Why Did The Devils Miss The Playoffs In 1996?

[GlitchMarner]

What went wrong?

They were the defending Cup Champions and had done very well in the 1994 season (finishing second in the East and almost knocking off the Rangers in the playoffs). They would bounce back by finishing first in the East in '97, '98 and '99.

They started the '95-'96 season off 4-0 and were 6-1 after seven games. They did end up with a respectable 86 points, which would actually have been good for fourth place in the Western Conference that season. They ranked second-best in goals against but second-last in goals scored. Did they simply not have enough offense to get into the playoffs?

 

[Moose Head]

Tough division plus a bit of a Cup hangover

 

[reckoning]

They needed a win against the last-place Ottawa Senators on the last day of the season to get in. Had a 2-1 lead going into the third period, when Tom Chorske, who the Devils had left unprotected in the waiver draft before the season, scored two goals to end their season

There was another game against Hartford the week earlier that should have been an easy win, but Whaler goalie Jason Muzzatti had the game of his career with 40 saves in a 1-0 win.

They seemed to lose a lot of close low-scoring games. Brodeur could only do so much.

Of course, if they were in the West they would have finished 4th and easily made the playoffs.

 

[Stephen]

2 lengthy playoff runs in 1994 (ECF) and 1995 (Stanley Cup win) and the combination of hangover and 82 games.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

swapping lemieux for stumpy thomas is the obvious roster difference

i wonder how much that factored in

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

i’ll say this was an impressive bit of GMing by lou

New Jersey Devils acquire	Date	Vancouver Canucks acquire
1996 2nd round pick (#38-Wes Mason) [TBODY] [/TBODY]	November 23, 1995	Esa Tikkanen [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

New Jersey Devils acquire	Date	St. Louis Blues acquire
Esa Tikkanen [TBODY] [/TBODY]	November 1, 1995	1997 3rd round pick (#78-Ville Nieminen) [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[The Pale King]

They remind me a bit of the 2014-15 Kings. Still a very solid roster from the Cup win the year prior, but choked at some key moments and really were their own worst enemy. Jersey was second last in the league in GF, LA was in the bottom third, but NJ allowed the second fewest goals, Los Angeles the 7th.

I think the vast majority of teams that rank that solidly defensively make the playoffs. Weird blip years, and it doesn't help that they both had that defending champ target on their back.

They had remarkably similar GF/GA numbers: NJ scored 215 and gave up 202, and Los Angeles scored 220 and gave up 205.

Has a team ever ranked first in GA and last in GF? Or vice-versa?

 

[wetcoast]

Their offense really dried up as they were 25th out of 26 teams in that metric.

 

[Dread Clawz]

Cup hangover plus the East was really tough that year. I watched almost every Devils game that season and it seemed like they waited too long into the season to turn it on. Iirc the Devils lost out on a berth on the last day of the season, and Tampa Bay essentially took "their" berth.

 

[vikash1987]

i’ll say this was an impressive bit of GMing by lou

New Jersey Devils acquire	Date	Vancouver Canucks acquire
1996 2nd round pick (#38-Wes Mason) [TBODY] [/TBODY]	November 23, 1995	Esa Tikkanen [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

New Jersey Devils acquire	Date	St. Louis Blues acquire
Esa Tikkanen [TBODY] [/TBODY]	November 1, 1995	1997 3rd round pick (#78-Ville Nieminen) [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Lou acquired Tikkanen because they lost Bob Carpenter due to injury. When Carpenter came back sooner than expected, it was decided that there wasn’t room for Tikkanen. I always thought that the shortness of his stay was because he wasn’t producing or pulling his weight on the ice—turns out that had nothing to do with it. (‘95-‘96 was a couple seasons before I became a fan.)

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Yeah, they sort of lost that special magic that they had had prior.

They just couldn't score.

Let's also no forget that, though they got good again in the regular season, it took them awhile to have any success in the playoffs again as well.

 

[vikash1987]

Cup hangover plus the East was really tough that year. I watched almost every Devils game that season and it seemed like they waited too long into the season to turn it on. Iirc the Devils lost out on a berth on the last day of the season, and Tampa Bay essentially took "their" berth.

What sticks out to me is that close to a third of their losses were against non-playoff teams, including the likes of Hartford and Ottawa down the stretch. Also, they lost five of their six games against Florida that season. Florida was a team, you could argue, which modeled its own success on the Devils. Kind of symbolic.

 

[Dread Clawz]

What sticks out to me is that close to a third of their losses were against non-playoff teams, including the likes of Hartford and Ottawa down the stretch. Also, they lost five of their six games against Florida that season. Florida was a team, you could argue, which modeled its own success on the Devils. Kind of symbolic.

