The New Jersey Devils had a fractured and troubled locker room last season. Devils defenseman Brenden Dillon made that clear on the Donnie and Dhali Show. On the Friday night edition of NHL Tonight, Jamison Coyle and former NHLer Bill Lindsay discuss Dillon’s comments and what Lindsay would be thinking about being inside that type of locker room.
DevilsNation.com Transcriptions
Jamison Coyle: “Taking it back stateside, some interesting news coming out of the New Jersey Devils room earlier today (Thursday). Brenden Dillon was on Donnie and Dhali and had this to say about the locker room issues this year:
[“I feel like we had, unfortunately, a lot of those elephants in the room this year. That was just the reality of, is this guy upset because this guy’s got more ice time, or should I be playing where that guy’s playing, or I wish I was playing with that guy as my winger or D partner.
It’s hard enough to win in this league when you’re healthy and when you’re just trying to beat the other team, let alone having other distractions going on. We just had way too many of those that hopefully will get the ship righted and can get back to the winning ways we need to be.”]
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If you’re a teammate of Brendan Dillon, and you heard that, or you read that, what are you thinking?”
Bill Lindsay: “There we got something to fix. Ouch, I, I, I, that’s what I saw in a lot of those quotes. I don’t like it when you have that. Then it’s more of a worry for yourself. I’m going home at night, talking to my wife, and saying, geez, I played a terrible game. I don’t know about my contract next year. They’re playing with this guy, dumps a puck in, and I never get it. I have a big kind of problem. That’s where you have tons of issues when you have egos and no we.
When you have a fractured dressing room, and if the Devils, if it’s fractured in any sort of way, then you gotta repair that, because it’s one group that has to be pulling on the rope in the same direction, and a lot of it has to go directly to the leadership.
I don’t know what Jack Hughes is as far as vocality and type of a leader, but it starts in practice, and bringing the group together, and it’s got to be 100%, and it starts with your top layers all the way through the bottom.
I was set with a great example at the start of my career with Brian Skrudland and Scott Mellanby, all kinds of players that work so darn hard that if I didn’t follow suit, then I went home at night and was like, these guys are pouring their souls into the game. I didn’t care if I was playing eight minutes, those eight minutes got to be the best that I could ever give. And we were one, you had a purpose going to the rink.
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It sounds like in New Jersey, everyone is just kind of frustrated with their ice time. It shouldn’t matter. You’re playing in the NHL, and I was asked a lot of questions and if you want to talk about what happens in a locker room with the Florida Panthers this year, losing, and the big question everyone wanted to know is, are there any fractures in the dressing?
Are there any problems? Bill Zito, the coach, the players, absolutely no. There’s 100% love in here. Gustav Forsling, I want to play with a kid who was called up from the minors, get him next to me, and I want to help him out. It was that type of scenario, so you have to build it off the ice. The product that you see on the ice, the cohesiveness, is built off the ice and behind the scenes.
So, when you hear that kind of vocabulary and those kind of words from Brenden Dillon, then you have some problems, and you have some trust. I need 100% trust in you, Jamison, and that you do it in this kind of scenario.
So I have to know that you’re going to do this exceptionally, so it’s on me to prepare and do my absolute best. And when I go home, I can’t say, “Well, geez, I suck tonight. It’s just I’m pulling you down. That’s where the fear and worry come. You should never have a locker room that has those types of things.
I’ve been in them, they’re tough, and it’s all about me, power play time, points, cookies, contracts, forget all of it.”
Coyle: “It’s like youth hockey.”
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Lindsay: “Yeah. If you get the understanding that you win, when you win, everybody gets paid, everybody gets their dollars. So, Sunny Mehta, coming over from the Florida Panthers, sounds like he’s got some work to do.”
As Bill Lindsay noted, it seemed like the New Jersey Devils locker room didn’t have enough buy-in. For the Devils to take the next steps, there must be belief and buy-in from the whole group. It can’t be a handful of players. There is a reason why certain players talked about understanding what it takes to win and having to accept playing that way, no matter the score.
But it is hard to repair a fractured locker room like the New Jersey Devils have. However, new GM Sunny Mehta comes from a winning culture and knows what it takes to win. The question is, can he weed out the players that don’t want to be in New Jersey from the ones that do?
