Prior to Game 4, Colorado got some bad news regarding Valeri Nichushkin but there was also a surprise scratch in Devon Toews. The good news is that Toews was back in the lineup for Game 5 and he is certainly one of the most important cogs of the team after Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.

Gabriel Landeskog was also taking part in drills at the team's morning skate, which is a good sign considering he's been off for nearly two years. There is still no timeline on his potential return.

Roope Hintz missed Game 5 with an injury – he blocked a shot and left after the first period in Game 4 – but good news from Pete DeBoer is it doesn't seem serious:

Roope Hintz will miss Game 5 tonight with an injury, but after he missed most of Game 4, Pete DeBoer isn't concerned.

Game 7 hero Radek Faksa will return to the lineup in his place.

More ⤵️https://t.co/qT93BnHIBS

— Lia Assimakopoulos (@Lassimak) May 15, 2024

*

Readers will never believe this, but Dallas blew a lead against Colorado! It has been so unlike them in this series. Never saw it coming.

Anyway, Dallas had a 2-1 lead with under three minutes left in the second period and lost the game 5-3. Cale Makar scored twice (once on the PP) while totaling five shots while both Nathan MacKinnon and Artturi Lehkonen each had a goal and an assist with one power play point. Lehkonen finished the game with two shots, two blocks, two PIMs, and three hits.

Casey Mittelstadt scored the remaining goal for the Avs. Miro Heiskanen, Joe Pavelski, and Logan Stankoven had the goals for the Stars.

Josh Manson had a big multi-cat night with an assist, five shots, a block, and eight hits.

Alexandar Georgiev saved 23 of 26 shots for the win. Game 6 is Friday night back in Colorado.

*

My offseason reviews of each of the 16 non-playoff teams continues today. We have already combed through the seasons of the San Jose Sharks, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Anaheim Ducks, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Montreal Canadiens, the Arizona Coyotes (now in Utah), the Ottawa Senators, the Seattle Kraken, and the Calgary Flames. Today, we are getting to the underachieving New Jersey Devils. Let's look at what went wrong, what went right, and where they go from here. This is all through a fantasy lens, of course.

Data from Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, HockeyViz, and Frozen Tools with salary cap data from Cap Friendly. Any tracking data is from AllThreeZones unless otherwise noted.

What Went Wrong

It is unfair to discuss the 2023-24 New Jersey Devils and not discuss how many players they lost in their lineup due to injury or otherwise.

At the top of the list is Dougie Hamilton, who finished top-7 in Norris Trophy voting for three of the prior four seasons before 2023-24. He missed 62 games and at the time of his injury on November 28^th, New Jersey was 16^th in the league by points percentage and sixth in the league by 5-on-5 expected goal share; they were 25^th by points percentage and 14^th by expected goal share at 5-on-5 from November 29^th onward.

Next up is Jack Hughes. He missed just 20 games, and was good production-wise in those 62 games with 27 goals, 74 points, 31 power play points, and 274 shots. He had shoulder surgery at the end of the season, but considering he missed time in early November with an 'upper-body' injury and had shoulder problems in 2022-23, it's fair to wonder how healthy he was for the 62 games he did play.

Jonas Siegenthaler missed 25 games and though he didn't have a great season otherwise, he had been a stalwart defensively for the team in the prior two seasons. In addition to the loss of Hamilton for three-quarters of the season, losing Siegenthaler for nearly one-third of the year compounded that veteran defenceman problem.

All of Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, and Ondrej Palat missed 11-13 games each. That isn't a huge deal in and of itself, but if Hughes was less-than-healthy all season (which seems likely), and those three top-6 forwards combined for another 35 games missed, it just puts a lot more stress on the bottom-6 to do well.

New Jersey's bottom-6 did well, for a time, as the team had a 5-on-5 goal share over 60% with Michael McLeod on the ice for his 45 games. However, he was arrested for and charged with sexual assault in January. In terms of just on-ice impact, it took a player that was having an excellent season on the third line out of the lineup for 37 games.

