Devils Respond to Coaching Change With Improved Effort | COLUMN

NEWARK, NJ – Travis Green took over as interim head coach for the New Jersey Devils on Monday evening. He addressed his team Tuesday morning ahead of hosting the Florida Panthers, the team with the best record in the NHL.

His message to the team?

“I tried to let them know what kind of coach I am,” he said. “I used words like trust, communication, honesty. Those are all important parts of coaching.

“I can be demanding, but fair. I talked about how I envision our team playing.”

And what did Green demand and envision from his team in his interim coaching debut?

“I’d like to see a lot of energy in our game, a lot of passion,” he told the media before the game. “I like players that love winning. And confidence. Players that have swagger, that believe in themselves, that are hungry to get on the ice. They love winning and hate losing. For me those are big elements in the NHL.”

Those elements had been missing from the Devils’ previous seven games in which the club went 2-5-0. The energy. The passion. The confidence. The swagger.

“The desperation and enthusiasm and passion for the game hasn’t really been there for our team lately,” forward Jesper Bratt said in the morning. “The energy hasn’t really been there. We haven’t really pushed through in the games we needed to push through. We haven’t had the push back to other teams at the times we needed it. We haven’t gotten to that passion and been desperate enough to give ourselves a chance to win.”

Against the Florida Panthers, most of those elements, if not all, seemed to return.

If any play could epitomize what the Devils want from their players, it came from Timo Meier. On a power play in the second period the puck bounced toward the slot. Meier barreled his way through two Florida Panthers – Niko Mikkola and Dmitry Kulikov – to reach the puck. Then he kicked the puck to his stick and with one arm, while being tackled, tapped the puck by the outstretched pad of goalie Anthony Stolarz for a goal. It was an incredible individual effort and a display of skill and heart.

Or how about Colin Miller’s block early in the second period. After an Evan Rodrigues shot was stopped by goalie Akira Schmid, the puck bounced into the high slot. Miller turned to see that Eetu Luostarinen was pouncing for a shot. Miller laid out his body with a feet first slide into the shooting lane and absorbed the shot off his kidney.  

Or Erik Haula taking a few punishing cross checks from Sam Bennett to plant himself at the crease while Colin Miller ripped a slap shot through Stolarz’s legs for a goal to make it a 4-3 game as the Devils battled back.

Or in the final minute with the goaltender pulled, Jack Hughes dropping to a knee to block a shot and his brother Luke leaping at the crease to knock away another shot at the vacated net.

“I thought they really started to feel good about themselves,” Green said after the game. “I liked our energy tonight. You could feel a lot of energy in our room, a lot of confidence.”

The energy. Check. The passion. Check. The confidence. Check. The swagger. Check.

But despite playing one of their better games of the season, the Devils still lost, 5-3, to the Panthers, the defending Eastern Conference champions.

“That’s a good hockey team over there,” Green said. “They’re a big team. They’re built to win right now. They’re one of the better teams in the league. That’s one of the teams that can expose certain parts of your game.”

While the Devils effort was much improved, there are still some areas of their game that need cleaned up. Once again, the Devils gave up the first goal and were trailing 2-0 just 6:30 minutes into the game. At times their exectuion was off, especially in the opening 10 minutes. 

“We played better, but not the result we wanted,” Jack Hughes said. “They’re a good team. When you’re down 2-0 early it definitely puts you behind.”

“I really like how we battled back in the game. I didn’t like our start,” Green said. “There were some things I liked about the game, and some moments we can learn from as well.”

Overall, the result was another missed opportunity to pick up points in the standings. The Devils remain at 64 points. They’re eight points out of a playoff spot with 20 games remaining and would have to jump four teams in the process to earn a playoff spot.

There are no more moral victories for their postseason ambitions.

“It’s all about winning. That’s all there is now,” Bratt said. “There’s nothing else that matters to us now than winning.”

Regardless of where the Devils finish in the standings to end the season, the remaining 20 games are still important. Green wants to instill a lot of habits into his players over the final six weeks of the year that they will carry the seasons that follow.

“For me, it’s a daily process. How you build. How you teach. How you talk about expectations and standards and what it takes to win,” Green said. “And having those standards. We still have a lot of young players that still have to learn a lot of that. It’s our job to be relentless in our teaching, in our communication and push our team not only forward this year to make a run … but also in the future.

“I have high expectations and standards for myself, for our coaching staff and for our players. It’s going to be important that we teach them how to be better players and how to win in the NHL. We’re not just here to make the playoffs and be good. We’re here to win championships.”

The lessons have begun.