Keefe vows Devils will improve: 'Not here to be average'

Head coach Sheldon Keefe made it clear he expects more from his New Jersey Devils after his first year behind the bench.

"We took steps this season, without question," he said Thursday. "When I reflect on it, my message to a lot of the guys is, there's a foundation here now, but when I look at it, to me, we finished 16 out of 32 teams in the regular season. That's average, and we're not here to be average. We want to be better, and we will get better."

It was a tale of two campaigns for the Devils before and after the Christmas break:

Keefe pointed to the drop-off as his "big project" for the offseason.

"We showed an inability to sustain our game, and that's the hardest thing to do in the league," he said.

Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald was concerned by his club's lack of offensive output.

"I think players underachieved for sure," he said. "I think players who have scored enough goals in this league to give assurance that we have depth scoring, didn't."

Despite the Devils' slide down the standings, they still finished third in the Metropolitan Division and set up a meeting with the Carolina Hurricanes. New Jersey's playoff run didn't last long, as it was eliminated in five games.

Injuries to players like Jack Hughes, Dougie Hamilton, and Jonas Siegenthaler were major factors in the Devils' struggles down the stretch. The team's luck didn't turn in the playoffs, as Luke Hughes, Johnathan Kovacevic, and Brenden Dillon all got hurt against Carolina.

Keefe said he liked how his group managed adversity throughout the season and didn't want to lean on absences as an excuse for falling short.

"You think about the potential of the group had it been at full health ... but things happen," he said. "The Dallas Stars have been on a run here without key players."

The Devils have eight pending unrestricted free agents and three restricted free agents on the active roster, making change inevitable.

"Looking back, I think it was a good year," Fitzgerald said. "Now, was it a great year? No. It was disappointing that we got knocked out in five games, but the fun part is to start to build around what we created here."

He added, "I like our group. My job is to continue to better the group. We've got a lot of decisions to make on certain players, whether we bring guys back, trade players. We won't be coming back with the same group, I can tell you that, because it wasn't good enough."