Howdy gang, Happy mid-August.
I know Chris just wrote about the long term D Corps and Gerard wrote about a Dougie bounce back already. Admittedly, I had this one half-cooked in the hopper for the Uncle Pucker site and it’s probably a month or two late, but I am here to spin a yarn about Douglas Entertainment Hamilton.
Most of the Devils fanbase identified Dougie and his newly updated 10-team no trade as a prime candidate to get moved this offseason. He popped up in trade rumors after Elliotte Friedman mentioned him on 32 Thoughts:
To me, the next biggest question for the Devils is Dougie Hamilton. He went from a full no move clause to a partial no trade. I’m just curious to see what happens. Uh, they paid him his bonus on July 1. I don’t have a great feel for it in terms of percentage chances that anything occurs with him. But I know his name was kind of out there a little bit. And I heard they’ve been talking to a couple teams. So we’ll see where that goes.
I see the logic, we all do, it’s very clear: The right side of the blueline is getting full and we have some promising up and coming kids. Quite frankly, I question the timing and logic of the Kovacevic signing but that’s a story for another time. Trading Dougie would’ve been and still would be, a mistake for the 24-25 season with the way our group looks right now. At this point in the offseason it likely isn’t going to happen but I want to emphasize that is correct decision.
Reason 1: Kovechkin, you ok?
Something happened during the playoffs that made trading Dougie a non-starter for me: Kovacevic got hurt. I touched on this in my first blog – the mystery around his injury and the lack of transparency we get from the NHL around injuries. What was it? Ligament? Something else? Sign of life? Blink twice if you can hear me, Johnny.
What we do know is that he is not starting the season, and reading some tea leaves on it I think he might be out much longer than just a few games to start the season. If it is a ligament tear (sprains don’t require surgery) and based on common knee injury timelines, I am guessing we won’t see Kovacevic until early 2026 at the earliest, but please note my liberal arts degree didn’t include orthopedic specialties. We haven’t been told anything, and obviously there are myriad other knee injuries out there, but my best speculative guess is some sort of ACL tear.
Reason 2: The Alternatives
What will the Devils get from Nemec and Casey? Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
To entertain the trade chatter, let’s game this out a little, shall we? If we were to trade Douglas, we wouldn’t get the value we need back: a shiny new top 6 forward or established 3C. He has value, but it doesn’t line up on a 1-for-1 basis. I suppose there are packages and/or convoluted 3-team/retention deals – some fans can get very clever – but I just wanted to look at where we sit purely without him.
I’ve seen some people talk about loyalty and I’m not going to get all kumbaya about him “choosing” the Devils. As Don Draper said, that’s what the money is for. However, the time to trade him was during the playoffs -> pre-free agency to give us more flexibility to look at UFAs or make trades before we got to the most boring off-season of all time. In the scenario with Dougie gone and Kovacevic maybe dead, we are likely running a right side of Pesce, Nemec, and Casey for 40-50 games. That makes me about as uncomfortable as the back of a Volkswagon.
I am a big believer in Nemec, and think he is closer to the guy we got in the playoffs than the one we got during the regular season. As of now though, we do not know which version we would get or if it will be a mixed bag. Nemec has an NHL top-4 ceiling and an AHL floor, and we cannot afford to find out by giving him big minutes out of the gate. I have full confidence he shows us he is that top-4 guy, but he definitely needs some time to grow still and we will get some of those AHL floor moments. That floor is what concerns me as it was pretty rough:
The below are in 365 5v5 minutes, via Natural Stat Trick:
Shot attempts for/against: 303 vs 384 (-71)
Goals for/against: 8 vs 17 (-9)
Scoring Chances for/against: 134 vs 174 (-40)
High Danger Scoring Chances for/against: 48 vs 71 (-23)
On-ice save percentage: .912
Those numbers are pretty bleak, and when you layer in the fact that he got just over 70% offensive zone starts, well, hopefully you get my concern.
Casey certainly burst onto the scene and has an “it” factor. I still lay in bed on cold nights and re-watch that heel-drag top-corner snipe against Buffalo in Prague. But make no mistake, he was the beneficiary of some serious luck of the Irish on both sides of the puck.
The below are in in 157 5v5 minutes:
shot attempts for/against: 125 vs 175 (-50)
Goals for/against: 8 vs 4 (+4)
Scoring chances for/against: 56 vs 84 (-28)
high danger scoring chances for/against: 20 vs 32 (-12)
Similar to Nemec he was sheltered with 70% offensive zone starts, and that on-ice save percentage is pretty glaring to me – he really got a lot of help from the goalies. Carrying a 1.08 PDO will regress to the mean and getting caved in will normalize the longer he plays. Make no mistake, I think his ceiling is Raflaski-esque but there is no reason to rush him. He is on his ELC and another year of consistent Utica top pair seasoning will do wonders for his development.
