New Jersey Devils notes: On Ruff's hot seat, Haula, and Marino

We're just two games into the season and Lindy Ruff's seat is understandably getting toasty.

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A few New Jersey Devils notes following a pair of disappointing results to open the season:

On Lindy Ruff

If you didn’t know the scoreline of the first two games, and looked only at the team’s underlying metrics and Ruff’s usage of players, you’d be very encouraged.

Across all situations, the Devils rank 2nd in scoring chance share, 6th in expected goal share, and the right players have been playing the most minutes.

Jack Hughes – despite being a forward – leads the entire Devils roster in 5v5 ice. Ondrej Palat, Jesper Bratt, and Dawson Mercer are the closest forwards to him, which sounds right.

Oh, and the team’s four best defensemen – Dougie Hamilton, Damon Severson, John Marino, and Jonas Siegenthaler – have played the most at 5v5 even though three of them are right-handed.

Despite all of that, the Devils are 0-2, have a -6 goal differential, and Lindy Ruff is on the hot seat. And you know what? That’s justifiable.

Because, despite all of the changes made in the off-season, the same problems remain. The Devils will play great hockey and the second they make a mistake they can’t stop the bleeding. One goal quickly turns into two and the game completely flips on its head.

We’ve seen that in each contest thus far. Alexander Holtz scored to give the Devils an early lead against Philadelphia. They conceded the next shift. 23 seconds and the lead is gone.

In the 2nd period the Devils were once again controlling the run of play. A mistake led to a Travis Konecny goal and 23 seconds later it was 3-1.

Then there was the Detroit game. The Devils had a 1-0 lead through 20 minutes. By the time the 3rd period began, the game was essentially over.

After Ben Chiarot broke the seal in the 2nd, the Red Wings scored three minutes later to take the lead.

Fast forward to the end of the 2nd period and the Devils conceded twice within three minutes once again, including a back breaking goal with less than a second remaining on the clock.

Those kind of swings have constantly caused problems since Ruff took over behind the bench.

As much as I’d like to argue Ruff deserves a shot with competent goaltending, it can’t be a coincidence that everybody is complete garbage playing goal for him.

No matter the talent, the netminders always perform worse than expected. If the goaltender is supposed to be good, he’s bad. If he’s supposed to be OK, he’s really bad. If he’s supposed to be a little below average, he’s horrendous and unplayable. You get the point.

I do think Ruff will get some time to right the ship here. But Fitzgerald is not going to sit on his hands until, say, mid November and wait until things are too far gone to be fixed.

If some of the constant issues remain – one mistake causing the Devils to completely fall apart, an inability to come from behind, PP woes, etc. – and the Devils don’t start getting wins, a change will be made sooner than later.

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