The Matchup: The New Jersey Devils (8-3-0) vs. Los Angeles Kings (5-3-4)
The Time: 9:00pm ET
The Broadcast: MSGSN, Devils Hockey Radio
Last Devils Game
New Jersey began the California portion of their road trip on Thursday in San Jose. A goal against in the first minute of the game, plus two more in the opening frame sunk the Devils in a terrible 5-2 loss. Dawson Mercer registered two power play goals for all the offense on the Devils’ side.
Last Kings Game
Los Angeles was also in action on Thursday, falling in a shootout to the Red
Wings, 4-3. The Kings were down 3-1 entering the final three minutes of regulation, but two goals in 40 seconds late in the third helped them secure a loser point to salvage something from their Thursday evening.
Friday Night News Dump: Markstrom Extended
The Devils made a pretty significant announcement last night. If you missed it, I don’t blame you. The team announced it on a Friday night, which just so happened to be Halloween, which also just so happened to come during Game 6 of the World Series. But in the middle of all of that, New Jersey announced that they have signed Jacob Markstrom to a contract extension: 2 years, $6m AAV:
This doesn’t really impact tonight’s game, but it’s such a significant development that we need to address it here. The timing isn’t the best as far as optics go. Markstrom is coming off one of his worst games as a Devil, and he’s struggled through substandard play and injuries early this season. Still, Markstrom showed in stretches last season (including the playoffs) that he can still be a high-end goalie in this league.
For me personally, I really like the two-year term, but the $6m AAV is a little rich for my blood. I guess I have to keep telling myself that in a rising cap environment, $6m AAV is the new $4m AAV, or something like that.
In any case, congrats to Markstrom. Here’s to hoping he can give New Jersey a few more good seasons to come.
Injuries Taking Their Toll
The Devils have been ravaged by injuries since before the season even began. Johnny Kovacevic and Stefan Noesen began the year on the shelf, and they were quickly joined by Evgenii Dadonov, Zack MacEwen, Cody Glass, and most recently, Brett Pesce. It’s that last one that seems to be hitting the Devils the hardest. In the two games that Pesce has missed, New Jersey has given up eight(!) and five goals. Completely unacceptable defensive efforts, even if a large portion of the blame belongs to the goaltenders.
Pesce is expected to be out at least a month, so he’s not walking through that door to help the Devils defense anytime soon. It’s on the players still in the lineup to figure things out and stop bleeding chances and goals. It’s only two games, but it would behoove New Jersey to nip this in the bud starting tonight.
And now, we may have to add another injury to the list:
Brown has been quite the offseason pickup for New Jersey. He won’t continue to shoot the lights out, but he’s a solid player with speed, skill, grit, and veteran leadership. Even if he isn’t a top of the lineup player, he will be missed if he can’t go tonight. Let’s hope whatever is ailing him heals soon.
In his absence, head coach Sheldon Keefe made some big changes to his lineup in practice yesterday:
I hesitate to put too much stock into this because Stein reported that Keefe said not to read too much into this. The lineup was the way it was apparently to accommodate Brown’s absence. If he’s in tonight, I expect the lineup to remain roughly the same. If he’s not, then perhaps we see something similar to this.
There’s also Dennis Cholowski seemingly being set to make his season debut tonight. He’s a very limited player but after the last two nights, it’s not like the defense begs to be kept together. We’ll see what Cholowski can bring this evening.
Some Big Guns Have Been Quiet
I mentioned this briefly in the game recap of the San Jose game on Thursday, but I would really like to see Nico Hischier and Timo Meier get back in the goal column. Both players have gone seven games without scoring a goal, and while they contribute in many, many other ways, scoring goals would be a nice way to contribute some more. Hischier only has two goals on the season, and Meier only has three. I get that a lot of their energy is taken up every night by stopping the other team’s best players, but they were fed brutal minutes last year and still produced. In fact, Hischier registered a career-high in goals with 35, and while much of that was on the power play, the overall point remains that even with tough assignments, they are more than capable of finding the back of the net.
