The 2025-26 season will be Sheldon Keefe’s first where he did not make it to the postseason as a professional head coach. The New Jersey Devils’ bench boss had an impressive run, but many, many things conspired against him and his team to keep them out of the playoffs.
But of course, one of those things that kept New Jersey out of the dance might have been Keefe himself. We’ll probably never know just how much blame to assign between him and now former general manager Tom Fitzgerald, but even the most
ardent of Keefe defenders would have to admit that Keefe deserves at least some of the blame. There have been whispers this season that Fitzgerald was forcing Keefe to coach in a way that he did not want to coach, and once he was freed of those shackles after the Olympics, the Devils looked like a much, much better team. Again, we’ll probably never know how true that is, but it does make some sense, and if true it would paint Keefe in a much better light.
I have to admit, for much of the winter I was very firmly done with Keefe. I thought his tactics were awful, his attitude was bad, and his understanding of the game of hockey was stuck in 2002. That being said, the way the Devils have played since the Olympics have swayed me more towards his side. I still am far from fully sold on him, and I don’t think Devils ownership is sold on him either. And obviously whoever New Jersey brings in to be their next GM (to perhaps go along with a new President of Hockey Operations) will have their own view of Keefe.
Today, we will go over some of the biggest pros and cons of retaining Sheldon Keefe for next season. There are a ton of factors to consider, and we won’t be able to cover them all in one article, but I hope to hit the most important ones today. If you ask me, it’s a tricky decision, which is why laying it all out might help us reach a conclusion.
Let’s begin:
Pro: The Devils Since The Olympics
Since returning from the Olympic break, the Devils are 14-9-1. If you eliminate their first two games out of the break, they are 14-7-1 over their last 22 contests. That’s an impressive mark, and a complete turnaround from what we saw out of them for the better part of three months. The system that New Jersey has been playing appears totally different. Gone is the stale, dump and chase hockey reminiscent of the Dead Puck Era. Keefe has his team playing with way more tempo, focusing on attacking off the rush, and the offense is leagues better as a result. Prior to the Olympics, the Devils scored at least five goals a grand total of six times in 57 games. Since then, they’ve done it eight times. It’s night and day, and Keefe deserves credit for that.
Con: What Took So Long?
As we touched upon earlier, this change in style can probably be traced back to Keefe, but we don’t know that for certain. Perhaps Keefe really did want to play this way all along and was held back by a meddling GM. If that’s the case, then fine. But what if it was the other way around? Or maybe both Fitzgerald and Keefe wanted to play a slower brand of hockey, but eventually came to the realization that they needed to switch things up. I’ll always remember Keefe being asked in his end of season presser in 2025 what happened to the offense post-Christmas, and he responded by saying it will be a project for him over the summer. Well he failed that project miserably, as not only did the offense not improve, it actually got worse, which was hard to do. I know we like to blame Fitzgerald a lot around here, but even if he did get in Keefe’s way to some degree, I don’t think that completely absolves Keefe of blame.
Pro: The Defensive Maturation Of The Star Centers
Keefe came to New Jersey with a reputation for being a coach that could take his team to a new level defensively. Just look at what he did with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner in Toronto. He took those uber-talented forwards and added strong defensive instincts to their games. And sure enough, in his first season in New Jersey, he did the same for Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier. Hischier was obviously anywhere from decent to great defensively for a few years before Keefe arrived, but he really did go to another level under Keefe. Hischier got some of the most hellacious minutes in the league in 2024-25 (and that continued this season), and not only did he survive, he thrived. His defensive impacts were stellar, and he shut down elite competition night after night, all while still putting up 35 goals and 69 points. Meanwhile, Hughes ascended to another level defensively himself. He was never known as a great defender (even if he was a bit underrated), but Keefe had him killing penalties and really impacting the game on the defensive end in his first season behind the bench. Keefe might have cost the Devils on offense, but what he did for his star centers defensively deserves acknowledgement.
Con: Stubbornness With Lineup Decisions
Keefe is far from the first coach to have this issue, but he really doesn’t adapt that well when things go poorly. I’m not so much talking about in-game decisions, I’m more talking about roster and lineup moves. Unlike his predecessor Lindy Ruff, who juggled lines like it was going out of style, Keefe tends to keep his lines intact for a long, long time. This is fine in good times, when the team is rolling and no changes are needed. But when things went poorly for long stretches this year and last, Keefe stubbornly stuck with the same lines and pairs and refused to give any other combos or players a chance. Again, he’s far from alone in this regard, but it’s a knock on him.
