Winless Devils left searching for answers to blown leads
NEWARK >> It only seems appropriate that Devils head coach John Hynes delivers his postgame press conferences while standing.
His seat seems to be plenty hot these days.
While expectations varied for a rebuilding franchise — adding star defenseman P.K. Subban in a draft-day deal, 2018 KHL MVP Nikita Gusev in another as well as the lottery balls falling their way to send Jack Hughes to Newark via the first overall pick — nobody seemed to have this team pegged for an 0-4-2 start, a stretch marred by blown leads, poor defending and some iffy ice time management.
“You just coach,” Hynes said. “You go in and, winning or losing, your job is to make sure that you’re focused on helping the group get better. That’s what we’ve done, and it doesn’t change. It never has in any year I’ve coached.”
Perhaps the approach hasn’t changed, even as his job security has come into question. The results, however, certainly have.
The team’s latest loss, a 6-4 defeat at the hands of the Florida Panthers on a Columbus Day matinee at the Prudential Center, had some in attendance calling for a change behind the bench in rather vocal fashion in the game’s waning moments. Five unanswered goals were the source of that frustration, and it’s a sentiment — frustration, that is, not a request for a coaching change — that extends into the team’s locker room.
The Devils aren’t finishing games right now. The skill is there to get out to a lead, and often a sizable one. Both the ability to defend as a whole and the killer instinct to seal the deal are lacking.
“You can learn how to win games, and you can also learn how to lose games,” Subban said. “For us, we have to continue to learn how to win games. If we’re going to do that, we have to be committed to playing a full 60 (minutes).”
Taylor Hall, the 2018 Hart Trophy winner whose contract runs out after this season, offered a similarly honest assessment.
“We just never really got to our game,” he said. “Somehow, we were up 4-1, but in my opinion, I didn’t think we got to our game throughout the night. I thought they dictated play, and no matter what the score was, I thought that was the case.
“I think everyone as an individual needs to play better. Obviously, that’s a broad term, but everyone needs to bring more. If you’re a bottom-six guy, we need more from you. If you’re a player like me that’s playing first line and getting lots of power play minutes, you need production and you need games where you’re not on for goals against…the score said (we were the better team up 4-1), but there wasn’t a point in the game where we had shift after shift where we really rolled over and played well against them. We had a couple here and there, but we never got the momentum, aside from the score, that we wanted.”
Entering Tuesday’s games, the Devils were, statistically, the 31st-place team in a 31-team league. Thirteen goals in their first six contests have them in a five-way tie for the eighthfewest so far this season, but a -16 goal differential thanks to a league-high 29 goals allowed would seem to speak to the larger defensive issues that’s plaguing the group.
Monday’s performance was particularly difficult to accept, thanks to a 25:42 stretch from midway through the second period to the last few minutes of regulation where a 4-1 lead turned into a 6-4 deficit.
“It’s difficult to digest, but we all have control over it, starting with me,” said Devils goaltender Cory Schneider. “Obviously, for me, five unanswered goals is embarrassing for me. It eats at me, and it sucks. It’s my job to figure that out and do better. I’m not going to speak for anybody else right now, but we just have to do a better job of giving our team a chance to win.”