The good news is that Hischier is due. He is only shooting at 8.0% thus far, well below his career mark of 13.2%. Meier on the other hand is actually at 10.7%, which is basically at his career mark of 10.9%. So it doesn’t appear that he’s getting victimized by bad shooting luck. Which is a little concerning, but if there’s one thing we know about Meier, it’s that he is capable of scoring goals in bunches. Once he sees that next one go in, don’t be surprised to see him follow it up with a stretch of seven goals in five games or something like that.
Jack Hughes has carried the offense lately, and Jesper Bratt and Dawson Mercer have produced as well. But New Jersey needs their other big guns to start scoring goals again too. I have confidence in them, Hischier and Meier won’t be held down for long. But it would be nice if they can stop being held down tonight.
Is Luke Ready For Primetime?
We’ve talked about Brett Pesce already, but now let’s talk about his defense partner, Luke Hughes. When I say primetime, I’m referring to being a true number one defenseman based on both traditional and advanced stats. It’s worth asking if he’s ready considering just how much the Devils now have invested in the young man. Again, all the small sample size caveats apply, but since Pesce went down, to me it’s been a mixed bag as far as what I’ve seen out of Hughes without his primary partner.
In the game on Tuesday in Colorado, Hughes actually didn’t look too bad based on the numbers at Natural Stat Trick. In that game, at 5-on-5 Hughes posted an Expected Goals For% of 54.30. The Devils also outscored Colorado 4-1 when Hughes was on the ice. Hughes was paired with Dougie Hamilton that night, and in 13:22 together at 5-on-5, Hughes’ xGF% was 68.77, and he was in the black in goals for, Corsi, Scoring Chances, and High Danger Corsi. In Thursday’s game, however, Hughes was paired with Seamus Casey, and boy did it not go well. Hughes posted a 5-on-5 xGF% of 14.31, which is shockingly bad. In 17:20 with Casey specifically, he put up a 19.72 xGF%. The Hughes-Casey pairing did not work in any way, and I would strongly suggest that Keefe not go with that pairing again.
The numbers at Hockey Stat Cards seem to back this data up. In the Colorado game, Hughes posted a Game Score of 3.18, second on the team behind only his partner, Hamilton. For those not familiar with Hockey Stat Cards’ Game Score model, 3.18 is a fantastic number. Meanwhile in the San Jose game, Hughes’ Game Score was -0.89, a really bad result.
So for Hughes, it’s been one great game and one bad game since Pesce went down. I will say, just based on my own personal eye test, I feel as though his numbers in the Colorado game are a little generous. Not to the point where I think he had a secretly bad game, but I do think it’s hard for me to point to Hughes and say he was truly dominant in that contest. Then again, he did get matched up against Colorado’s super-elite top line of Nathan MacKinnon, Martin “The Diver” Necas, and Artturi Lehkonen, along with a steady dose of the all-world Cale Makar-Devon Toews pairing. So maybe I’m being too harsh on Hughes given he posted really good numbers against arguably the toughest matchup in the league.
And even if we go by traditional stats, Hughes has zero goals and six assists through 11 games. His shots will start beating goaltenders again, but that’s still only slightly more than half a point per game production. Which is pretty much exactly what he’s produced in his first two seasons (47 points in 2023-24, 44 points last year). That’s not bad obviously, but that’s far from top of the league stuff. The only way you can get away with that level of production and still be considered a number one defenseman is if you’re also an elite shutdown guy. Think Jaccob Slavin or Gustav Forsling. Luke certainly isn’t on their level in that regard. Then again, if Hughes actually starts getting regular playing time on the top power play unit soon, instead of splitting time with Hamilton, he could see his production skyrocket.
So what does all this mean? Well in my eyes, it means that Hughes is not quite ready to be considered a true number one defenseman yet. He has all the tools, and he shows that elite production and ice-tilting ability in spurts, but not at a consistent level. He doesn’t appear to be able to carry his own pairing yet, though perhaps it’s unfair to expect him to carry a player as raw as Casey. Then again, it’s not like the Hughes-Casey pairing was going up against MacKinnon or McDavid, they were playing a woeful Sharks team. I really don’t think it would’ve been too much to ask for Hughes to have a good game against a team that bad regardless of who his partner is.
