Lindy Ruff Was Not the Devils' Problem

The now ex-head coach was relieved of his duties earlier this week, but was it really his fault that the season turned sour?

On the afternoon of the 4th, the Devils took care of some much-anticipated business: firing then-head coach Lindy Ruff. It was expected — and likely needed — as the players looked deflated in a Californian road trip that should have seen at least two wins in three games but instead resulted in just two points.

I would argue the problem wasn’t him, though. He certainly had his faults — which I’ll get into later — but for the most part, the skaters dominated the other team this season. They currently sit sixth in the NHL in expected goals share (xGF%) at 5v5, having produced the second-most expected goals (xG) in the league and having allowed the 13th fewest. So… what were the problems?

Goaltending, Goaltending, and More Goaltending

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: the Devils’ goalies have combined to be the third-worst group in the entire NHL, solely trailing the Minnesota Wild and Ottawa Senators in terms of goals saved above expected (GSAx) — a metric that I would consider the best in terms of gauging a netminder’s skill. The defense has been just about perfectly average (very, very slightly above average, in fact) in terms of allowing xG, as I mentioned above.

Vanecek has been the worst of the bunch, leading the way with -11.2 total GSAx and -0.375 GSAx/60. Believe it or not, Daws has been second-worst, posting -3.7 GSAx and -0.201 GSAx/60, and Schmid stacks up as the Devils’ “best” goaltender with a raw GSAx total of -3.0 and a GSAx/60 of -0.197. All this is to say, they’ve all been below average at best.

It’s not for a lack of trying, though — GM Tom Fitzgerald has been incredibly active in terms of trying to acquire a goaltender all season, so it isn’t really his fault, either.

Friday’s deadline day saw Fitzgerald extremely active in the goaltender market, acquiring Canadiens’ goaltender Jake Allen in exchange for a conditional third-round pick (which turns into a second-round selection if Allen plays in at least 40 games next

season) and sending Vanecek and a seventh-round pick to the San Jose Sharks for Kaapo Kahkonen.

Vitek Vanecek, formerly with the Devils (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)

Allen and Kahkonen should be significant improvements from what the Devils have had all season, but it’s likely a too-little, too-late situation for them this season. Allen has a -2.8 total GSAx and -0.138 GSAx/60 in 21 games this season while Kahkonen is repping a -1.8 total GSAx and -0.065 GSAx/60 in 31 games.

Kahkonen in particular is of interest to me, even though he’s the least likely to become more than a this-season-stopgap; his high-danger save percentage (HDSV%) of .838 is top-15 in the league among goaltenders who have at least 900 5v5 minutes — or about 20 games worth of play. Vanecek, meanwhile, is 53rd of 53 goaltenders in that group with a .742 HDSV%. Allen is 23rd with a .823. For comparison, Daws and Schmid have a HDSV% of .817 and .802 respectively, but neither has hit that 900-minute threshold yet so they aren’t ranked.

All this is to say that the Devils’ goaltending has been addressed for this season. Hopefully, Fitzgerald holds up to his word in his post-trade deadline press conference and goes after a big-name, star goaltender who can steal wins for the team and provide above-average goaltending at least on a game-to-game basis, because it is the primary reason that the Devils sit out of a playoff spot rather than being atop the league like they were last season.

Injury Woes

Another monumental reason that the season fell off the rails was injuries to their star players. They’ve missed significant time from all of Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, and Dougie Hamilton, who only played 20 games this season before going down for the remainder of the campaign with a torn pectoral muscle.

Hamilton, in my opinion, has been the Devils’ biggest loss. Before going down for the campaign, he was one of the league’s premier offensive defensemen, having sported the third-highest expected goals for per 60 minutes (xGF/60) among blueliners with at least 200 minutes of 5v5 time from the start of the season until his injury, solely trailing Evan Bouchard and Jordan Spence, who played 130 fewer minutes than Hamilton. His presence is particularly missed on the power play, where the Devils are now lacking a true shot threat from the point. He might not have the transitional capabilities of say, Luke Hughes, on the first unit, but the constant threat of a deadly one-timer allowed the offense to come up with a bit more creativity play-wise. I’d assume that’s a big reason why the power play has drastically fallen off since he went down.

