New Jersey has hired former Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe to be their new bench boss. The Devils missed the postseason this year after making it to the second round a season ago, and that led to the dismissal of coach Lindy Ruff. After years of playoff disappointment, Keefe was also let go by the Leafs and this seemed like a perfect confluence of events to get Keefe back to a team that is on the rise.

Starting with what this means for the Devils roster, I will refer to my Ramblings from a week ago. There were basically two reasons why New Jersey took a step back this season and they are 1) horrific goaltending and 2) lengthy injuries to key players. This team will rebound in a big way, regardless of coach, as long as they get anything approaching average goaltending and if players like Jack Hughes, Dougie Hamilton, and Jonas Siegenthaler stay on the ice (and are healthy to start the season).

As for Keefe, specifically, it'll be interesting to see how he brings his approach to New Jersey. Over the last two seasons, per AllThreeZones, the Devils were one of the top 5-on-5 teams at generating offence off the rush. Even in a down 2023-24 season, they were fourth in per-minute rate of rush shots:

The year before, the Devils were second, so this team has a very specific style. Contrast that to Toronto, which was below average in 2023-24 in creating shots off the rush, but were very good at creating off the forecheck. New Jersey has players that can create on the forecheck – Nico Hischier and Timo Meier – but that hasn't been the team's bread and butter for a while now.

Toronto's forechecking penchant may have also been a personnel issue. There wasn't much offensive talent in the bottom-6, and top guys like Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander were all good at creating in both facets. The Devils might create less off the rush, overall, but they should get better at cycling for shots so the overall change in offensive potency shouldn't really be that much.

It will be interesting to see what Keefe does with New Jersey's defencemen, too. The Leafs typically had blue liners that were not involved very much in the offence as every single regular defenceman in 2023-24 was below average by percentage of zone entries that were carried in. That means Toronto defencemen either dumped the puck or passed it off to the forwards (the latter isn't necessarily a bad idea). Conversely, every single New Jersey defenceman was above average by carried entry percentage:

Is that another personnel thing? I don't really think so considering Morgan Rielly and Timothy Liljegren are decent at moving the puck themselves; certainly they are to the levels of Brendan Smith and Kevin Bahl. It'll be interesting to see how much Keefe changes that approach from New Jersey's blue liners, or changes his own approach to coaching. We won't know until October.

All that aside, it's what happens in the playoffs that matters. There was a good article from Dom Luszczyszyn at The Athletic about how Toronto's elite forwards improved their defensive game in their playoff runs, but was a trade-off for declining offensive potency. Will Keefe do the same with the Devils? We probably find out next April.

Overall, this seems a fine hire for fantasy purposes. It shouldn't change the outlook of the team from a fantasy perspective too much, though it might hurt point production from the non-power play defencemen like Siegenthaler, John Marino, and Simon Nemec. Other than that, just good goaltending and a healthy lineup will make a bigger difference than any coach would.