Devils Make Changes to Coaching Staff

The Devils announced today via a press release that there will be some changes behind their bench for the 2022-23 season.

So far, head coach Lindy Ruff will be retained, but his staff will look drastically different.

First up, assistant coach Alain Nasreddine, who had been with the team since the John Hynes regime and had in fact served as interim head coach between Hynes’ firing in 2020 and Ruff’s hiring in the 2021 offseason, “has mutually agreed to part ways with” the Devils.

Nasreddine’s contract will not be renewed by the Devils.

As well, “Mark Recchi has been relieved of his duties” as an assistant coach.

In another piece of news around the Devils, PK Subban has been nominated by the team for the King Clancy Memorial Trophy for 2021-22.

The announcement was made in a post on the team’s app and website by writer Amanda Stein.

The award is given to “the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution to his community.” Stein said that the “winner will be chosen by a committee of senior NHL executives led by commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly.”

Subban continued his work within the Newark community, particularly through his Blueline Buddies program, which helps “to bridge the gap between law enforcement and underserved children” which Subban adapted for the Covid pandemic to become digitally based when in-person meet-and-greets were not feasible, which Stein notes in her article.

Stein said that the virtual meet-and-greets were done “in a designated Devils Zoom room” and be held prior “to the start of every home game.” Subban was available to the participants to answer questions and interact with the participants.

Subban has also worked tirelessly to create awareness for causes and people outside of his programs.

Congratulations to PK Subban on his nomination for the King Clancy Trophy and good luck to him on winning the award.

In one other noteworthy accomplishment to two members of the Devils’ television broadcast team, congratulations to both studio and ice level analyst Bryce Salvador and rink side reporter and studio reporter Erika Wachter, both of whom will be working first round playoff series for the NHL on TNT and TBS.

Salvador will be working the Pittsburgh Penguins-New York Rangers series while Wachter will be working the Dallas Stars-Calgary Flames series.

Both will be working the same roles for Turner that they perform for Devils games on MSG.

Binghamton Names Eklund Goaltending Coach; NHL Eyes New Season Plans

Some news to get to today and we will begin with the Devils’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Binghamton Devils, who named Brian Eklund their new goaltending coach. Tom Fitzgerald, Devils Executive Vice President and General Manager made the announcement earlier today.

Eklund previously served as goalie coach for Boston University for the last five seasons. Before coaching with the Terriers, he “was a volunteer assistant coach with Harvard University. The press release put out by the Devils notes that “in his time with the Crimson, Eklund’s goaltenders set records in wins, saves and starts, and also won the 2015 ECAC tournament.”

Eklund, a former collegiate goalie at Brown University from 1998 to 2002, played “in one regular season NHL contest (Nov. 8, 2005) over his six-year professional career.” In a neat twist, he was the third goalie for the Lightning in the 2004 Stanley Cup Playoffs and, as such, is the owner of a Stanley Cup championship ring.

He was picked 226th overall in the seventh round of the 2000 NHL Entry Draft by Tampa Bay and played three seasons in the AHL, two for the Springfield Falcons and one for the Providence Thunderbirds. He played a total of 73 games in the AHL, finishing with a 2.95 goals against average and an .874 save percentage according to the press release.

The press release notes that he spent three professional seasons in the ECHL with the Pensacola Ice Pilots and the Johnstown Chiefs. In the ECHL, he played 83 seasons and posted a 3.15 GAA and a .916 save percentage. The PR staff also said that, in the 2003-04 season, he set league records “for most minutes played in one season (3,724), saves in one season (2,194) an most saves in a playoff game (83; 2-1 2OT loss).”

The 40-year-old native of Braintree, Massachusetts also owns a goalie school in the state called Massachusetts Crease “designed to develop aspiring goalies.”

In other, more broad NHL news, Nicholas J. Cotsonika had an article on the NHL website today that outlined Commissioner Gary Bettman’s plan to get back on the ice for the 2020-21 season.

The coronavirus pandemic has altered a lot of our lives and the NHL will be no different. The league, according to remarks by Bettman on Tuesday, said that “he would never ask players to return to a bubble fort an entire season.” That is how the 2019-20 season and 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs ended up, from July 25 to September 28 in bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton.

Bettman told Cotsonika that the league would try to get teams to be able to play “in their own arenas (with or without fans depending on the local situation), in hubs or in a hybrid system.”

Cotsonika said that “any plan would be a collaborative effort between the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association, as was the 2020 Return to Play Plan. Though both sides are in constant and regular communication, there haven’t been any regular meetings.”

The plan, as it stands now would see teams, if in a bubble, “to rotate in and out.” The Commissioner “said in a virtual panel discussion during the 2020 Paley International Council Summit” he was on with Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver: “You’ll play for 10 to 12 days. You’ll go back, go home for a week, be with your family. We’ll have our testing protocols and all the other things you need. It’s not going to be quite as effective as a bubble, but we think we can, if we go this route, minimize the risks to the extent practical and sensible. And so that’s one of the things that we’re talking about.”

Bettman also said that while the league has tried to target January 1 as a start date, “how the season starts is not necessarily how it will finish, depending on how the situation evolves.”

There is one major factor in all of this: the United States-Canada border. There is “closure to nonessential travel” between the two countries. Bettman joked that they are not “going to move all seven Canadian franchises south of the 49th Parallel, and so we have to look at alternative ways to play.” In addition, he noted that certain states have quarantining for travelers from other states within the US.

Bettman said that they need to be “flexible” and that, “as it relates to the travel issue, which is obviously the great unknown, we may have to temporarily realign to deal with geography, and that may make sense, because having some of our teams travel from Florida to California may not make sense.”

He continued by saying that “it may be that we’re better off, particularly if we’re playing a reduced schedule, which we’re contemplating, keeping it geographically centric, more divisional based, and realigning, again on a temporary basis, to deal with the travel issues.”

On the topic of fans, Cotsonika noted that, which the NHL returned in July, “it had to transform itself into a studio sport, tailoring the game presentation to a TV audience.”

Bettman, on this topic, said that “what we were doing was trying to create an energy and excitement and coverage of our game that would be compelling in the absence of fans.”

As TV ratings were down for the NHL (as, Cotsonika says, they were for all sports), Bettman made two excuses points: “One, fans in the stands give games energy that comes through on television, and some of that was missed.” (The Florida Panthers would like to have a word….)

And, “two, research showed that while avid fans would watch the NHL at any time, casual fans were less inclined to watch in the summer.” (Ahh, yes, the mythical “casual fans” who are either fans of all teams or none.)

So, the Commissioner thinks, “that’s where … a lot of the falloff came. And while we’re in the middle of working on our return to play as well, which I hope to have put to bed soon, our goal is to get back to normal schedule starting [next] fall and being done before July on a longer-term basis. That is the goal.”

Manfred applauded how the NHL in how they handled the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that MLB could learn how to handle things a little bit better and that “maybe it’s not about playing through it, maybe what you’ve really got to worry about is making sure it doesn’t spread.”

In speaking to Bettman, Manfred realized that they were going to have “shutdowns” and “accepted the fact that we were going to have to reschedule to get through.” He credited Bettman with helping him see a different approach.

Whatever they decide, and regional divisions with realignment and a reduced schedule seems to be the way they are leaning, it will just be good to get some hockey on our television screens again soon.