Trenton Devils – Working out the Kinks

TRENTON , NJ – With a third of the 2009-2010 ECHL hockey season behind them, the Trenton Devils are struggling to stay afloat in the race to the 2010 playoffs. As of mid-December the T-Devils sit in third place in the East Division, only a point ahead of fourth place Johnstown. Overall in the Eastern Conference they are in eleventh place out of twelve teams; having put up only nine victories in the win column while suffering 13 regulation-time losses, two overtime losses, and two shootout losses.
A brief look at the overall team stats, which accompany the standings, one can see why they are in such a position. The 67 goals which Trenton has scored are third-lowest in the league; the lowest total in the Eastern Conference. Even the Johnstown Chiefs, who trail the T-Devils in the standings, have 81 goals and have played two less games to this point in the year.
The T-Devils have gotten their scoring from 17 different players over the course of the season, but no individual has reached the double digits in goal-scoring totals. Dan Eves leads the team with eight goals while Trevor Kell has seven, and Jeff Prough, Kyle Kucharski, and Dave Leaderer have six goals each, respectively. Brett Wilson, a rookie forward formerly of Princeton University, leads the T-Devils in overall points with 19 (5 goals, 14 assists).
Compared to other ECHL teams, the T-Devils do not have any skaters in the top-50 of scoring. The only category which the club excels is in penalty minutes from a combination of fighting and poor discipline. Myles Stoesz is second in the league in penalty minutes with 97 while Dan Eves is in 16^th with 65 minutes spent in the box. Collectively, the team has 581 penalty minutes, second-most in the league behind Alaska’s 659 minutes.

Dave Caruso Defends the Net

Trenton ’s goaltending tandem of Dave Caruso and Gerald Coleman have jointly surrendered 95 goals; 97 when empty-net goals are included. This is third-worst in both the conference and the league. One issue may be that the team does not have a clear-cut primary goaltender, instead alternating starts between Caruso and Coleman, since Coleman was assigned to Trenton by the Lowell Devils in late October.   Neither goalies have had a shutout on the year, nor have they been in a position to post one.
Capping off the Trenton Devils frustrations are special teams. The power play has converted on only 12.5 percent of their man-advantages on the year. And while their penalty-kill has dispatched their opponent’s power-play unit 82.9 percent of the time, about the middle of the pack compared to the rest of the league, those are still not numbers to write home about.
Bench-boss Rick Kowalsky has expressed concerns throughout the season with his team’s break-downs, when it comes to following the offensive and defensive systems which have been prescribed to him by the higher-ups at the New Jersey Devils. However, be it thought of as an excuse for poor performance or hope for improvement, ten players who have suited up for the T-Devils this season are rookies to professional hockey, having played either collegiate or Canadian junior hockey last year. Only six active players have over 100 career games each. This does not include Mike Harder, the most experienced player on Trenton’s roster to start the season, as he was waived by the club in early December.
However with all of the team’s frustrations, a good majority of the Trenton Devils wins so far this season, were against quality opponents. They are 4-2 against the Elmira Jackals and another one of their wins came against the Kalamazoo Wings, two teams that at one point were undefeated for several games to start the season. The T-Devils have also dominated the Johnstown Chiefs, defeating them in both games in which they played one another so far this season.
Looking forward at the remainder of December, the Trenton Devils will take on the Cincinnati Cyclones for three games in a row from Thursday December 17^th through Sunday December 20^th at the Sun National Bank Center in Trenton, NJ. After five days off for Christmas, the T-Devils travel out to play the Johnstown Chiefs on Saturday December 26^th at the Cambria County War Memorial, returning home the next day to host the Reading Royals at 5:00 PM on Sunday December 27^th. Then on Wednesday December 30^th at 7:00 PM the T-Devils will host the Johnstown Chiefs for their 4^th overall match-up of the season.   
Contact the writer at michael.meier@prohockeynews.com  
Contact the Photographer at rob.huelsman@prohockeynews.com