NHL Heroes and Heels: Cory Schneider makes his triumphant NHL return

Heroes and Heels is a weekly NHL column highlighting the heroes and villains of the last week of hockey. This week, a veteran goaltender gets his mojo back.

Somehow, there are less than five weeks remaining in the 2019-20 NHL season. In the moment, the regular season often feels long and drawn out, with slow days turning into weeks after the initial hype around the start of the season dies down. The worst, for me anyway, is after the holiday and New Year’s to about mid-February, where the cold and gray of winter kicks in and time slows to a near crawl.

However, it’s the beginning of March, which means… we’ve survived the slow months of the hockey season! The playoff races, which had been shaping up since early October, are well and truly here. The Eastern Conference has been dominant all season, as the playoff teams are starting to separate themselves from the wild card pack, while the Western Conference has at least five teams vying for two wild card positions.

Entering Monday, the Philadelphia Flyers are your odds on favorites — of all teams — to win the Stanley Cup, according to Money Puck.

Silly season is nearly here for the NHL, so let’s get down and enjoy the ride.

Hero: Cory Schneider

Lost in the New Jersey Devils’ miserable season has been the demotion of veteran netminder Cory Schneider. In mid-November, after the Devils’ horrid start to the season and before the firing of head coach John Hynes on Thanksgiving and the trade of Taylor Hall in December, Schneider was demoted to the AHL after posting a .852 save percentage in six games and allowing a total of 26 goals during that time span.

Schneider had been the Devils’ on-and-off-again starter for the last few seasons due to injury and poor play after being New Jersey’s No. 1 since the 2014-15 season. The years haven’t been kind to Schneider since his Vancouver Canucks days, as his stat lines between the pair of teams show a tale of two cities.

Provided by Hockey-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/2/2020.

However, before the trade deadline last week, the Devils recalled Schneider from the AHL as the Devils playoff hopes continue to dwindle and garbage time takes effect. The move seemed to garner very little noise, not much of a surprise given the impending trade deadline and that Schneider was previously recalled for a handful of games in mid-January, where he played poorly.

Unlike Schneider’s mid-January stint, this time around the 33-year-old netminder has been… good? In three games — a small sample size, we know — Schneider has a 2-0-1 record with one shutout and a .957 save percentage. Out of 92 shots against, Schneider has let in just four goals during these three games.

After his 34-save shutout against the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday, Schneider was more than happy to lay the praise not on himself, but at the feet of his teammates.

“My teammates did their job tonight,” Schneider said, according to NHL.com. “For me, it’s just about doing my job. The game felt good tonight in terms of my performance and how I felt.”

“The game felt good tonight in terms of my performance and how I felt.”

Given his recent performances, it’s fair to say Schneider is likely sticking around in New Jersey for a little while longer. And good for him, honestly. This season has been a tough one for Schneider, who hasn’t really been the same goaltender after sustaining a hip injury as early as the 2016-17 season.

Schneider’s decline from possible Vezina candidate to struggling in the AHL has been tough to watch over the years, but it’s good to see him succeed again at the NHL level, even for just a short amount of time.

Heel: The injury bug

There is never a good time for injuries to strike, and for a handful of playoff-contending teams, the last week was a tough one.

Mere days after signing a seven-year extension to stay in New York, forward Chris Kreider is set to miss significant time with the Rangers after sustaining a broken foot over the weekend against the Flyers. The Rangers are, at the moment, contending for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference — somehow — and losing Kreider after the momentum of locking him up long-term is a tough blow to a contending team.

The Tampa Bay Lightning’s playoff spot is more secure than the Rangers’, but losing captain Steven Stamkos for six-to-eight weeks due to undergoing core muscle surgery is significant, to say the least. That timeline puts Stamkos back into the playoffs after the first round of the postseason, at minimum, if the Lightning even make it that far.

Toronto also received news last week that defenseman Jake Muzzin would be missing four weeks with a broken hand, putting the already thin Maple Leafs blue line in danger of completely collapsing with five weeks left in the season.

And finally, wild card contending Columbus Blue Jackets have a scare with rookie goaltender Elvis Merzlikins — who has played really well this season — as the netminder had been diagnosed with a mild concussion over the weekend.

It’s a tough rash of injuries for these four contending teams to face, ranging from outright devastating to mildly annoying. Players such as Kreider or Stamkos sitting out longer-term due to the nature of their injuries has the potential to shift the powers in the standings in the weeks to come, and even into the playoffs.

Of course, with star players playing — at max — 45 percent of a game, hockey teams are able to take more of the brunt of losing a top player than a basketball team would in the same scenario. It is, however, going to make the road tougher for these teams to reach the highs they so desperately want to achieve in the spring to come.

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