That is a lot of key players either missing significant time or playing injured, and that put a lot of pressure on forwards like Erik Haula and Dawson Mercer, and rookie defencemen Šimon Nemec and Luke Hughes. It should be instructive that with their lineup nearly intact for 20 games through to late November, they were 16^th in the league by points percentage despite a team save percentage of .874. Just a save percentage of .900 would have likely that them on a 100-point pace. This was not a bad team, they just had too many key players missing too much time.

To clarify, the team itself wasn't bad, but the goaltending sure was. At the Trade Deadline on March 8^th, New Jersey sat 31^st in the league by overall save percentage (only Ottawa was worse). Considering they were 11^th in the league by save percentage in 2022-23, the awful play of Akira Schmid, Nico Daws, and Vitek Vanecek sunk their season, and none provided much fantasy value with all of them having save percentages of .895 or worse, and goals against averages of 3.15 or higher.

Part of the problem with the goaltending could probably be chalked up to what happened to the blue line. Hamilton was out from November 30^th onward, and Siegenthaler missed over six weeks in the middle of the season. Those six weeks where both defencemen were out of the lineup saw Luke Hughes skating over 23:30 per night and Nemec pushing close to 20 minutes. As good as both players were (and will be), few teams will succeed defensively with two of their top minute-eaters being rookies.

While it's not really fair to evaluate this team as if they had a healthy, normal lineup for most of the year, there were still steps backwards. They created far fewer shots at 5-on-5, had less playmaking on their scoring chances, and greatly reduced their forechecking effectiveness compared to 2022-23:

All the same, it feels kind of weird to say a bunch of things went wrong when they had so little time with healthy skaters at the top of the lineup.

What Went Right

Despite a down year for four months, Timo Meier caught fire late and finished with 28 goals, 52 points, 17 power play points, 207 shots, and 111 hits in 69 games. Those are declines from 2022-23 on a per-game basis, but he also lost 2:22 per game in ice time compared to his last year in San Jose. New Jersey was a much deeper team on the wing than the 2022-23 San Jose roster, and that led to much lower usage for scorer. In fact, on a 60-minute basis, Meier's points rate fell just 1.9% from his aggregate in 2022-23. He did shoot and hit less on a per-minute basis, but a full season would have seen him cruise past 240 shots and 130 hits. He is still a good multi-cat performer, but skating 17:30 a night rather than 19:30 a night is going to hurt the fantasy upside of any forward that draws a lot of value from peripheral stats.

It was a great year for Jesper Bratt, who played all 82 games and finished with 27 goals, 83 points (a career-high), 27 power play points (career high), 248 shots (also a career-high), and 66 hits (another career-high). He did that because he's a tremendous playmaker, can find his teammates for high-danger shots, plays quick off the rush, and is very good on zone entries:

Despite all the injuries around him, Bratt was consistent for most of the season as he had double-digit points in every month except January when he still had five goals in 12 games. Most of that month was spent without Hamilton, Hughes, and Siegenthaler in the lineup, so we can excuse Bratt for a bit of a downturn in what was an excellent season otherwise.

Nico Hischier had another good season with 27 goals, 67 points, 17 power play points, 182 shots, and 44 hits in 71 games. He may have reached 30 goals, 70 points, 20 PPPs, 200 shots, and 50 hits had he played 80 games, and may have got there regardless had the team been healthy.

Though he's known for his defence, the team was extremely proficient offensively with Hischier on the ice at 5-on-5 as he had the highest on-ice expected goals-for rate of any of their regular forwards. This is where the team shot from with the center:

It is similar to his 2022-23 season, but a bit better, and that gives a lot of hope moving forward that he can keep doing this as the team matures (and gets healthy) around him.

With 47 points in 82 games, Luke Hughes had a fantastic rookie season that led to a Calder Trophy nomination. While most of his production was on the power play (25/47 points), there were many good signs at 5-on-5: of 146 defencemen in the league with at least 250 tracked minutes at 5-on-5, here are Hughes's percentile ranks in various measures:

Player	D-Zone Touches	Exits w/ Possession%	Failed Exit%
Luke Hughes	79th	92nd	42nd

The failed exits were a problem, but considering how much he touched the puck in the zone as a rookie defenceman on a non-playoff team, it's hard to argue with being very good at exiting the zone, even if there were turnovers. As he matures, and the rest of the team does the same, there will only be more goodness here. That he also took over the top PP role even with Hamilton in the lineup should tell us that there's very high fantasy upside, very soon, with the young blue liner.

