What Is The Biggest Reason the Devils are Worse Than Last Year?

The Devils do still have some encouraging signs this season, analytically speaking. For instance, they still have one of the strongest K-ratings in the league. A truly unforgiving schedule, combined with some poor goaltending, and a little bad luck has certainly contributed to our current predicament. But it would be difficult to make any argument that the Devils are not performing at least marginally worse than last season.

I decided to look at Evolving-Wild’s GAR metrics to try and isolate the areas in which the Devils are suffering most in comparison to last season. Below is a Tableau viz of the changes in value since last season. On the left, it is broken into 3 categories, GAR of…