘demoted’ to the 3rd line with Erik Haula & Ondrej Palat. I’m not saying Holtz should be simply given first line minutes instead of earning them, but Ruff sometimes does head-scratching stuff like that – a young guy gaining confidence and chemistry with two other offensive stars for a period of time, just to switch it up before we get a real chance to see that chemistry in game action.
I do, however, agree that Holtz needs to prove he can play throughout the lineup, away from top end players.
So here is how the lineup is looking for the 2023-2024 season:
28-13-91
63-86-73
18-56-10
92-20-14/42
71-7
88-6
43-2/24
41
40
On paper, that’s one hell of a lineup, and it certainly justifies the hype. So what stands in the Devils way this season?
Reasons For Concern – A Step Back For The Defense?
Well, in my opinion, despite all the fan fare for Luke Hughes, the Devils back-end is going to be slightly worse than they were last year. At least for a little while. Say what you want about Damon Severson & Ryan Graves, both of those guys played a lot of minutes last year, and Seves on the 3rd pairing was a luxury. Graves-Marino shut down the opposing teams’ best players on a nightly basis, allowing Seigenthaler-Hamilton to play more minutes against lesser skilled opponents, which paved the way for Dougie’s career-best offensive output.
While Kevin Bahl looks like he has taken a serious step and the hope is he will fill the shutdown role alongside Marino, it may not be seamless or perfect. And at the end of the day, the younger Hughes is a rookie defenseman. Even the Hall of Famers historically have some gaffs adjusting to the NHL at that position at such a young age. Without a luxury like Severson on the 3rd pair, the Devils do look a little thin at that 6th Dman position between Smith & Miller.
How Does That Affect Goaltending?
Which segues to the next point, which is the most obvious ‘weakspot’ on the team – goaltending. While Vitek was great in the regular season last year, he was certainly not in the playoffs. In fact, Vanecek ranked amongst the worst goaltenders in the NHL playoffs last season using both basic and advanced analytics.
Schmid has been mostly really good in both the regular season and obviously during his coming out party in the playoffs. But he is still young and unproven with a small sample size.
Mackenzie Blackwood, who was never consistent or healthy, at least provided the organization some competition at the NHL level. Having three NHL-caliber goaltenders competing against each other sharpens the iron. And as mentioned, Blackwood has moved on.
So, with the potential for the defense to be slightly worse this year, that could expose the goaltending more than we saw last year, and create issues keeping pucks out of the net. The Devils were 9th in the league in goals against last year. I’m willing to bet they slip down a few notches this year.
That puts a ton of pressure on the admittedly deep forward group to produce every night. While the Devils almost certainly have the players up front to do that, with one of the deepest, fastest, and most talented forwards in the league, it’s not a long-term recipe for success in my opinion and it could create trouble over the course of a long season.
Reversion To Mean?
I’ll also add this – almost everything that could have went right for the Devils last year, did.
Jack, Nico, Dougie, Bratt, Mercer all had career-best production output. Tatar, Haula, Palat filled excellent secondary scoring and veteran leadership roles. Bottom six guys like Mike McLeod took another step. Our defense was big, rangy, mobile, and amongst the best in the league. Vitek had a career year in net. The Devils had long winning streaks.
I’m a believer in reversion to means – and while this team is most certainly just entering its prime contending years, that doesn’t mean a 3rd place finish in the NHL is guaranteed this year, and again, I’ll be surprised if everything falls into place perfectly again like it did last year.
Ending On A Positive
But here at WOTD – we keep things positive. So with all that said, the hype is real for the Devils. They are amongst the most fun, exciting, and well-built-to-contend teams in the NHL and should be for a long time.
The on-paper talent is undeniable. And as a result, the expectations have risen. That creates a new dynamic for this team as well. They are now a team that will be circled and used as a benchmark for other teams all year long. They will get the other teams’ best every night. Those are the types of challenges that winning teams inevitably face. It will be a new test for this still-young core to take another step and coalesce around.
This is what the long, LONG rebuild was all about. Patience has paid off. It’s time again to be proud and excited for this Devils franchise.
My way-too-early prediction? I’ll take a slightly less impressive regular season – 2nd or 3rd place finish in the Metro, but a longer stint in the playoffs to the conference finals.
Let’s. Go. Devils.
Word Of The Devil 