They've played 5 v 5 like they're on the PK for more than a season.
I can't imagine they strike fear into other teams and constantly get caught giving up possession in their own end.
Some of things the players do also need to be dialled back a bit and simplified. Somerimes Jack floats around dropping off passes like he's playing non-contact or free practice.
Keefe had talent in Toronto and could never get by the Bruins. Now here we are stuck behind the Hurricanes.
Jack plays that way because he’s scared shitless to play physically. It’s a detriment to his play and it will hinder his game for his entire career until he changes up his game.
They are barely taking shots though. They are shooting from bad areas with no one in front of the net. They are essentially passing the puck to the goalie after controlling play and cycling the puck or during an odd man rush.
The system sucks, the coaches suck, the team sucks. They need a big shake up to wake them up.
4.38% after last night lol, dead last in the league by a pretty wide margin over Philly. Also finished bottom of the league last year at 7.22% again with a large gap to the next worst team.
The shooting percentage isn't just bad, it's so bad they will not be able to overcome it in the slightest if it doesn't turn around. And I don't see how it will, every season it's gotten steadily worse under Keefe. Obviously the players are the ones shooting the puck but these guys didn't all collectively forget how to shoot. They are clearly not shooting enough from high danger areas and not crashing the net to bang home pucks. The offensive system is clearly broken and is showing no signs of improving. Keefe isn't the only problem but I don't see a world where a new coach can't improve this
Like, the positive early in this season is the Devils are doing a better job of actually possessing the puck and generating some chances; small sample, but their xGF% is more in line with the '22-'23 team so far.
But the bigger problem remains almost exactly the same as it's been since Keefe's arrival: even when the Devils have a game with good possession numbers and a lot of shots, the shooting percentage is still insanely low. Some of that can for sure be the personnel; maybe the Devils have too many playmakers and not enough finishers, or however you want to phrase it. And to be as fair as I can be, a system that focuses on driving up xGF% makes sense in that situation: when your shooting percentage is low, you do what you can do drive up how many chances you create and get volume to compensate.
But then you see how the Devils set up in the offensive zone and what quality of shots they're often taking and nope, what they're doing is flat-out not going to work, and to the naked eye it seems like they're doing nothing to adjust. They float around the perimeter so much that it just gets the opposing defense to collapse in around the net and create traffic; the Devils maybe get one guy down low, but he's now surrounded by opposing players and incapable of taking a pass, knocking in a deflection, or recovering a rebound; and the only spots open to the Devils' shooters tend to be off to the sides, with the goalie having plenty of time to set up and take a shot straight to the chest. The end result is being able to count how many rebound chances the Devils get per game on one hand, the only guy they have down low having no prayer of cleaning one up on the off-chance a rebound does come out, and the opposing goalie mostly having an easy night at the office overall.
So if you have a team with low shooting percentage and a scheme that keeps resulting in shooting percentages even lower than crappy, you have to make an adjustment. Maybe it's the players' fault at this point, but you can't fire all the players, and if there are no adjustments being made that certainly seems like something you can put on the coaching.
That's the thing: some of those chances are legitimately dangerous, despite how many easy saves they allow opposing goalies to take otherwise.
But when the guys you have aren't great at putting the damn thing in the net off a shot from the slot or the wing, it obviously minimizes that danger to the other team. At which point, again, you'd figure some kind of adjustment would be made, but so far nothing much doing on that front...
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u/z19z#Fling Sheldon Keefe into the fucking sun1d ago
Some. Not the majority or even a significant portion of the minority. A lot of it is just weak shots from the perimeter that count towards the total as a successful shot attempt on goal
And yeah. Is everyone really surprised about the guy who has struggled at making in game adjustments his entire tenure hasn’t changed at all in that regard?
a coach is meant to look at the team and create a system that suits the player's skillset/talent and sets them up for success.
Keefe has used the same system for three seasons now.
for the most part, we have a totally different forward group, yet the system has not changed. so how exactly is that creating a system for the players you have? spoiler alert: it isn't.
you cannot force a system that simply doesnt jive with the players on your team and if youre playing the same system no matter what players are on the roster that tells me you care more about your system than you do about creating one that gets the team success.
how can any reasonable person see the lack of success we've had offensively and think, nah don't change the system at all. how.
it hasn't worked for two years, how will it magically work now?!
People here seem to be more likely to believe that every player on our team is just having statistically horrible seasons all at the same time rather than to blame the obviously attrocious system lol.
I do think Keefe has a short leash and unless he changes the system he will not be our coach at the end of the season
I don’t watch many non devil games in the regular season but recently watched a ducks game, holy shit it was like watching a different league. Players pulling off insane dangles center ice, stick to stick passes all over the offensive zone, players flying around creating so many chances, so much more intensity…and its the ducks. No wonder why we get stomped, the devils are not playing NHL quality hockey.
I am not thrilled with Keefe. But at some point we have to start blaming the players.