It is kinda funny. Yeah, that was Doug MacLean's first season as head coach and he definitely continued on Roger Nielsen's style of trapping hockey. Although MacLean had an improved team and a terrific rookie in Jovanovski. I think that season forced changes for the Devils that benefited them longer term though and led to their great success in the early 2000's. I look at the late 90's as kind of a retool for them, although it was an incredibly successful and painless retool.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Lou acquired Tikkanen because they lost Bob Carpenter due to injury. When Carpenter came back sooner than expected, it was decided that there wasn’t room for Tikkanen. I always thought that the shortness of his stay was because he wasn’t producing or pulling his weight on the ice—turns out that had nothing to do with it. (‘95-‘96 was a couple seasons before I became a fan.)

according to this article, tik and lemaire didn’t gel

Early in the 1995-96 season, the Blues shipped their declining asset to New Jersey for a draft choice, where it didn't take Tikkanen long to clash with noted disciplinarian Jacques Lemaire. After dressing for just nine games with the Devils, Tikkanen was on his way to Vancouver for a second-round draft choice.

The problems started immediately. First, it was rumored that Tikkanen wouldn't report. Then, he wanted his contract renegotiated. When he finally did get to Vancouver, he failed his team medical, thanks to years of damage to his knees. After a great deal of testing, rehab, and checking past medical records, Tikkanen finally joined the team more than a month later, announcing "Moses is here". The Canucks' fortunes did improve when Tikkanen first took to the ice, and he was his usual formidable shadow' self against Peter Forsberg in the playoffs. But the situation turned really ugly this year at training camp, thanks to an early clash with rookie coach Tom Renney over the coach's banning of beer on post-game charters. "I'll get a doctor's note," quipped Tikk with his usual lack of respect for authority. Renney was not amused.

Canucks and Rangers complete big deal days before deadline​

but it doesn’t seem like tikkanen gelled with anybody that year and was a general nuisance, albeit an extremely productive one on a line with ronning and mogilny. i wonder if contract stuff also played a part in him getting traded from nj

later that year, they ended up replacing him at LW with andreychuk, at the cost of a second (which they got for tikkanen) and a conditional later pick.

and man what a year by lou. he got second rounders for both terreri and corey schwab that year. lou’s entire career was a master class in stockpiling draft picks but nowhere was the benefits of this more evident than at the 98 draft, when he traded two seconds so he could move up to the first round to take scott gomez, then later that day traded a fourth and a fifth so he could take gionta in the third round.

 

[Brodeur]

Oddly the 1995-96 team had a similar regular season to the 1994-95 team. The Cup team had 52 points in 48 regular season games, on pace for ~89 in the regular season. The 1995-96 squad finished with 86 points. The lack of scoring at center ice was probably a culprit. Neal Broten was unexpectedly a shot in the arm offensively for the stretch run the previous year but his offense dried up after the Cup. Stephane Richer and John MacLean's numbers started declining at this point as well.

On the back end, they opted not to re-sign Bruce Driver in order to keep a spot open for a young Jason Smith who didn't provide a ton of offense.

I'd be curious about the Lemieux trade's effect on the locker room. I remember an anecdote from Shawn Chambers that the day he showed up to the locker room after being acquired in 1995 that the first thing he saw was Lemieux and Scott Stevens brawling. Thomas led the 1995-96 club in scoring, so I'm not sure I'd point any fingers in his direction necessarily.

And as another poster mentioned, it was a weird season where the Conferences were really imbalanced. 86 points wasn't good enough to qualify for the East, but would have been good enough for the #4 seed in the West.

Due to the 1994-95 lockout, the 1995 Stanley Cup was awarded a few weeks later than usual. Even with a sweep, the series ended on June 24. Not sure if the slightly shortened offseason was a factor at all. Brodeur/Niedermayer also missed most of training camp due to contract disputes. Not sure if that might have been a factor.

Stumbled on this nugget while reading up on Brodeur's holdout: Devs must find a way to keep Marty

This was one year after the Blues had extended New Jersey captain Scott Stevens a Group II offer sheet that Lamoriello matched. There was educated expectation that St. Louis, run by Mike Keenan, would do the same with Brodeur.

Late that July, the Blues traded two first-round draft picks to Edmonton for Shayne Corson that would have been used as compensation for Brodeur. But within a week, St. Louis got them back in a deal for Curtis Joseph and Mike Grier, thus laying the groundwork for an expected bid on the then 23-year-old goaltender.

But for reasons never explained, the NHLPA entered into a hasty agreement with the NHL that defined reacquired draft picks as “encumbered” and thus could not be used as offer sheet compensation.

I hadn't heard that anecdote before about not being able to use reacquired picks.