Though he was traded at the Trade Deadline, we should note that Tyler Toffoli had 26 goals in 61 games up to that point. That is a 35-goal pace over a full season and, like so many others, his production was likely affected by the injuries to the skaters in the lineup. Including his time in Winnipeg, Toffoli ended the season with 33 goals in 79 games, basically bang-on his goals-per-game pace from 2022-23. Now that he's a free agent, he could return to New Jersey if he wanted, but that's a bridge to cross another time.

Where They Go From Here

The Devils fired head coach Lindy Ruff after the season though, like most players on his roster, his standing was likely diminished by the upheaval to their roster and poor goaltending. They will have a new coach, but the Devils played a very fast, counter-attacking game under Ruff, and that was great for fantasy players. It is hard to imagine a coach who can improve on that, but let's wait until they name their new bench boss before making determinations.

Starting in net, it'll be interesting to see who the team pairs with Jake Allen. Going back to the 2023 playoffs, goaltending has been a significant issue for this team and just average goaltending may have gotten them close to a playoff spot in 2023-24, injuries elsewhere or not. Allen is a solid netminder, and with the right team in front of him he can help them get back to the postseason, but it's a wonder if they pair him with one of Daws/Schmid or go looking in free agency. My guess is the latter, and that leads to a split timeshare in net for 2024-25.

On the blue line, we only mentioned Nemec briefly because he really didn't contribute much for fantasy – 19 points, 73 shots, 105 blocks, and 22 hits in 60 games – but he had a solid season as a teenage rookie. Add him to an improving Hughes, a returning Hamilton, and a healthy Siegenthaler, and the top-4 looks good for now.

New Jersey has Kevin Bahl and John Marino signed for 2024-25, so if they add to the blue line, it's likely depth (as they did with Colin Miller at the Deadline) because they still have Santeri Hatakka in the minors and signed Seamus Casey recently. They likely won't make significant overhauls on the blue line this summer.

It should be a curious offseason for New Jersey. They have nearly $20M in cap space, but Dawson Mercer is up for an extension. If he signs some kind of short-term bridge deal, they could still have $15-$16M in cap space and that enables them to make a big splash. They do have a lot of players signed long-term, but spending $41M on Jack Hughes, Hischier, Meier, Bratt, and Hamilton for the next three years is not a bad way to spend that space. They could make a big splash if they wanted, but with so many top forwards signed long term (especially once they get Mercer a new deal), they may look to rebuild the depth instead.

New Jersey does have to figure out their bottom-6 forwards. How effective Palat can continue being at the age of 33 is a fair question, McLeod is not coming back, Alex Holtz hasn't taken the step forward they've wanted from him (16 goals aside), and Haula is solid defensively but not a game-changing depth forward.

It seems likely that rather than going after a Jake Guentzel, Sam Reinhart, or Brandon Montour-level free agent, that New Jersey takes their $15M-ish in cap space (after signing Mercer) and builds out the bottom-third of their roster. They just saw what happens when top players miss extended time, and don't want to repeat the 2023-24 season if injuries strike again.

The one big change that may come is with Holtz. He was not a favourite of either Ruff or Travis Green, often being stuck with bottom-6 forwards. This was his age-22 season and he's still on his ELC. There would be trade value if they want to make a splash for a similar RFA, whether up front or on the blue line. It is by no means a certainty they trade him, but considering his standing on the team and where they want to be in 2024-25, it does make sense.

Barring a defence-first coach being brought in, this should be a bastion of fantasy goodness this coming season. Jack Hughes had shoulder surgery but the expectation is he will be fine for training camp, Hamilton was already skating by the end of the season, Luke Hughes has the top power play role, Hischier is a steady producer, and there are still highly productive wingers with Bratt and Meier. This should be a top-10 scoring team once again and with their power play regulars back (and healthy), there should be production in all offensive phases. With a down year in 2023-24, fantasy drafts this coming September could see discounts on many high-end fantasy options, so don't read too much into what happened this season. Wait to see who they hire as a coach, have faith in the talent, and reap the rewards come draft day.