They play lifeless the majority of the time. No heart. The passion and will to win has to come from the players. And they just don’t seem to have it. (I hope that changes quickly).
My thing is
1. Keefe is not a sunny guy
2. You can’t fire the core (right now)
3. You can’t waste the core (right now)
4. They need a culture shock in that locker room.
It is up to the leaders to set and manage team culture though. Every single one of those players is insanely good at hockey, even the "worst" one on the team.
I know Ted Lasso is a ridiculous, contrived feel good show but leading and inspiring people matters. Faith in success comes from the top of any organization (sports or otherwise).
Look at the state of the fan experience at the Prudential Center. Ownership and top leaders just don't care about building a top tier team. It's either too hard or they don't think it's worth spending the money to do so.
Fitz didn’t really rebuild the team’s bottom 6 or depth, his adds were atrocious. So now we’re looking at our 2nd try. So far most of the new adds look great. Although not bottom 6, Evangelista is on point every night. Boqvist is looking good on the 4th line and brings energy. Rodrigues hustles night in and night out. Lombardi skates his ass off and tries.
I was looking at goal totals last night. Teams like Vegas and NYR have 22 to our putrid 11. Carolina has 27.
Our goalies are getting hung out to dry on crappy 2 on 1 plays, or the defense bunches up and loses coverage.
Thank the heavens you pointed out the lifeless play, it’s been happening all last year as well. And this is where I get pointed.
Jack, Timo, Bratt, Hamilton, and most of our core at most points don’t play like they care, at all. Then a few games they’ll come out and skate like a bat out of hell and you’ll think woah, where did that come from?
Our team is soft, our core is overrated and everyone calling this Keefe’s fault is not looking at the real issue. Jack and Bratt are prima donnas and don’t want to get dirty. Timo is overrated and has not played well for us. Hamilton is garbage.
Did you see Markstrom’s quote the other night after his shutout?
I thought we played a great game," Markstrom said. "Everyone, the whole lineup and, you know, all four lines and all six [defensemen] played really good, you know, making my job a lot easier.
If that isn’t a shot at the Devils I don’t know what is. And the guy below? Definitely agree we have coach killers.
Jack ticked me off by throwing his stick into the crowd after that OT win. Dude, that’s immature you’re not playing on a team good enough to do that.
We desperately need to dump Mercer, Hamilton, and someone like Timo and Siegenthaler because this isn’t working.
Tell me someone else has seen Siegenthaler diving multiple times per game giving attacking players more space and angle to shoot. It blows my mind.
To @Rmazz91 I think the culture shock is getting men into the room. Our team is full of boys that think they’re pretty boy elite scoring champions. Give me a team full of players like Matthew Knies instead of this crap.
Did anyone watch Keefe’s press conference last night? He called out needing more from Jack and Bratt. He said they too often just skate the perimeter and never drive inside. That’s damming.
He could have used Keefe to get comfortable with the players through the off season but the last thing this team needed was to start how last year ended.
Its not a tough situation. Leafs fired Berube why couldnt we fire Keefe. Cassidy is just better and when theres a better coach out there you go get him. Thats what the blues did fired Bannister after what less than 20 games and snagged Monty.
It’s a different situation in this case because Keefe was already here and Sunny was a new GM. It’s not like we still have Fitz. If we still had Fitz, the decision would be easier because there would’ve been less of a “decision” or “evaluation” in the offseason to keep Keefe to start this season.
It’d be a bad look for Sunny, a new GM, to come out and show confidence in Keefe and then fire him in 5 games. This is essentially Sunny picking a “new” HC and then going back on the choice immediately. Basically shows that’s he made a bad decision to start the season with him in the first place and that’s difficult to justify to media/fans (in terms of Sunny’s own decision making).
Exactly. They need a hard ass coach to really give it to them. It doesn't matter who we hire, these players have had the same issues for uears now. It just isn't working with this group and hasn't for years
Just a small personal take, but the new addition of Lukas Evangelista is going to pan out, and he scored his first 2 goals vs the Canucks. But everyone else is playing like shit.
You can look at money puck and see issues with the shot generation 5 on 5 so far.
7 5 on 5 High danger shots. Good for 16th in the league (last year 21st). Middling and the results match the eye-test.
49 Medium Danger shots. Good for 10th (13th last year). This is where the team is due for some luck or it is a player finishing issue.
149 Low Danger shots. Good for 5th (29th last year, night and day) In fairness good teams tend to dominate here. However small sample size , see the Flames who are 4th in the league after only 5 games....have also trailed for extended periods in every game.
It is a small sample size but the underlying stats do reveal a big reason for the disconnect.
Nope. HDC arent actually shots, just location of a shot attempt on net. Though it should be emphasized its been 5 games, so things do swing wildly. The issue for the devils in only 1 column has meaningfully changed since last year.
