How many Stanley Cups is it fair to expect from these Devils?

CJ Turtoro examines just that in his latest.

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By CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil)

The “Avs East” prophecies have come true. The New Jersey Devils’ elite young core is locked in for the foreseeable future and they were already one of the best teams in the league last season.

With a year of seasoning for Luke Hughes, a year of adjusting for Timo Meier, and a new acquisition in Tyler Toffoli; the Devils are the team of the future in the NHL.

But what does “future” mean? Are they not ready yet? How long until they are? And how long will they stay in their prime competing years?

One way to answer these questions is to look at past teams that have made dynastic runs and see how their timelines fared. We shouldn’t just look at Stanley Cups, because tournaments are fluky. We should look at overall performance to find the peak talent levels of those teams. So we’ll need a team strength metric to do that.

Hockey-Reference uses a statistic called SRS which stands for Simple Rating System and it basically uses two things – goal differential and strength of opponent – to calculate teams’ strength.

It’s a helpful heuristic in stripping a team’s record of it’s randomness relative to allocation of goals and leaving it with just the actual results on the ice.

In order to get a sense of what might be coming for the Devils as they enter their contending years, and the timeline we should be expecting, I wanted to look at the recent dynastic teams and find when their peaks were. I chose to look at multi-Cup winners, and defined their peak the 3-year weighted average of their SRS (3-2-1 weighting).

Recent dynasties

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ best season was 2012-13. Crosby and Letang were 25 and Malkin was 26. Average age: 25.3

The Tampa Bay Lighting’ best season was 2018-19. Point was 22, Vasilevskiy was 24 Kucherov was 25, and Stamkos and Hedman were 28. Average age: 25.75

The Chicago Blackhawks’ best season was 2013-14. Kane and Toews were 25 and Keith was 30. Average age: 26.7

The Los Angeles Kings’ peak was 2013-14. Kopitar was 26, Doughty was 24, and Quick was 28. Average age: 26.0.

Let’s say you think the Avs are gonna take another Cup seeing as they’re the betting favorites at the moment. With the talent they’ve lost due to injuries and departures, it seems like their peak will likely have been 2021-22 when Mackinnon was 26, Rantanen was 25, and Makar was 23. Average age: 24.6.

Noticing something? All those teams are around the same age. It’s 25.5 years old, give or take a year. The obvious follow-up? Where does that put the Devils?