The New Jersey Devils find themselves 11 points out of the final Wildcard spot and final spot in the Metro Division with 25 games to play once they return from the Olympic Break. New Jersey sits with a record of 28-27-2 with 58 points through 57 games
Elliotte Friedman: “Gordy, it’s a great question. When I was driving home last night (Tuesday, February 3rd) after working the Toronto and Edmonton games, someone sent me a note saying, You’ve got to watch that Sheldon Keefe scrum at the end of the game? And I went, and I watched it. I was like, that’s a tough one.
It’s like when your season is kind of falling apart at the seams. It’s almost like one of those moments where it almost becomes like everyone for themselves in that particular moment. I mean, number one, the injuries. Like the wildest thing about it was, you go back 18 games in, they had a lot of injuries. And I think there were 13-4-1. And I was really impressed.
I said wow, like, this team’s much better than the sum of its parts. They got a lot of guys hurt, and they’re really competing well. And then I don’t know what happened, in the sense that. The Quinn Hughes situation happened, and then Jack got hurt, and they haven’t been the same team since.
And Jack Hughes has been in and out of the lineup, and he’s hurt right now, and I still think he’s going to end up in Italy. I think he’s going to be okay to play, but he’s hurt right now. And it just seems when he’s been out of the lineup, the offense has gone with him.
New Jersey Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald: “Where We Are At is on Me“
(Jacob) Markstrom’s had a tough year. That’s been a problem, too. But whenever Jack Hughes has been out, they’ve really had a tough time scoring. And I just can’t help but think that something happened around the time of the Hughes thing, and I know Tom Fitzgerald tried to do that and to do other things, and just didn’t happen.
And I don’t know, it’s a combination of, I think, the Jack Hughes injury and whatever kind of their room went through during the Quinn Hughes trade sweepstakes. I think those two things derailed their season.”
While you can point to the poor play of the goaltending and the defense, what this season represents is a failure of how poorly structured the New Jersey Devils are. Building around a player like Jack Hughes is good in theory, but realistically, he is more of a complementary piece to an already established core and room.
New Jersey Devils Players Are Mentally Fragile
He shouldn’t have relied on being the guy. And adding the family element to the mix doesn’t help matters. However, the Devils have mental issues in that room; they need to address them if they want to salvage the season.
But as it stands now, the New Jersey Devils will miss the playoffs once again, and questions about how this could have happened persist within management.