I want to make it clear, I am absolutely not giving up on Hughes. I still have confidence that he will be a star defenseman in this league very soon. But the numbers seem to indicate that he has thus far only been able to achieve star-level play when paired with another really good defenseman. For Hughes to be considered a true number one, he needs to thrive under tougher conditions.
Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown
The Los Angeles Kings have been a very good team for half a decade now. They’ve made the playoffs every year since 2021-22, finishing with 99 points twice, 104 points once, and 105 points last season. They’ve built their team through terrific team defense, finishing second league-wide in goals allowed last season, third in 2023-24, 16th in 2022-23, and 9th in 2021-22. Even in their “down” year in 2022-23 they were still average.
The biggest problem for Los Angeles since they’ve become a perennial playoff team can be summed up in two words: Edmonton Oilers.
Over the past four seasons, the Kings have been eliminated by the Oilers in the first round every single year. Other fans have plenty of complaints about the current playoff format, but Kings fans probably have the biggest complaints of all. They just can’t seem to solve their Edmonton problem.
That problem cost general manager Rob Blake his job this past spring. In his place came longtime NHL executive Ken Holland. He went to work reshaping the team, which basically boiled down to the highly questioned signings of defensemen Cody Ceci (4-year, $4.5m AAV) and old pal Brian Dumoulin (3-year, $4m AAV). These two have effectively replaced (or at least that was the idea) shutdown ace Vladislav Gavrikov, who signed with the New York Rangers in free agency.
Aside from Ceci and Dumoulin, the rest of the team remains largely the same. They still haven’t solved their Oilers problem, but as we’ve discussed, this has still been one of the stronger teams in the league for years now. They hope this is the year they can finally get over the hump.
Abdicating The Throne
With apologies to Cyrus The Great, Anze Kopitar has been the King of Kings for a long, long time in Los Angeles. But the future hall of famer’s reign is coming to an end, as he announced before the season that 2025-26 would be his last. Obviously Kopitar has slowed down in recent years (he only has five assists and zero goals in eight games this season for example), but he’s still been an effective player and invaluable leader for the Kings.
The heir apparent to Kopitar’s throne is Quinton Byfield. The second overall pick in 2020 has developed into a pretty darn good player over the past couple seasons. Over the past two years, he posted 43 goals and 109 points over 161 total games. Certainly not elite production, but respectable for a player his age. But that’s not what makes Byfield so dangerous.
Byfield is one of those players who just controls the run of play very well. A look through his Natural Stat Trick numbers show a player whose big 5-on-5 stats (Expected Goals For%, High Danger Corsi For%, Scoring Chances For%, Corsi For%) have all been in the mid-to-high-50’s since 2022-23. That’s excellent work for a player as young as Byfield. Meanwhile, a look at Byfield’s Hockey Stat Cards numbers have him above average in defensive impact, borderline elite in offensive impact, and borderline elite in overall impact. As far as traditional stats go, he’s got those 109 points over the past two seasons, and this year he’s leveled up a bit in terms of point production, registering 10 points (two goals, eight assists) in 12 games, an 82-game pace of roughly 68 points.
Byfield is probably the most important Kings player of the next five to ten seasons. He’s a star in the making, and while he might not be a true star yet, he’s a dangerous player that the Devils should devote a sizeable amount of their gameplan to.
Keeping Kempe Contained
Apart from Byfield, Adrian Kempe is the other big Kings forward to keep an eye on. Through 12 games, Kempe leads the team in points with 15, and is tied for the team lead in goals with five. Kempe has been a point machine for Los Angeles over the past few seasons, registering a career-high 41 goals in 2022-23 (67 total points that year), 75 points in 2023-24, and 73 points last season. He’s over a point per game pace in the early going, so he’ll need plenty of defensive attention as well.
Projected Lineup
Here’s how the Kings lined up in their last game:
I’m not sure if Trevor Moore will return to the lineup (he missed last game due to personal reasons). If he does, expect this lineup with Moore drawing back in for Jacob Moverare.
Your Take
What do you make of tonight’s game? Are you confident the defense will right itself, or will they struggle to keep the puck out of their own net again? Who on the Devils are looking for to step up? Who on the Kings are you most intrigued by? As always, thanks for reading!
