Connor Brown Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Evgeni Dadonov Perry Nelson-Imagn Images
Hi, I’m Tim, long time lurker/first time writer. I’m a Central Jersey kid (it exists) and grew up in Baker Rink at Princeton. I’ve been a Devils ride or die since I was able to stay up a little late to watch Johnny Mac send us to the playoffs in ‘88. I played for The Lawrenceville School and briefly in the Nescac during the late 20th century, but like every once promising youth legend I have found myself heroically toiling in the beer league trenches for the past 20 years. I’ve been one of the hosts of The Uncle Puckers NJ Devils fan podcast for a few years (available on all audio platforms and YouTube) and I look forward to contributing to the best blog on the internet, and hope you enjoy what I have to say. Generally, I try to take a central thesis and extrapolate a story via data, mix in some movie quotes and touch of sarcasm and voila.. see below.
GMs: I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands (probably)
Anyone else just sitting around in the dark staring at a blank wall?
Fine then, while all of you with “lives” that are watching “baseball” and off doing fun summer things, I continue to wonder what what Fitz and co. are doing at this moment (all evidence points to who knows). It has indeed been a very strange summer in the hockey-verse, with the new cap environment leaving GMs acting like Ricky Bobby during an interview. Nick Robertson was the last arbitration eligible RFA and just signed, which further signals that teams and their management groups are just keeping their guys and kicking the can down the road. As of 8/8 there was still $187.5 Million dollars in available cap space across the league according to PuckPedia. That’s a lot and doesn’t include projected LTIR moves by Vegas and Montreal for Alex Pietrangelo and Carey Price respectively, which will push that number over $200 Million.
So now what? And what does this have to do with the Devils? Well glad you asked, dear readers, Uncle Timmy’s here to recklessly speculate on just that.
I get the feeling that this is the team heading into the season. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe there will be a flurry of moves in August, but there doesn’t seem to be a reason for any team to make a move. Typically trades happen as a need for need / positional rebalancing, cap shenanigans, or bottom of the lineup tweaks. But with nearly every team under the cap, and no team in any real trouble, the need to eliminate salary isn’t pressing. The ONLY teams that have to make a small move are Florida to clear $3.7 Million (now likely it seems Matt Tkachuk will go on LTIR) and Toronto who have an excess of forwards.
As for the Devils, yes, a long term extension for Lukey boy will put us over the cap, but Fitz can punt that down the road a bit by putting Kovacevic on LTIR to start the season. Or he can bridge Luke at a lower number, but all reporting points to a long term deal. I have very little expectation that Palat gets moved at this point in the off season, and it would be unwise to trade Dougie with Kovacevic starting on LTIR/IR. Quick aside – I am of the mind that he might be out longer than we suspect. Due to the overwhelming transparency of injury news, we know exactly nothing about what his injury was and if it was a ligament issue – that’s 9 months minimum and we are looking at the Olympic break. Anyway, the other trade target floated around is Dawson. I think (hope?) we see a bounce back from him, and he is the only high Fitz draft pick that has worked out so far, so methinks there is a bit of loyalty there.
Anyway, assuming this is the team, while not everything we wanted, Fitz did deliver on his promise that “This team will look different” – albeit mostly on a technicality by not re-signing guys. And after his ayahuasca retreat to discover the meaning of depth scoring, we signed two guys that will help in that department coupled with the addition by subtraction by unloading a whole gang of bottom 6 NPCs in Haula, Bastian, Tatar, Sprong, Dowling, and Lazar. All have signed elsewhere in the NHL and/or internationally – Bastian was the last looming threat but Dallas took the plunge on him. In their stead we get Connor Brown, Evegeny Dadonov, Alexi Gritsyuk and a full season of Cody Glass. Gerard wrote up the 5v5 scoring issues that were a real problem for us last season, which will certainly improve.
Stress Hockey: So Hot Right Now
Speed has become increasingly important over the past decade in the league as the game has seen a quantum leap in pace since the 2010s. Further, we are seeing the emergence of the latest effective brand of hockey dubbed “stress hockey.” The most obvious example is Carolina’s high pressure philosophy and in a copycat league, several teams have started adopting various derivatives of it. Florida runs a version of it without the man on man Dzone coverage. It is a system that is predicated on playing with pace, eliminating time and space, forcing turnovers, and counter attacks. We saw this play out in the Stanley Cup last year as Florida has really perfected this high pressure/counterattacking system. If you’re a real sicko, I’d highly recommend this episode of the PDOCast with Rick Tocchet for an examination of how it works and how coaches look at it. Or you can just refer to the Amazon series clip of Paul Maurice’s motivation: “**** the plays, pound their D.” (Note: NSFW video clip — language)
What makes that work? Speed and pace.
First and foremost, the new guys are a huge bump up in the straight line speed department, based on the data from NHL Edge, you will see Brown and Dadonov are immediate upgrades there over the rest of the wings. Uncles Curtis and Erik had good top speed, but lower body injuries rendered them both largely ineffective for the bulk of the season.
Source: NHL Edge
Now “stress hockey” isn’t exclusively reliant on being the fastest kid alive. The aforementioned departees barely played with any pace, especially with our two fastest guys nursing lower body injuries. When half your forward group is taking their time it causes a massive ripple effect across the lineup: the forecheck is slow to develop, neutral zone transitions are ineffective, breakouts are easily read and 4 guys become responsible for the team going 200 feet. This is not a sustainable model. Since playing with pace is equally (if not more) important, I also looked at speed burst data:
Source: NHL Edge
This really where the upgrade is pretty stark, or where the rubber meets the road (see what I did there). Once again, Dadonov and Brown look to be immediate upgrades in the speed burst department/playing with pace. Glass is just about even with Haula, although Haula was visibly hobbled for the back half of the season (see: no points over 3 months). One thing I will caveat is these numbers are raw counts and the only guy who made it a full season was Tatar. Taking the average number of games played of 73, I extrapolated those numbers for a full season:
Source: NHL Edge / Google AI for average games played
Even if they played an entire season, Brown and Dadonov are still clear upgrades, Dowling is the only one who comes close and.. well.. he did try really hard. The only other guy most likely to be written in Amanda’s ink is Arseni Gritsyuk and the KHL is the KHL, so no dice on any actual data that I could find (promise, I tried). So, here’s a video of him being awesome instead of a chart. He looks fast, like he makes fast people look not fast.
Arseni Gritsyuk Photo by Jean Catuffe/Getty Images
Arseni Gritsyuk Photo by Mario Hommes/DeFodi Images via Getty Images
We should be better, and will be faster in 24-25 which will have a ripple effect up and down the lineup. With an actual competitive bottom 6, that relieves the pressure of Jack/Nico/Timo/Bratt to do ALL of the heavy lifting. You hear Keefe and co. talk about better connections between shifts, and the bottom 6 shifts will certainly put our top 6 in better positions than they did last season. One of the main reasons is better speed and pace.
LGD