Pro: The Head Coaching Market
This one doesn’t have to do with Keefe directly, but it does have a major impact on whether the Devils should keep him or not. If you fire Keefe, you of course have to replace him. Which leads to the question…who exactly should do that? I don’t know about you, but the head coaching landscape looks a little barren at the moment. I would’ve been good with a Pete DeBoer reunion, but unfortunately a division rival already snapped him up. Bruce Cassidy is a top notch coach and just became available, but this article from The Athletic when he was canned had one very notable passage to me:
As Cassidy said many times this season, it’s his job to get the team to buy into the idea of chipping pucks behind opposing defensemen and playing a simple, direct style early in games. That hasn’t been easy for a team of playmakers that is accustomed to creating offense on the rush, and it clearly didn’t happen enough. But as Cassidy also said throughout the season, he can only say so much, and at some point the responsibility falls on the players to execute.
Now doesn’t that just sound so painfully familiar? It certainly gives me pause as to whether Cassidy would be right for this roster. Aside from DeBoer and Cassidy, there’s Jay Woodcroft, though he hasn’t been a head coach for a few seasons now. There are plenty of unproven coaches out there that New Jersey might want to take a chance on. Perhaps David Carle, who has now won three NCAA championships in the last six seasons at the University of Denver, would be of interest. He’s certainly got the resume at the collegiate level. But there’s no denying that he would be a risk. All of this is to say, while there are some options out there, the proven ones are few and far between, and everyone else carries a great deal of risk. New Jersey might be better off sticking with Keefe.
Con: Safe Is Death
Then again, is the goal here to improve modestly and just squeak into the playoffs again before getting blown out by a division rival? Or is the goal to win a Stanley Cup? The answer is obviously the latter, so if the Devils’ new GM and/or POHO think that Keefe has a low ceiling as a head coach, they need to make a change. So what if the proven options are sparse, go get one of them. So what if the unproven options are risky, if you believe in them then give them a shot. It’s high risk/high reward to go with a new coach, but the Devils have lost the risk vs. reward game in supremely embarrassing fashion two of the last three years. What would they really lose if they went down this road?
Pro: The Results From Young Players Have Been Promising
It’s not all good here, but I do think that Keefe deserves credit for bringing some of the younger players along quite well. Last season he got a lot out of Luke Hughes, pairing him with Brett Pesce and watching them work quite well together. This season, Hughes appeared to take a bit of a step back, but an offseason injury rehab, plus missing training camp due to a protracted contract negotiation might have played a bigger role than we thought. As the season went on, Hughes got stronger, even while battling yet more injuries. And the Devils’ defense falling apart without him in the middle of the season showed that he might be more valuable than we thought. Aside from Hughes, there’s Arseny Gritsyuk, who enjoyed a terrific rookie season under Keefe. Lenni Hameenaho cooled off after a hot start, but he still showed tons of promise under Keefe. The one young player I can’t give Keefe credit for is Simon Nemec, who continued to look lost for much of this season. He did have his moments though, including scoring a bunch of overtime goals this season, so it wasn’t all bad though. Overall, Keefe did manage to get a lot out of New Jersey’s young guns. That goes a long way.
Con: His Attitude
I have to admit, this one I’m not entirely sure of. But I really do get the impression that Keefe lost the locker room at least on some level during the course of the season. He seemed prickly and stubborn many times in postgame pressers this season, and while I can appreciate a head coach holding his team accountable, that doesn’t exactly work if you yourself are failing your team. To Keefe’s credit, he seems to have turned things around with this post-Olympics system update, but once again, I don’t know how much credit to give him for that. In any case, he seems like a guy who can quickly lose a room. As I said, I can’t be sure of it, so perhaps I’m reading too much into things. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not the leader this team needs.
Final Thoughts And Your Take
These are some of the biggest factors that I think need to be considered when deciding if Sheldon Keefe should be back next season. It’s not an easy decision to make, or at least it’s not as easy as I thought it was a couple months ago. But at the end of the day, that’s why a new GM will get paid the big bucks: to make the tough calls. We’ll see what they do with Keefe shortly.
Now that I’ve had my say, what are your thoughts on whether the Devils should keep Sheldon Keefe or not? As always, thanks for reading!
