“I banged my head against the wall every day wondering; ‘What is depth scoring’!?”
– Tom Fitzgerald, former general manager of New Jersey Devils (circa May 8, 2025)
It took one offseason, but Sunny Mehta found the answer to Tom Fitzgerald’s question. And tonight’s game was the shining example of it. On a night when the Utica Comets New Jersey Devils were without multiple regulars due to injury and illness, the depth that Mehta built led the way in a massive 5-2 victory over the Washington Capitals.
It seems silly to call a mid-November game massive, but given the circumstances, which we’ll get to, tonight’s matchup really was an important win for New Jersey.
Before we go through each goal, let’s set the scene. Yesterday, the Devils made a series of moves in response to some injuries they’ve recently suffered. Anthony Mantha, already having missed the last two games thanks to getting high-sticked in the throat last Saturday, was placed on LTIR. New Jersey also returned Riley Tufte to the Utica Comets, while recalling Stefan Noesen and Lenni Hameenaho. Then earlier today, New Jersey also announced that they would be calling up Vladislav Kolyachonok from the Comets. This was in response to Johnny Kovacevic sustaining an apparent knee injury on Tuesday in Winnipeg. Finally, we heard the news after morning skate today that Brett Pesce would miss tonight’s contest due to illness. The Devils had been keeping the injury bug at bay through the first month-plus of the season, but it finally started to bite them as they finished up their road trip this week.
So, out went Mantha, Kovacevic, and Pesce in quick succession. In came Noesen, Hameenaho, and Kolyachonok. All of those players have seen NHL time before, with Noesen obviously the grizzled vet of the group, having already played plenty at the NHL level this season. But still, it’s never ideal to have to dip so deeply into your system to field a team.
But hockey is a funny sport, and tonight was a funny game.
Let’s go through each goal to help illustrate just how improved this organization’s depth is. Less than a minute into the game, Cole Hutson took a holding penalty on Evan Rodrigues to send New Jersey to an early power play. Given the Devils’ struggles with the man advantage this season, this wasn’t exactly exciting news. But the man who drew the penalty was able to end the power play struggles, as Rodrigues took a gorgeous cross-ice feed from Timo Meier and whipped a shot past Logan Thompson to stake New Jersey to an early 1-0 lead.
However, Washington would respond. Declan Chisholm took a penalty of his own in the middle of the opening frame, and New Jersey’s penalty kill, which has been atrocious thus far, wilted once again. The Devils gave up a stunning seven(!) shots on goal on the PK, capped by Ryan Leonard slipping behind the defense and backhanding a shot past Connor Hellebuyck to knot the game at one.
The period would end at that score, but the Capitals would take the lead early in the second. As Washington worked the cycle, the puck went down low to Aliaksei Protas. Jonas Siegenthaler and Luke Hughes overcommited to Protas, who found Pierre-Luc Dubois alone at the near faceoff dot. Dubois rifled a shot past Hellebuyck, giving Washington their first lead of the game.
It would also be their only lead of the game.
Almost exactly halfway through the second period, Brenden Dillon corralled a pass at the blueline and fired a shot toward the net. Hameenaho, in his first game at the NHL level this season, got a stick (or maybe a hand?) on the shot, deflecting it past Thompson to bring the Devils even at 2-2.
The game would stay tied until the 6:27 mark of the third period. Rodrigues won a big offensive zone faceoff back to Kolyachonok, who just flipped a shot on net from the blueline. Somehow, it beat Thompson for one of the softest goals I’ve seen in a while (nice to be on the receiving end of those for a change) to push the Devils ahead by a score of 3-2.
Then late in the game, with Washington pushing for another equalizer, Connor Brown won a board battle in the Devils’ zone and chipped the puck through the middle of the ice and down into the Capitals zone. Noesen won a foot race with Hutson (yes, really) and roofed a backhander over Thompson and in to give New Jersey some much-needed breathing room with about three minutes left to play.
Rodrigues, a key offseason addition, broke the ice. Hameenaho, Kolyachonok, and Noesen, the Utica gang, took it from there. And once Jack Hughes put the game to bed with an empty-netter, the Rock rose to their collective feet to applaud a gutsy win over a strong Capitals team.
It won’t always work out this way, but the depth showed up big time tonight. The top six had a surprisingly quiet night, which over the last three seasons, almost always meant a Devils loss. But this evening, the call-ups and replacements led the charge. I want to specifically shout out Kolyachonok, who was playing his third game in three nights after skating in Utica’s back-t0-back Tuesday and Wednesday. That takes heart, and it deserves special mention.
New Jersey played a crucial division game tonight, and Sunny Mehta’s depth helped them finish on the right side of the four-point swing.
What is depth scoring, indeed.
The Game Stats: The NHL.com Game Summary | The NHL.com Event Summary | The NHL.com Play by Play Log | The NHL.com Shot Summary | The Natural Stat Trick Game Stats
The Game Highlights: Courtesy of NHL.com
In Defense Of Fitz
Despite my jabs at Tom Fitzgerald, I will say one thing about all that depth that shined tonight: Noesen was a Fitzgerald signing, and Hameenaho was a Fitzgerald draft pick. Credit where credit is due, Fitz helped in that regard.
But the larger point is, I think if Fitzgerald were still here, players like Noesen and Hameenaho would not be “depth”. They would be key contributors up near the top of the lineup. So that when players like Mantha and Kovacevic and Pesce can’t go, it’s not players like Noesen and Hameenaho and Kolyachonok getting the call. Nor is Rodrigues there to open the scoring. Fitzgerald added some players, but Mehta helped build out the roster so that everyone is slotted into the depth chart properly.