Since we can’t seem to escape injuries, what if one of them gets hurt? That would likely mean Dennis Cholowski-on-his-off-side’s music. Dennis carried a 35.5 xGF% and was similarly under water on all the above metrics, so he is not a guy you want logging 15-20 minutes for any extended period of time. The other main option would be AHLer Calen Addisson, and well that wouldn’t be great either. Suddenly, our great defensive depth doesn’t feel as great anymore.
Reason 3: Admin Still Has Juice
I won’t belabor the point that Gerard thoroughly covered about how effective he is offensively, but for comparison purposes here are the same numbers for Doug:
In 1352 5v5 minutes via Natural Stat Trick:
Goals for/against: 54 vs 42 (+12)
shot attempts for/against: 1135 vs 1035 (+100)
scoring chances for/against: 510 vs 461 (+49)
High danger scoring chances: 201 vs 198 (+3)
He also makes people around him better, particularly Nico and Timo. Together, they are one of the most effective trios in the league. In fact, there isn’t anyone still on the team that he isn’t on the positive side of xG differential on the team (or close, sigh.. hello Ondrej):
5v5 xGF differential for Dougie with common forwards HockeyViz
Dispelling Some Defensive Concerns
For all of Dougie’s shortcomings defensively, Nemec and Casey as the starting baseline is a far worse gamble. I personally think his defensive issues are overstated and he is more hit or miss defensively. The way I tend to look at it is “puck on his stick = good, puck not on his stick = adventure.” He occasionally loses his gap control on rush chances, sometimes he goes walkabout in the D-zone, and one of his best offensive attributes (pinching down the wall to keep Ozone play alive) backfires here and there. All three lead to flat footedness that gets mistaken for slowness. We tend to remember those moments more than the boring ones where he does his job and even the anointed best defensive defenseman in the league isn’t immune to getting dog walked while flat footed.
There has been a league wide trend toward bigger, rangier D and Dougie still fits that bill. Size does matter and he has great length, a good stick, and wins most of his board battles by sealing opponents along the wall using his strength. Yes, I get it, he doesn’t use his 6’6” frame to lay big hits (except for that one). His biggest strength is tilting the ice so well that it minimizes his Dzone time. The addition of Brad Show should be a boon for him as well.
HockeyViz
If I’m right about Kovacevic, Dougie will likely also be on the PK , and you’d be surprised at what that looks like. While a limited sample, opposing shot rates are below league average with him in there.
It can’t be overstated how important Kovacevic was to the #2 ranked PK in the league, as he clocked in the second most minutes at 201, with Dillon on-ice for 215 minutes. We will need a veteran like Dougie to fill some of that void and fill it well.
Regarding his “loss of footspeed” his top speed has actually gotten faster each year and has been steadily above league average in 18-20 MPH speed bursts. I went back and watch a few clips and it made me realize that he looks slow because he is an upright skater, but at 6’6” that is masked with long strides.
Where he does clock in below league average is that 20-22 MPH bursts, which I think shows a lack of acceleration to that top speed and why he gets visibly burned occasionally. He has been pretty consistent year-over-year, though, and shows no real decline in footpseed by any measure:
Dougie Hamilton 20-22 MPH Speed bursts, Full Season is calculated at 73 games except for 22-23 when he played 82Source: NHL Edge
Reason 4: But Wait There’s More!
One of the more under-discussed issues that contributed to our offensive woes was the lack of goal scoring from the defensive group. We NEED his offense and we NEED the rest of the group to step up offensively. We were near the bottom of the league for goals from the group, and if you take Casey and his luck out, we were tied with Montreal and Detroit:
Only MTL, TOR, and the LAK were playoff teams in the bottom 10.
The Injury Elephant in the Room
Obviously, he has missed significant time since his arrival here – 100 regular season games over 4 seasons, or 30% of his time here. That’s not great, but I do want to note that every injury has been somewhat freak-ish. In Year 1 he caught a puck to the face a broke his jaw, year 3 he tore his pec which is a rare hockey injury, and last season it was a nebulous leg injury that didn’t require surgery that happened on a somewhat innocuous play. All unrelated, so it’s not a consistent injury issue, or a consistent soft tissue issue.
I am confident he will put together a full season this upcoming year. Frankly, we NEED him to do that for one more year while the kids grow and Johnny heals.
So what do you think? Do you want to see him moved still or do you agree it’s a mistake?