The New Jersey Devils are discovering what life will be like under new head coach Sheldon Keefe. Keefe is putting his team through the wringer early into training camp. There is a reason why Devils President and General Manager Tom Fitzgerald waited until after the Toronto Maple Leafs were eliminated from the playoffs to hire Keefe.
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Fitzgerald knows what Keefe can bring to a team that needs a little bit of a kick in the pants. Last season, the Devils were outworked way too many times. This year, that will not be the case. The first couple of days of training are all about skating. As Herb Brooks said in Miracle, “The Legs feed the Wolf.”
“We started the practice today with a skating drill, which is a sprinting drill, and that’s a reflection of the fact that we need our group to sprint,” Keefe said. “We need our group skating. We need a group to be relentless. We either need great effort, and we need to be able to do that also when it’s difficult, and it’s hard, and you’re not feeling great, and we’ll push through that. So we led with that here today. That’s by the bit of a theme of my camps that I run in the past.”
The tone is set early, and the Devils will use their speed to their advantage. They have one of the fastest teams in the NHL, which is how they finished 112 points in the 2022-23 season. New Jersey was a fast-attacking and relentless team on the puck. Fitzgerald wanted a guy who could play to their strengths, and Keefe was that coach just a few days into training camp.
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However, as Keefe said, that reflects who he is as a coach. He wants his teams to skate hard. Just look at the Maple Leafs last couple of seasons under Sheldon Keefe. They were relentless on the puck. Now, were the results there in the playoffs? No, but the Maple Leafs were one of the best regular-season teams over the last several seasons.
Like the Maple Leafs, the Devils are gifted offensively. However, they need to tighten up the areas of their game, more specifically on the defensive side of the puck. Forwards return to help the defense, allowing them to transition better to offense. Again, that was an area the Devils struggled with last season. He wants to limit those chances this season.
“Well, in terms of the pace, we talked a lot about that, again, going back to the sprinting that we started to practice with like we expect our guys to skate and work,” Keefe said. “I think when you do that, I think you just make up for so many mistakes. It’s a very imperfect game that we play, a game that’s filled with mistakes. So the more we work, the tighter and more connected we play, we’ll be able to support one another and make up for mistakes.”
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The Devils’ strength was skating during their 2023 playoff run. Sheldon Keefe wants his team to be relentless on the puck, so skating will be a constant part of this training camp. As we saw, Keefe progressed defensively with the Maple Leafs as things progressed in the season. The Devils have been a staple of the Devils organization, and Keefe wants the players to be relentless defensively in all three phases of the game.
“I think when you have a strong defensive foundation and commitment to keeping the puck out of your net, commitment to work without the puck, then those kind of things can carry you through tough times and keep you in games,” Keefe said. “So that’s a big part of what we’re trying to lay down as a foundation here. And you can early go in your camp, and certainly will be something we will maintain throughout the season.”
With the Devils talking about a fast, attacking, and relentless style of hockey, who better than Sheldon Keefe to see this vision come true? It is one thing to see it in training camp, it is another to see it executed during games.