Dougie Hamilton, New Jersey Devils (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)

As for the injuries to Hughes, Meier, and Hischier, the biggest reason why they were such huge issues was because they were missing at the same time for the most part. For the first couple weeks of January, the team was without three of their four best forwards, and their play (and record) naturally took a dip because of it.

On top of the injuries to stars, they’ve had some depth injury issues as well. All of Ondrej Palat, Tomas Nosek, Nate Bastian, Nolan Foote, and Jonas Siegenthaler have all missed significant time as well, causing issues at the bottom of the lineup, which, when in combination with the injuries to their star players, effectively had them icing an AHL-caliber lineup for a good chunk of games. Other depth players like Brendan Smith, Colin Miller, Curtis Lazar, and Erik Haula have lost games to bumps and bruises as well.

Actual Problems With Ruff

With the two main perpetrators for why the Devils’ season has been a mess out of the way, it’s important to note that there are some legitimate gripes with Ruff’s system and coaching habits.

High-Danger Defense

Stylistically, I truly only think there was one thing wrong with Ruff’s system, and that was that it seemed like the average chance against the Devils was more dangerous than the average chance that other teams give up.

In order to test this theory, I first took a look at the Devils’ Corsi against (CA) — or shot attempts against. They have given up, on average, 55.39 shot attempts per 60 minutes, which, though it might seem like a lot, actually puts them at 6th best in the NHL. For comparison’s sake, the Carolina Hurricanes unsurprisingly rank first in the NHL in CA/60, with 48.13, but there’s a significant drop off to 52.44 for the second-place Edmonton Oilers. Last place, also unsurprisingly, is held by the Sharks, who are giving up 69.31 (!!) shot attempts per 60.

Once I had the ranking of CA/60, I then took a look at high-danger chances against per 60 minutes (HDCA/60) in order to find out what percentage of shot attempts are or turn into high-danger scoring chances. In terms of just raw data, the Devils rank 14th-best in the NHL in HDCA/60, but when looking at the proportion of shot attempts that are HDCA, the picture becomes a little clearer.

Shots against them were, on average, more dangerous than what other teams were giving up. Besides the Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks, and St. Louis Blues — all three of which have been ripped apart this season for their lackluster defensive game — the Devils ranked last in percentage of high-danger shot attempts, with over 20% of their CA/60 translating into high-danger chances.

It does make sense from a systemic perspective; defensemen in Ruff’s system are generally more active in pinching in the offensive zone and oftentimes in the defensive zone are asked to hurry the puck up-ice to generate a rush chance for the forwards. What that does mean, though, is that they’re more prone to giving up odd-man rushes by proxy of their pinches not always working out and that they’re more prone to giving the puck up in their own zone by proxy of trying to force rush opportunities that may just not be there when they gain possession of the puck.

Simon Nemec, New Jersey Devils (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)

So, as bad as the goaltending has been for the Devils this year — like I said it’s been the worst facet of their game, bar none — there is some legitimacy (albeit not much) to the thought process that their goaltenders were left hung out to dry more often than some other teams. To play Devils’ advocate (pun fully intended), though, their goaltending was actually quite good last season, with Schmid and Vanecek posting respective GSAx’s of +8.2 and +5.1 in a total of 70 games.

Systemic Stagnancy

With the systemic issue in mind, and considering the sheer amount of injuries the Devils had at the same time last year, one would have expected Ruff to switch up the system’s mechanics a little bit to make it a bit easier for rookies to learn and to help the goaltender out a bit more.

What a nice thing that would have been, huh?

For the bulk of the time that the Devils were dealing with their injury pains, Ruff’s system remained the exact same. It wasn’t until the end of Hughes’ injury that the system changed at all, and by then the team had regained Hischier and Meier. The cherry on top? The systemic change worked — he put more defensive responsibility on the center, thus taking a bit of pressure off of the defenseman and getting more of the slot covered by a forward. The result? A six-or-seven-game span of defensive dominance that saw the Devils win the bulk of their games. At this point, though it was too little, too late, as they had already fallen well behind in the playoff chase.