That is the big difference between Tom Fitzgerald and Sunny Mehta.
A Big Win For A Lot Of Reasons
Throughout the 2010’s and into the early 2020’s, the New Jersey Devils seemed to lose every single time they played the Washington Capitals. This trend reached its nadir in the 56-game Covid season of 2021, when the Devils went an embarrassing 0-6-2 against the Caps. I suppose you could argue that entire season was odd and should be disregarded, but that’s still an unacceptable display of incompetence.
Since that season, things have stabilized a bit. Thanks to tonight’s victory, New Jersey is now 10-9-2 against Washington since 2021-22. On the other side, the Capitals are not 11-6-4 against the Devils, thanks to more of New Jersey’s wins requiring Overtime/shootouts.
22 points for New Jersey. 26 points for Washington. It still feels like the Devils always have trouble with the Caps, but credit where credit is due: even though Washington still has a slight edge since 2021-22, New Jersey has figured out how to hold their own against them.
The other reason this is a big win, of course, is that the Capitals are unquestionably the Devils’ most direct competition in the Metropolitan Division this season. This is something I wrote about in the preview for the Winnipeg game, and I’ll reiterate it here. The Devils are still pretty close to the first place Hurricanes at the moment, but I really think that Carolina is still a cut above New Jersey and will pull away from them in the regular season eventually. The Flyers and Penguins are pretty buried, and the Islanders, Rangers, and Blue Jackets are all somewhere between decent and mediocre, but probably won’t pose a major threat to the Devils by the end of the campaign.
That leaves Washington, who was a trendy dark horse pick to come out of the East in the runup to the season. These games against the Capitals are massive four-point swings. And considering New Jersey was on the wrong end of one of those last month, it was very important to come away with a regulation win of their own tonight.
That sets up another big swing game on Saturday in D.C., where the Devils can put some serious distance between them and the Caps. It’s another big early-season measuring stick contest, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out over the weekend.
Win Probability
I have barely mentioned Connor Hellebuyck so far, which seems hard to do considering how much of a main character he was in tonight’s matchup.
After all the chaos and blowback from hysterical hockey media members all across North America, Hellebuyck entered tonight’s game well-rested. He and Mehta took the heat for Hellebuyck not playing in Winnipeg on Tuesday, with one of the primary reasons for that decision being to keep Hellebuyck as fresh as possible for this vital home-and-home against a division rival.
And would you look at that. Through all the mocking and the jeering and the insults and the threats (yes, threats), Hellebuyck made his general manager look like a genius. I would have liked a save on the Dubois goal, but aside from that, Hellebuyck was terrific. He made 26 saves on 28 shots, good for a .929 save percentage. According to Natural Stat Trick, Hellebuyck saved 0.56 Goals Above Expected. I really like Jake Allen and I still have faith in him, but I really do believe this game turns out differently if he was in net tonight instead of Hellebuyck. Heck, I think there’s a decent chance this game turns out different if Hellebuyck played in Winnipeg, then played again tonight.
I’m sure Hellebuyck was not able to get any mental rest through the Winnipeg saga, but at least his body was rested. And tonight, he looked every bit as fresh as Mehta was probably hoping he would. Once again, Mehta gets the last laugh over the 200 hockey men who think they know better.
Other Thoughts
Even putting aside the goals, I thought all the call-ups looked good tonight. Hameenaho was buzzing around on the fourth line, Noesen was effective on the third line, and Kolyachonok looked smooth and poised on the backend. Noesen’s individual play-driving numbers did not look great tonight, but Hameenaho and Kolyachonok were both firmly in the black as far as xG% goes. And most importantly, all three of those players outscored their opponents at 5-on-5 today, with Hameenaho winning the goals battle 1-0, and Noesen and Kolyachonok each sitting at 2-0 on the scoresheet. Again, it was a great night for the depth.
As mentioned, the top six was quiet, but they did have their moments. There was one sequence in the second period where the Hughes line gained the zone, and Arseny Gritsyuk made a ridiculous one-touch slap pass to find Hughes alone behind the defense. Hughes couldn’t quite tuck it past Thompson, but it was yet another example of how far Gritsyuk has come as an all-around player, and how lethal that entire line can be.
Meanwhile the Hischier line did it’s job once again. Nothing fancy, no points aside from Meier’s assist on the power play. But they kept their assignment in check and allowed the rest of the team to feast.
The Luke Hughes-Jonas Siegenthaler pairing did not have a good night. The fancy stats over at Natural Stat Trick actually say they controlled play well, but I think this is one of those nights where NST’s model just didn’t properly capture their impact. Hockey Stat Cards had Siegenthaler measured as having a solid night, but Hughes had a poor one according to their metrics. This is more in line with my (very flawed) eye test, but I still do think they struggled a bit. Let’s hope Pesce returns soon to stabilize the blueline.
Finally, listen to what Sheldon Keefe says here around 33 seconds in:
“I know we’re running on fumes here”. I don’t like hearing that 20 games into an 84-game journey. But I think this might be confirming that there’s an illness running through the Devils room. There seems to have been for a while now, with Luke Evangelista having missed three games earlier in the year with an illness. And now Pesce tonight. If that really is the case, I sure hope whatever illness is running through the New Jersey locker room right now gets cured in a hurry.
Next Time Out
New Jersey concludes their home-and-home against the Washington Capitals on Saturday. Puck drop from the nation’s capital is slated for 7:00pm.
Your Take
What did you make of tonight’s game? How impressed were you with the depth? What do you expect against Washington on Saturday? As always, thanks for reading!
