Should you have seen the 2022-23 New Jersey Devils coming?

CJ Turtoro examines just that in his latest deep dive.

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By CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil)

Editor’s note: this beautiful post is as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy so I’d recommend reading on the website or app. Enjoy!

The New Jersey Devils are the talk of the NHL right now. Every major hockey podcast has been forced to dedicate airtime to their start, every major journalist has been forced to dedicate column inches to it, the individual players are getting attention for their performances, and even the fanbase is getting attention for the mobilization and humor.

The 13-game winning streak (at the time of writing this) is the spark for the attention, no doubt, but the oxygen for that flame to thrive is in the “surprising” nature of the team’s rise. Everyone loves an underdog and – after a decade of nothing more than a single token playoff appearance – this team checks that box.

But notice that the title of this piece asks if “you” should have seen the Devils coming. The Devils fans have been trying to tell the rest of the league that our young core was really good and ready to make waves. But is it fair to say that we expected this? 

These Devils lead the league in both expected goals for and expected goals against at 5v5, they are the hottest team in the league, they have the 2nd best record behind only the well-oiled machine that is the Boston Bruins, and they are now in the top-10 according to most models in Stanley Cup Odds. That seems like a big jump from a 63-point team and surely anyone saying they saw that coming is full of it, right?

Well, to some degree, yes. As much as I’d like to take a victory lap and tell you all “I told you so!” there are certainly things that even I – one of the most optimistic Devils bloggers over the last few years – couldn’t have seen coming. But it’s also fair to say that this roster, especially after the injury to Palat, is composed almost entirely of guys that were here last season. 

So, in this piece, I just want to draw a line in the sand about what things were predictable, and what things genuinely are very surprising. 

I’ll give every component of the team a highly unscientific gut-feel percentage on how predictable the success of the unit was, accompanied by an even less scientific emoji depicting my emotional reaction to it.

Elite top-endt talent: 95% expected 😴

While goaltending, and depth, is likely to be considered the biggest reason for the turnaround, the biggest reason for the success is unmistakably the top-end talent. The Devils currently have five of the top 12 players in the league in game score. Their best three forwards, and top defensive pair, are among the very best players in the league and they are the engine driving this hype train. The fact this was easy to see coming is the main reason some people feel they have the right to be “I told you so”ing at this moment.

We knew Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier were primed to be one of the very best 1-2 punches down the middle in the league. We knew that after the emergence of Siegenthaler, Dougie had a partner that could help him create one of the best pairings in the NHL. We knew Jesper Bratt was going to be amazing at least two full years ago, and by last year, it was already clear he had nothing left to prove.

According to Evolving-Hockey’s player projections; Hughes, Bratt, and Hischier were projected to be the 20th, 23rd, 70th best skaters in the NHL preseason. As of this writing, according to their GAR model, they’ve been 20th, 33rd, and 14th. 

Hischier is outperforming a little bit due to some shooting percentage luck, but a lot of it is because the models didn’t realize that he was actually still hampered by injury for much of the last two seasons.

Even still, though, if we graph the average xGAR (more focused on individual shooting than teammate shooting) over time, this year is not remotely surprising. If anything, last year was the one where the big jump happened for the core three Devils forwards.

So the forwards are continuing the expected trajectory of three young superstars in this league. And the top pair defense? According to xGAR, Dougie Hamilton was the No. 1 defenceman in the league from 2018-2021. Last year he looked great early, but we had some clear evidence that injuries hampered him. There was no reason to think he wasn’t still a top-end defender in this league. 

After Dougie got injured, Jonas Siegenthaler emerged as perhaps the best defensive defenceman in the league (lead NHL in Def xGAR). Pair one of the best offensive defensemen in the NHL with one of the best defensive defensemen in the NHL and what do you get? The best defensive pair in the NHL.

In short, the fact that the Devils could throw out a full five-man unit of some of the best players in the NHL is, at most, mildly surprising to anyone who was paying close enough attention.