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From before the lockout until now, I’ve seen a good amount about how this year’s Devils team was going to be much worse than last year’s team. I was curious to see what the stats said about how the two teams compared. So for those who are not very fond of math, you may want to stay away from this post because I’m about to throw a lot of numbers your way. Ready? OK, here we go. The Devils are now 64.58% through their season this year. In comparison to last year’s full season, that’s roughly 53 games into the season. Actually its 52.95 games, but I’ll be nice and round it off to 53 games. Game 53 was on February 7^th, 2012. Here are a few stats at that point last season:

• The power play was operating at 16.39% (Scoring 30 goals on 183 power play opportunities)
• The penalty kill was operating at 88.71% (Allowed 21 goals on 186 times shorthanded)
• The Devils had allowed 2 or more power play goals in 3 games (5.66% of their games)
• The Devils were shorthanded 4 or more times in 26 games (49.06% of their games)
• Their goals against average was at 2.75 GA/G*
• Their goals for average was 2.66 GF/G*
• They had picked up 61.32% of possible points

Now here are some stats from this season so far:

• The power play is operating at 17.8% (Scoring 21 goals on 118 power play opportunities)
• The penalty kill is operating at 79.66% (Allowing 24 goals on 118 times shorthanded)
• The Devils have allowed 2 or more power play goals in 5 games (16.13%)
• The Devils have been shorthanded 4 or more times in 16 games (51.61% of their games)
• Their goals against average is at 2.61 GA/G*
• Their goals for average is 2.45 GF/G*
• They’ve picked up 54.8% of possible points

So doing some subtraction, you can see that:

• The power play has picked up 1.41%
• The penalty kill has dropped 9.05% (Of course, last year was a NHL record setting PK)
• They have allowed 2 or more power play goals in 10.47% more of their games
• They have been shorthanded 4 or more times in 2.55% more of their games.
• They are allowing .14 fewer goals per game
• They are scoring .21 fewer goals per game
• They’ve picked up 6.52% less of possible points

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As you can see, the Devils have bettered their power play and goals against average, but their goals for, penalty kill, and discipline have gone down. And, overall, are picking up points at a slower pace. Now, none of these stats jump out as a reason to hit the panic button (aside from the penalty kill, but come on, did we seriously expect them to break their own record?) but their performance has dipped just a bit. Injuries and offseason losses have played a big part in this. You can almost attach each dipped stat to a specific player. Martin Brodeur’s absence is going to affect things like the penalty kill and power play goals allowed per game, and losses of Zach Parise to free agency, not resigning Petr Sykora, and Dainius Zubrus to injury have affected the scoring (albeit not by much). Overall, the Devils’ performance has gone down, but not necessarily by all that much, or at least, not as much as most thought it was going to. Now, with Marty Brodeur back and a few other pieces hopefully getting healthy within the next few days it’s crunch time. With only 17 games (or 35.42% of the season) remaining and hovering around the playoff bubble, every game and every point is critical.

*I decided to not count the goals scored in the shootout. That is, for a game that goes to a shootout after being tied 2-2, the final score would be 3-2 in favor of the team that wins the shootout. I chose not to count that extra “goal” as part of the goals against or goals for average. I’ll include them here, though, in case anyone wants to know the numbers with those included: 2011-2012: 2.79 GA/G, 2.83 GF/G | 2012-2013: 2.74 GA/G, 2.52 GF/G