The New Jersey Devils still have a defensive depth problem, and it is being exacerbated by Brett Pesce‘s absence, who will be out for at least a month with a significant upper-body injury.
“He’s not great. He’s going to be out for sure, and he won’t travel with us,” Sheldon Keefe said after the Devils 4-3 overtime victory on Sunday.
Once Sheldon Keefe said that, you knew the Devils defence was going to be in trouble. While New Jersey still had Dougie Hamilton, Jonas Siegenthaler, Luke Hughes, Simon Nemec, and Brenden Dillon on the backend, once again, some players would be forced to punch above their weight class.
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This is a position where you want to see the young guys like Nemec and Seamus Casey take the next step. We saw that last Sunday against Colorado when the Devils played with five defensemen and Nemec recorded his first three-assist game. Still, New Jersey needs more of that, as Keefe alluded to this past Tuesday in Colorado.
“He is going to be out at least a month,” Keefe told the attending media. “It is a significant injury, and we are going to have to fill in the spot. The defense corps has to step up and be good in Pesce’s absence. He is such an integral (defenseman) for us, especially in matchups against the top players.”
While it is still early, you can see that Nemec and Casey are not ready, at least not right now. Even though the Devils won eight straight games, bad habits were creeping into their game. In the three losses on the four-game road trip, the Devils gave up 14 goals. In addition, they have seen an increase in high-danger scoring chances against, rising to about 26 percent without Pesce in the lineup.
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“That was not it,” Keefe told the media on Friday after the Devils 5-2 loss to the Sharks. “That’s not the way you can work and compete, and the urgency that you need to have defensively, you just cannot win in the National Hockey League with that as the baseline. So that’s unacceptable. And once again, you get what you deserve.”
Keefe continues to keep his players accountable. Even in the wins, he is not satisfied. He knows, coming from the Toronto Maple Leafs, who were a consistent playoff team, that there are things you need to do the right way to win. That is why he is always pushing his players to be better.
Keefe continues to point out that the Devils have issues creeping into their game that have yet to be resolved from years gone by.
“But here are some things here, just defensively that have been creeping in and have been there, not just, throughout the start of this season, but have been there historically as well that we’re trying to get better at and we’re just not there,” Keefe told the media. “And that’s individuals. There are some players here that if we want to be a serious hockey team, we just got to do these things better. We just don’t have a chance to compete with the best.”
And everyone wants to know who he was pointing the finger at. He was pointing the finger at the defense as a whole. The players continue to leave their goaltender out to dry. Jacob Markstrom, in the Devils 4-1 win, had to stop 43 of 44 shots faced. Then Allen lost for the second time in three games, stopping 26 of the 29 shots he faced, including several high-danger shots.
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There is only so much the goaltending duo of Markstrom and Jake Allen can do. They need help. Again, when the Devils were rolling at their best, they limited their opponents to 20 or fewer shots. But when they give up more, the Devils struggle.
Yes, they were able to win games early in the season, giving up 25-30 shots, but eventually that comes back to bite a team in the butt. But as Nico Hischer said during the offseason, the standard is high in New Jersey, and the players are not meeting it.
One thing is clear, though: the New Jersey Devils will need to make a trade for a depth defenseman. Until Brett Pesce and Kovacevic come back, do they trust what they currently have?