 

[Big Phil]

People forget, it wasn't the West that was dominant back then, it was the East. The first part of the 1990s it was the Eastern Conference that was the strongest, and was winning the Cups. Not until 1996 did the Western Dominance start. So yeah, you have a hard division, but what people forget is that the 1995 Devils finished with just 4 games above .500 as well. They had about as unimpressive of a regular season as any Cup winner in recent memory. So it wasn't as if they should have gotten more points. Plus, if what is between you and a playoff spot is the 1996 Ottawa Senators and you lose that game convincingly, then you do NOT deserve the playoffs. They were also well below .500 on New Year's Eve. This just was not a great season for them. The last game of the season against the Sens, they were up 2-1 going into the third. You would think, that one of the worst teams in NHL history would make it a lock to win this game, and yet the Sens got 4 third period goals and made it 5-2 for the win. Alfredsson of all people, a Calder winner that year, scored the winning goal.

I remember liking Lindros a lot back then and wondering what would have happened to Philly had they met the Devils in the 1st round, which they would have had the Devils beaten the Sens. The Flyers always had trouble with the Devils. They did in 1995 and 2000. They dodged a bullet in 1997 when the Rangers knocked the Devils out, I think. So who knows.

 

[Brodeur]

After looking it up, the Devils had the 24th (out of 26th) PP in the league as well. Acquiring Phil Housley and Dave Andreychuk at the deadline made sense to help out but maybe it was too little too late; Unrelated but the Housley trade always make me smile since that was possibly the first article I ever read online at home with a terrible text only dial up modem. Albeit the PP stunk the year before (23rd) and was in the bottom half in 1993-94.

Just to add on previous post, I think Richer/MacLean/Broten declined but were still given ice time over Sykora/Rolston/Holik. Mix in a possibly sour locker room after winning a Cup but several guys butting heads with Lou regarding new contracts.

 

[hacksaw7]

They were a playoff caliber team that year. In the 1980-1996 NHL it was kind of unheard of for a team to go 37-33-12 and miss the playoffs. FIVE Western Conference teams with worse point totals were in while the Devils were out.

Lamoriello waited too long to get that team offensive help, they should've opened things up a bit more offensively that year. Richer had a poor season and was having personal/depression issues I believe. Zelepukin after his eye injury just wasn't the same guy anymore. Lost his scoring touch. That hurt

They were also unlucky in a lot of games. Like the below

Hartford Whalers at New Jersey Devils Box Score — April 4, 1996 | Hockey-Reference.com

New Jersey Devils at Hartford Whalers Box Score — January 27, 1996 | Hockey-Reference.com

Also playing down to their competition. They played San Jose twice that year and lost and tied with them. No excuse for that. They lost two games to the Oilers and scored one goal each game against them. Can't go 0-3-1 in 4 games vs EDM/SJ in 95/96. Also lost both their contests vs Anaheim

Strangely, they were really good in 5 on 5 OT that year. They went 7-0-12 in the 19 regular season games they played that went into OT.

They also took the 7th most shots in the NHL that season. And had the lowest shooting percentage in the entire league.

 

[vikash1987]

Larry Robinson, asst coach on the '95 Cup team, was another key guy---albeit a non-player on the coaching staff---who wasn't there in '95-'96. He had been offered the head coaching job in LA.

How big of an effect this had at the time, I don't really know. But I always found it revealing that the Devils started to have playoff success again when he (and Claude Lemieux) returned in 2000.

 

[Brodeur]

1999-00 had a big influx of rookie talent: Rafalski, Gomez, Madden, and even Colin White.

The forward lines for the 2000 run made a bit more sense. Devils were very heavy with C/LW types. As much as I still kinda dislike swapping Rolston for Lemieux, it balanced the lineup. Gomez and Madden usurping Morrison/Pederson's spots allowed them to add Mogilny as a secondary weapon as well.

I had forgotten about Larry leaving. Devils were still 2nd in GA in 1995-96 but the offense just dried up.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

As much as I still kinda dislike swapping Rolston for Lemieux, it balanced the lineup

probably helped them win in 2000, with claude leading all devils forwards in icetime and scoring as much as any forward on the team not on the a-line

but came back to bite them in the ass the year after, with rolston being the main piece flipped for ray bourque

 

[MS]

As others have noted :

1) Fluke tough division. 6th in their own division but would have been 4th in the entire Western Conference. In any other year this is a solid playoff team.

2) Given that, their biggest issue was that their offense and PP dried up. Of their top 4 scorers in the 1995 playoffs only 1 was an effective player in 1995-96. Lemieux was traded after a contract dispute, Richer was having serious mental health problems, and Neal Broten turned back into an aged pumpkin. Bruce Driver was also a loss on the blueline.