Red Wings 4, Devils 0: Blanked

The Devils put up a complete dud in Detroit and were shutout for the first time since the tail end of the 2021-22 season.

Follow along on Twitter @ToddCordell | @InfernalAccess

Be sure to join the Discord channel to talk hockey, and everything else, with our writers and subscribers.

---

A few observations following an ugly Devils loss in Detroit:

Houston, we have a problem

Let me preface this by saying I’m not pinning last night’s loss on Vitek Vanecek. The Devils created next to nothing offensively and they were very sloppy defensively until it was too late.

He didn’t get much help at either end of the ice, making it nearly impossible for him to help the team get any kind of result.

That said, there is a common theme in a lot of these Devils losses: they can’t get a big save...ever.

Have they made too many ill-timed blunders in the defensive zone this season? Yes. Have they given up too many odd man rushes with bad reads and pinches? Absolutely.

But we don’t need to pretend the Devils are the worst defensive team to ever walk the earth. Their numbers are upper-middle tier across the board.

Things look worse than they are because every single time the Devils make a mistake it ends up in the back of their net. They can’t give up any quality opportunities or they might as well head to center ice.

Of the 39 goaltenders to man the crease for at least 350 minutes at 5v5, Vanecek ranks dead last in high-danger save percentage. Dead last. He has managed only a .714 save percentage vs high-danger shots.

For perspective, Joey Daccord – an AHL journeyman – is the next closest at .733.

The Oilers are spending every waking moment trying to replace Stuart Skinner as the starter in Edmonton. He owns a .761 HDSV%.

Jonas Johansson is a career .890 goaltender who a Sabres beat once dubbed as the worst goaltender he’s ever seen. He owns a .807 HDSV%.

Mackenzie Blackwood was borderline unplayable his past couple of years with the Devils. He owns a .821 HDSV%.

You all get the point by now. Journeymen, castaways, and scapegoats league-wide are coming up with HD saves at a much higher rate than Vanecek is.

It’s not that the goals he allows are necessarily ‘his fault’ or can’t be justified. Many of them you could think to yourself ‘that’s fine, Player X shouldn’t have made that mistake.’

But that’s just it. Goaltenders are there to bail you out when you make mistakes. They are inevitable. Teams can limit the mistakes – and the Devils do need to improve in that regard – but they are always going to be there.

Vanecek can’t simply allow every quality chance to end up in the back of the net and we throw our hands in the air as if nothing can ever be done about it.

Part of the reason it feels like the Devils are so incompetent defensively is because every mistake it ends up in the back of the net. Then we spend a minute or two watching replays of all the errors that led to the goal against.

If Vanecek – or Akira Schmid, for that matter – come up with more saves, we don’t sit there thinking about how the winger took a bad line change or how the defender put the puck in a dangerous area on the breakout. Those things happen.

But because Vanecek constantly concedes goals after those plays happen, we sit there dissecting every mistake and convince ourselves that Players X, Y, and Z are useless disasters when really they just need a save from their goalie once in a while.

Vanecek has nearly matched the worst GSAx of any season in his career and he has only played 13 games.

Could he use more help? For sure. But Vanecek needs to raise his game more than the defense does in front of him.

No. 86 was off