Rogalski Fired: Evaluating the Before & After of Devils' Goaltenders Under His Coaching

Looking back at Dave Rogalski's track record as the Devils' goaltending coach to put a timeline to why he was let go.

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Yesterday, something happened that Devils fans have been asking for for several years: Dave Rogalski was let go from his position as New Jersey’s Goaltending Coach. He had been with the organization from 2020-21 on, presumably joining the organization at the request of Martin Brodeur, who worked with him in 2017-18 while he was in the front office of the St. Louis Blues.

It was a long time coming for Rogalski, who coached the Devils to the eighth-worst goals saved above expected (GSAx) in the NHL during his six-season tenure.

The real role of a goalie coach in the NHL has to do with physical and mental conditioning, becoming increasingly important as the league has continued to evolve and become more skilled. Physically, goalie coaches are there to reinforce ideas like the economy of motion and to ensure that a goalie is moving efficiently. Mentally, with the NHL environment becoming increasingly more difficult to predict whether a play is a shot or pass or predict the angle of a shot, goalie coaches are there to support and teach probabilities and analysis. According to an NHL.com article, goalie coaches also act as a quasi-confidant and sort of therapist for their players, who have the most difficult job in all of sports.

All that fleshed out, there seems to be a fanbase-wide notion that Rogalski has failed the goaltenders who entered the Devils’ system. Of course, I wanted to put that logic to the test.

For context’s sake, I feel as though it is important to first define GSAx. With the NHL shifting more toward quality over volume as time passes, it’s increasingly difficult to rely on save percentage (SV%) as a meter to judge goaltenders. With volume down and quality up, average SV%s have been and will continue to be on the decline. Thus, judging a goaltender based on the quality of looks against him is the best route to go. GSAx does exactly that, subtracting the number of goals he allowed from the number of xG he faced. If a goalie allowed two goals on 3.5 xG, he would have a GSAx of +1.5 Conversely, if a goalie allowed three goals on 2.5 xG, he would have a GSAx of -0.5.

With that in mind, I gathered GSAx data from HockeyStats for a myriad of goaltenders who have played for both the Devils and other teams. I excluded goaltenders who played fewer than 10 games with New Jersey and fewer than 82 games in their career, so as to eliminate sample size issues. Of course, that takes away goalies like Eric Comrie, Jon Gillies, and Andrew Hammond, who played but a handful of games for the organization. Let’s check out the GSAx per 82 games of the goalies that fit that criteria:

Data via HockeyStats

Looking at the above chart is relatively damning. Two players — Jake Allen and Vitek Vanecek — were better than the rest of their career while they had Rogalski as a coach. Though, I will note that Vanecek was heavily buoyed by his 2022-23 season (+15.5); his GSAx/82 in 2023-24 with the Devils was -12.6. The remaining five goaltenders were worse by a significant margin.

Scott Wedgewood had a limited sample size leading up to his tenure with Rogalski there, but he was simply horrid while with the Devils while Rogalski was the goalie coach. Of course, he has been a strong goalie since, and he and Mackenzie Blackwood combined to win the William M. Jennings Trophy this past season. Blackwood is a tough evaluation, too, given that he was largely injured in his time with New Jersey after 2019-20 and likely never fully recovered until after leaving the organization for good. Perhaps there’s something to be said there for Rogalski’s conditioning and routines, though.

My gut instinct is to say that the Devils’ goaltending woes up until 2024-25 were simply by virtue of employing subpar goalies, but it is pretty undeniable that their goalies in the aggregate have performed worse with Rogalski as their coach.

As such, in Sunny Mehta’s presumably meticulous evaluation of the Devils’ coaching staff, Rogalski just didn’t cut it anymore. The ostensibly calculated head honcho dissected the coaching staff as a whole, landing on Rogalski and Sergei Brylin as the odd men out, though it should be noted that Brylin will reportedly have a position elsewhere in the organization.

Other coaches, notably Sheldon Keefe, Brad Shaw, and Jeremy Colliton, will remain with the organization entering 2026-27.