The same applies to the power-play, too, which had struggled mightily from the beginning of 2024 to the end of Ruff’s tenure as head coach, resulting in a dip from 1st place in the NHL all the way down to 14th. They were once comfortably and consistently above 30%, and have since dropped to 22.5%. Since the new year, the Devils rank third-lowest for total PP goals (11), only better than the Vegas Golden Knights and Columbus Blue Jackets. They’re tied with Vegas for the second-fewest PP goals for per 60 minutes, where they’re only better than the Blue Jackets.

The power-play technically wasn’t Ruff’s responsibility — now-interim head coach Travis Green was in charge of the man advantage — but at the end of the day, Ruff was head coach and his decisions are final. Stagnancy on the power play personnel could have easily been addressed and, simply put, just wasn’t.

Player Bias

If there’s one thing that Ruff did this year that really ground my gears, it’s his apparent favoritism — or un-favoritism — with certain players. In his eyes, it seemed that players like Miller and Alex Holtz could do no right, while scrubs like Brendan Smith and Chris Tierney couldn’t do any wrong.

Let’s start with Holtz, who has had a shockingly good season despite appearing on the fourth line on a nightly basis. At the time of Ruff’s firing, Holtz was the Devils’ second-leading 5v5 goal scorer with 12 goals and fourth-highest 5v5 point-getter with 22 points. The real kicker in Holtz’s production is that the majority of it has come from the fourth line, playing with AHL-caliber players in Bastian, Nosek, and Tierney.

The funny, and unsurprising, thing about it is that his best results in terms of underlying statistics have come alongside Hughes. Holtz is the quintessential passenger player — he thrives when he doesn’t have to do transitional heavy lifting, which he isn’t particularly good at, and excels in finding space to get a shot off if he receives a good pass in the slot. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with those types of players (Mika Zibanejad, Patrik Laine, and Andrei Kuzmenko are a few guys from the top of my head that fit that bill successfully), and they tend to bring out the best in their respective play drivers when paired up. Holtz has an xGF% of 46.52% on the year, but in the 70 minutes he’s spent with Hughes at 5v5, the duo have posted an astounding xGF% of 56.72%.

The other players Ruff toyed with were Meier and Miller, both of whom deserved much more time than they got. Meier, before Tyler Toffoli was traded, spent practically the entire season in the bottom six, and, as a previous 40-goal scorer who makes $8.8 million a year, that’s simply unacceptable. He didn’t even see time on the first power play unit, which is especially concerning considering how awful it had been since their initial bender.

Timo Meier, New Jersey Devils (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)

Miller is the one that angers me the most because he was a healthy scratch for Smith for the most part. Smith is the only Devils’ defenseman this season to have an xGF% of below 50%, and he isn’t even close with a 46.38%. He takes reckless penalties, turns the puck over a ton, and has actually caused the Devils to lose a game or two because of his poor play. Miller, meanwhile, was a more-than-serviceable defenseman whose xGF% of 53.75% ranked second only to Simon Nemec among Devils’ defensemen with 40 or more games played.

Travis Green is Not the Solution

If there’s one thing we’ve learned thus far into the new regime, it’s that Green and his system are not — or at least should not — be permanent fixtures. Outside of one game, a 4-1 victory over the St. Louis Blues on the 7th, the Devils have looked worse than they did under Ruff; sloppy, slow, deflated. The man who couldn’t run the power play with all the talent they’ve got in that lineup should not be the man at the helm next season.

If I’m Fitzgerald, I’m taking a very, very long look at Jay Woodcroft to be the coach next year. His system worked wonders for the Connor McDavid-led 79-41-13 Oilers, who had elite underlying statistics for just about all of his tenure there and performed to the tune of a 79-41-13 record (.643). His system is one of my personal favorites to watch — his teams have historically been elite both on the cycle and off the rush, somehow without sacrificing more high-danger shots than usual on the back end.

Mike Sullivan is another name to keep an eye on, as his time coaching the Pittsburgh Penguins might be coming to an end after this season. In 816 games as a coach, Sullivan has an incredible career record of 435-270-111 (.601), winning back-to-back Stanley Cups with them in 2016 and 2017. Much like Woodcroft, his teams are elite in both styles of offense while being sturdy on defense and letting his goalies breathe a bit more.

Regardless of who is leading the pack next year, I at least know that it shouldn’t be Green.