The Devils are Ruining Cory Schneider
No one can ever accuse goaltender Cory Schneider of not wanting to handle a full workload or shying away from wanting to be a franchise goalie.
19 games into the New Jersey Devils’ season Schneider has started, well, all 19 games. No, that’s not a misprint. Sure, he still has a ways to go before reaching Glenn Hall’s consecutive games played record (a paltry 502 total), but in today’s NHL, what the Devils are asking from Cory Schneider is unprecedented. More and more teams are relying on two goalies to carry them through a season and it has become the norm for the backup to play at least one half of a back-to-back set. The norm for everyone except Cory Schneider that is.
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No, he isn’t going to become the first goalie to ever play 80 games in the regular season (Grant Fuhr holds the record with 79 games played in the 1995/96 season), but it’s still mind-boggling that six weeks into the season and Schneider has yet to be given a night off between the pipes.
If the Devils were cruising atop of the division with Schneider posting top-notch numbers, I could understand the justification for playing Schneider on a nightly basis. However, the Devils are sputtering along with an 8-9-2 record and Schneider has posted a pedestrian .910 save percentage and 2.72 goal against average (which ranks 27th and 25th respectively amongst qualified goaltenders in the league this season.) And it goes beyond the statistics; it’s the quality of goals he’s allowing that’s concerning as he’s been good for one “soft” goal a game it seems that always come at the most inopportune times. Saturday night against Colorado he allowed one late in the third period with the Devils clinging to a one-goal lead. You could sense it was only a matter of time before he blew the lead at that point, and sure enough Colorado won the game in regulation.
The most interesting aspect of Schneider’s struggles is that this is the first season where he entered the year as the undisputed number one. Whether he was sharing time with Roberto Luongo in Vancouver or Martin Brodeur last season with the Devils, Schneider has consistently played with the cloud of uncertainty hanging over his job status. The Devils seemingly gave him peace of mind this summer and assurances as the number one goalie when they signed him to a seven-year extension that doesn’t kick in until next season. Do you think anyone on the Devils is having buyer’s remorse?
Should the Devils be worried that this is the goalie they’ll have for the next seven years? They committed a huge sum to him, so obviously they will give him plenty of rope to find his game. In his previous four seasons where he found himself in a time-share with another goalie, Schneider posted numbers no worse than a .921 save percentage and 2.23 goals against average. Does Schneider need to split time in order to be effective, a “1A/1B” approach? The Devils bet on him being a bonafide number one. But if he’s not? Ouch…
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While it’s easy to kill Cory Schneider here, blame should also be on coach Pete DoBoer, and more broadly, the Devils’ organization. After Schneider the team has used both Keith Kinkaid and Scott Clemmensen in back-up roles, with both goalies seeing limited time in mop-up duty for the Devils this season. While it’s understandable if the team believes Schneider provides the team with the best chance for a win nightly, if there is no faith in the back-ups to give the team a quality performance once or week or so, then why even have those back-ups in your organization? If Kinkaid isn’t a long-term solution for the back-up role, then isn’t it necessary to look elsewhere for someone (and no, I’m not suggesting Brodeur return)? It seems unfair to Kinkaid to do that at this point since he hasn’t been given a legitimate opportunity for the role, but why allow precious points to fall off the calendar because you’re uncomfortable with what he can do for you?
The Devils have finished out of the playoffs the last two seasons since a surprise Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 2012. There is no doubt the team is feeling the pressure to make a return to the playoffs and find its place among the league’s elites it was so used to being during the Brodeur era. Perhaps DoBoer’s insistence on playing Cory Schneider every game is nothing more than the desperate attempt for a spark from a coach that realizes his time may be coming to an end? Perhaps, and if so, it’s a clear attempt of DoBoer putting himself ahead of the team.
At some point the Devils are going to have to think about the long term effects of playing the same goalie every night give Schneider a break. It may force the team to play more conservative than they’d like, but it’d be no different that every other team who plays its back-up. It’ll benefit the team to have Kinkaid play some meaningful minutes, even if it’s just a way for the organization to see if he has a future role on the team. Plus, what if Schneider were to go down with a serious injury? Clearly the Devils have no idea what they have behind him in the organization which should give them great unease.
While some may think it’s admirable that the Devils are relying so heavily on Schneider, the team is playing with fire and potentially risk running Schneider into the ground and missing any opportunity it believes it has at making another playoff appearance this season.