The score aside, at first glance this game appeared to be a good one for the devils. Cory Schneider played an excellent game in goal only to see the team in front of him provide no goal support once again. Stephen Gionta, Ryan Carter, and Cam Janssen played minutes on par with what fourth line players should. The Devils had a solid effort against a good team and simply came up unlucky.
At least that is the way this game could have been viewed circa March 2012. In the context of November 2013, this game simply represents a continuing trend for the franchise. Cory Schneider played excellent, yet his stat line for the season still finds him 6th in the league in GAA with 1.98 yet only with one win. Carter and Gionta's minutes were limited, yet they both got several shifts in the waning minutes of a game the Devils were losing by one goal when neither had shown much in the way of offensive chances to that point in the game. The Devils played nearly as mistake free of a game as you'll find in the NHL, yet came up short. The game was a textbook example of the two greatest problems facing the Devils franchise today: a woefully inept group offensively and a coach that does not seem to fit in with where the franchise is headed.
The Devils have been shutout five times already in nineteen games this season. They are twenty-seventh overall in goals for per game with an average of exactly two per game. There is no way to view the team other than bad offensively. This fact isn't helped by the way coach Pete DeBoer has employed his players since the playoffs in 2012. DeBoer has made it a habit to turn to his "favorite" players, such as Gionta and defenseman Peter Harrold, over others in crucial moments of the game. While most coaches would keep their top two lines on the ice in the final minutes of a game in which they are trailing, DeBoer turns to Gionta and Carter for inexplicable reasons. And while most coaches would scale back the minutes of a defenseman that was struggling as much as Harrold was last night, particularly after he took a hard check from the Kings' Jordan Nolan late in the second period which left him on the ice for several moments, yet Harrold still logged the third most minutes among Devils defensemen. Not to mention the fact that forwards Jacob Josefson and Mattias Tedenby were scratched from the game after Gionta came back from injury despite both young forwards having played several strong games. Sitting the younger players while giving veterans much more leeway has been a hallmark of DeBoer's time in New Jersey.
Overall DeBoer has made it clear both in New Jersey as well as his previous Head Coaching position in Florida that he does not handle young players well and relies on his favorite veteran players far too often. For a team that is transitioning from an older core group of players to a new group of youth, this raises Questions about his future with New Jersey. There aren't many coaches better than DeBoer in a seven game playoff series, but for the foreseeable future, he may not be the best fit for a Devils franchise that desperately needs to get younger and grow as a team.
I'm personally not ready to fire DeBoer, but something needs to change in order to get him to get more on board with the youth movement, because it is undeniably coming.
The Devils will be back in action tonight against the Pittsburgh Penguins. DeBoer has already said that the same lineup will be taking the ice tonight as last night, but it remains to be seen if he'll change his use of those players based on last night. Perhaps he will use young defensemen Adam Larsson and Eric Gelinas a bit more. It certainly would help them to develop to get a bit more responsibility, and it might even help the Devils score for a change.
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