Revisiting early-season thoughts
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Today’s post was written by C.J. TURTORO. You can find him on Twitter @CJTDevil.
This week marked the end of Q1 of the New Jersey Devils season, and it also marked one month since my early-season thoughts piece. Given exactly how much has changed since then, and how flat out wrong I was on some things, I wanted to take time to revisit some of those takes.
Pavel Zacha
My take on Pavel Zacha one month ago: that it was time to acknowledge he was nothing more than a special teams gadget player who would be used most effectively as a PP2, PK1, and 4C.
Zacha scored the next two games, and then after 0-pointer, he proceeded to tear off an 8-game streak culminating with an OT GWG to cap off his 3-point masterperpiece versus Buffalo on Thursday.
His streak is only two behind the league lead and has put him past Jack Hughes and into the team lead in scoring. He’s not only the hottest player on the Devils, but one of the hottest players in the NHL.
So was I wrong? Maybe? I’m actually not convinced yet. While this truly is a new level of production from Zacha, I’m not ready to throw out four seasons of mediocre hockey because of a hot streak.
It’s worth pointing out that when we look at the entire season, he actually still has a negative impact in terms of xG differential. He genuinely has been better lately, but I want to see a couple dozen games before I declare that a player who’s been notoriously streaky over his 5-year career “figured it out” sometime between his 5th and 6th game of his age-23 season.
Will Butcher
This one I have mixed feelings about. I think that Will Butcher was a very good fit for Hynes’s system, which did require the players to utilize space very well, but asked them to do it more with their vision and positioning than with their speed and aggression. And I still believe strongly that Butcher’s offensive instincts are very good -- as evidenced by the fact that he’s scored a point in each of the three games he’s played (the only Devil averaging a point per game). But in watching this team play I do see why Lindy Ruff scratched him.
The team is built around out-skating their opponent. We appear to be everywhere at once, because we simply are able to get places faster than the other team. If a defender isn’t speedy enough to join the rush and get back to their spot -- which Butcher isn’t -- then they need to be able to hold down the DZ so that their partner can -- which Butcher can’t.
He’s no longer a natural fit for our 5v5 scheme, and given that we have plenty of PP defenders, and no PK defenders, him being on the outside looking in does make sense to me.
That said … if someone gets injured then put him in and send Matt Tennyson to the moon. I don’t care if you have to go lefty-lefty or righty-righty or if one of the defenders has no hands at all -- they’ll still be better than Matt Tennyson.
Miles Wood
I said that Miles Wood had been the Devils best 5v5 player. I think that, if this is no longer true, it’s more because of usage than anything Wood is doing or not doing. Wood probably has still been the most consistent 200-ft 5v5 player on this team.
He still leads the team in goals and trails only Andreas Johnsson in terms of value metrics. He’s continued to be extremely effective for the Devils, but now he’s doing it alongside McLeod and Bastian as the enforcing line whose job is to take a DZ faceoff and turn it into a positive possession, rather than as a top-9 forward tasked with filling the scoresheet. The fact that he’s been able to succeed in both roles is a testament to his growth as a player.
That said, I didn’t think then, nor do I think now, that he’s likely to continue being the best 5v5 player on the team. But if he can continue to be merely a positive, that’s a big jump from his last couple years, which is why the performance is noteworthy.
Smith and Tennyson
Basically what I had said was that Smith and Tennyson were both getting terrible defensive results and benefiting from a red-hot goaltender bailing them out, but everyone seemed to love Smith and hate Tennyson despite the fact that the same mechanisms were impacting both of their results. That was true.
But I drastically underestimated the degree to which Smith would be able to improve his game with a better partner and just a few more games of NHL experience.
Ruff’s first move was to put Smith with Severson and shelter them heavily. This worked great because Smith is a natural at the offensive blueline and can extend the play as well as anyone on this team.
His on-ice results improved, but his overall impacts were still in question because of the sheltering. Eventually, it became clear to Ruff that the pairing was just too good to keep limiting their minutes. He took off the training wheels, and now Ty Smith and Damon Severson have not surrendered a 5v5 goal in over 100 minutes of play since returning from the COVID delay.
Smith has dragged his xG impacts all the way into the positive territory, and he and Severson are the unquestioned top pair and should stay there indefinitely.
So, yeah, I was wrong here. Smith should be on the top pair and Tennyson should be in orbit.
The Devils
After 4 games, I said that it was hard to figure out who we were, but we were probably closer to the team that got steamrolled by the Islanders than the team that took ¾ points from Boston. Interestingly we continue to dominate Boston, but I do think that time has born out this take. We likely are not a playoff team this year. But we’ll be more fun to watch and the kids are looking great.
So I’m gonna say that I was right on maybe 2 of these? I’m sure you could argue as few as zero. That said, if I had that same information, I’d probably come to the same conclusions today.
Smith did look bad in the DZ early on, it wasn’t just his numbers. Butcher was one of the most efficient defenders last season. Zacha did look exactly the same as he had the past five years over the first five games.
It’s not a matter of using analytics, or the eye test, or astrology -- it’s just a matter of having some humility.
Remember what you thought a month ago, and perhaps you’ll be less cocksure about what you’re likely to think a month from now.
Those who are in the business of predicting future outcomes often fall on the trope that their job is to be “less wrong.” The first step to being less wrong is being less confident that you’re right.
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