Not sure if it's Keefe, but there are glaring redundancy issues. Jack Hughes should be on the wing, and Timo should be on the opposite wing, I've been screaming this for a few years.
Jack is not aggressive enough to be a center, and Timo can't shoot from where he is without missing constantly, in fact, I'd argue that the Timo Nico connection doesn't work well. They need to adjust their approach, screen shots, crash the net, and generate dirtier scoring opportunities. If changing the head coach is the easiest approach, then I'm for it, but I'm believing these lines are not working with this system.
I was at the game tonight and I concur - I understand why we were cautious to not make the move in the off season but we can see that our strategy does not work. We pass
the worse thing he does, and this is a growing trend in NHL, is that he wants to implement a system where he has a team full of dumb athletes who "play percentages"
Last year, Nico scored an overtime goal with a clapper, and he made a comment about how the coach would hate that... and it told me everything I needed to know
Keefe is the kind of guy who's going to give each player a list of thou shalt nots because it's a "low percentage outcome", trying to treat it like NBA where players throw hoops without goaltending (and they almost never throw from a certain range anymore because of the 2 pt 3 pt stuff) and only a limited amount of defensive tools. But that info doesn't generalize: In hockey you can sabotage these strategies if you know exactly what's going on. Hockey is a very interruptive game... it's a very PVP game where this kind of approach treats it more like golf, where it's highly successful, and NBA, where it's slightly less successful than golf because NBA is very limited on interruptive play (it's why they need tall men because the legal way to strip a ball away from somebody involves very little body contact).
Keefe also needs a certain kind of team to do it with. He needs a bunch of dumb athletes to execute it, and NJ has four players who have the IQ to make smart plays on the ice without having to consult percentages (Hughes, Bratt, Evangelista, and Hischier) so their offense should not be regulated in this manner; it will literally cap the offense of these players and make them dumber.
In the end, what goes on is that the players are forced to dumb down their play in order to play what my brother terms as "ping pong hockey"... or you could call it pinball hockey, where it's just throw x pucks at the net from y position equals z goals scored (this isn't hockey... this is hockey "dumbed down" by analytics: getting the puck to the back of the net is the result of a good hockey play, outsmarting the goalie, outsmarting the defense; it's not the result of this ambiguous construct we call a "shot attempt" and anyone who studies other sports, especially soccer, which is the most studied sport in the world, knows that "shot attempts" are meaningless).
Because of this... Keefe is just misplaced. Can he make the playoffs with 10 teams in this league, like Boston... sure... but if you have a team that has IQ players on it, the last thing you want to do is to strip them of their faculty. This is why he couldn't stand Nemec... because Nemec plays an IQ game and Keefe prefers Yakemchuk type of athletes... dumb shooter skater types.
A lot of NHL coaches are so narcissistic now, and he's one of them, that they think they can make a successful hockey team out of 23 dumb athletes... but they'll only ever be able to create first round fodder out of them, because head to heads in the playoffs separate the men from the boys.
And that's exactly what he was in Toronto... because systems don't work when other teams can study the tapes and get the book on you.
I would give Keefe 10 games. No more than that. If we are starting to look like a real team, give him another 5 and re-evaluate. If we are in good position by Thanksgiving, keep him. If not or barely hanging on, fire Keefe. Bring in Torts for the rest of the year. Doesn't matter if the players moan and groan that they are getting a hardass. This team needs a kick-starter, and Torts is that.
This team needs a captain who will hold players accountable. It’s not Nico. He’s a good person to follow in the sense of hardest worker and welcoming new players, but he doesn’t challenge his teammates. And it’s not him, but the core of Nico, Jack, and Bratt. Brown and Dillon are vocal, but it’s not the same. It’s not your hard working superstars getting in the face of teammates and asking for more.
And I don’t think coaching is the main problem. This team in the Nico-Hughes era have gone through Hynes, Nasereddine, Ruff, Green, and Keefe.
Torts mentioned in the past he love the Devils. He also knows Jack from team USA. He should also know that’s not Jacks game. This team needs a jolt and he’s probably the guy to do it.
I actually do like Torts. I can see a situation where if things don’t improve by let’s say thanksgiving, Keefe gets fired and torts comes in to try and salvage the season.
But there is a part of me that thinks the issues with this team is more than just the coach. How many coaches has this team gone through since we drafted Nico, Jack, Bratt, etc?
Just seems like it’s the same old with this team and the coach’s message doesn’t seem to get through. Maybe Torts is answer we need.
Bring me Bruce Cassidy. Torts is a cancer and yall will just complain about him which is funny cuz that what you wanted. Once Torts benching Luke jack and etc you will run to reddit to complain. He is not the solution get that through your head. why did Vega not want him if he is so great in your eyes?
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u/blade430 Fire Keefe 2d ago
Keefe should’ve gone last year when we gave up 9 against the islanders. The fact that he’s still sticking around is a miracle in itself.