Ever since Lou Lamoriello was eased out of the executive suite in 2015, the Devils have been the proverbial team that is two years away from being two years away.
For fans who have witnessed one quick eighth-seed playoff knockout in eight seasons – and haven’t even seen the team that was left out of the 24-team bubble take the ice in 10 months – patience is a virtue. It has to be, for this could be another Devils season in hell, thanks to a truncated 56-game slate that has New Jersey in a modified East Division featuring five of the top 11 teams from last season.
As the calendar turns to 2021 and training camp gets underway, the organization’s mindset appears to be unchanged. Devils owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who also oversaw “The Process” with the NBA’s 76ers, won’t be giving a playoff mandate to general manager Tom Fitzgerald or new head coach Lindy Ruff – as evidenced by the minor ripple generated by the club’s offseason moves, as compared with bigger splashes from predecessor Ray Shero a year ago. The Devils are still sitting with a league-high $14.4 million in salary cap space (with restricted free agent wing Jesper Bratt still unsigned), per CapFriendly.com, and seem intent on maintaining flexibility and keeping roster slots open for young players over making upgrades that could potentially yield marginal bumps up this season’s standings.
Building around recent No. 1 overall picks Nico Hischier, who reportedly will miss some time in camp with a “minor” leg injury, and Jack Hughes will be the team’s mission for the near future. The problem, in my opinion, is this: many of those supplemental pieces will become free agents or get traded before they do, thereby resetting the Devils’ timeline. The players to watch this season are top-six wings Kyle Palmieri and Nikita Gusev, each of whom will be looking for raises over their relatively team-friendly expiring contracts of about $4.5 million.
The Devils’ prospect pool gets fairly high grades from experts, but it’s not like they can plug in a Nolan Foote or a Janne Kuokkanen and expect them to replace Palmieri’s 30 goals or Gusev’s elite playmaking right away. This year’s first-round pick, Alexander Holtz, isn’t even in camp as one of six Devils properties competing in the World Junior Championships. Unfortunately, in order for this plan to work, the team is going to need some of their other young players to make a leap in the next couple of formative Hischier/Hughes seasons; otherwise, they’ll continue to be stuck in mud like Edmonton and Buffalo.
For this season, the forward group seems to have a solid top nine in Hischier, Hughes, Palmieri, Gusev, Bratt, Travis Zajac, Pavel Zacha, Miles Wood, and Andreas Johnsson, whom Fitzgerald obtained in a trade with Toronto. Among the players battling it out for the other trio of nightly active spots, in addition to Foote and Kuokkanen, will be Michael McLeod, Nick Merkley, Nathan Bastian, Brett Seney, and Yegor Sharangovich, who was tearing up the KHL until departing for Devils camp.
On defense, however, the Devils are still suffering from years of Shero ignoring the position in drafts. Ty Smith, the Devils’ 17th overall pick in 2018, might make the team. Otherwise, New Jersey seems content with running it back with most of one of the NHL’s worst units, only having added solid trade acquisition Ryan Murray – who hasn’t played more than 60 games in any season since 2015-16, mostly due to chronic back injuries – and underwhelming free agent acquisition Dmitry Kulikov. Other top prospects like Kevin Bahl and Reilly Walsh seem ticketed for Binghamton, where they can get AHL playing time instead of sitting idle on New Jersey’s taxi squad.
Murray will likely be partnered with childhood friend Damon Severson on the first pair, with Will Butcher looking to help P.K. Subban rebound from an off year on the second pair. The pickings are slimmer further down the depth chart – Smith could supplant either Kulikov or Connor Carrick if he can avoid a reprise of last preseason’s struggles.
If Devils fans have any hope, it’s in the goaltending, where recently extended MacKenzie Blackwood will share duties with free agent signing Corey Crawford. While I maintain that Blackwood’s 32-24-8 record backstopping the mess in front of him was one of the NHL’s most remarkable achievements in these last two seasons, the issues have come on his nights off. With Cory Schneider finally bought out after multiple seasons of unwarranted faith, the Devils are betting that Crawford, a two-time Jennings Award recipient and Stanley Cup champion, still has something left in his tank at age 36.
While it’s not exactly insightful to note the outsized impact on NHL outcomes from goalies, if the Devils are going to make any noise this season, they will require a top-half save percentage, a ranking they have reached just twice in the last decade.
Support may be on the way, or it may not. In two years, we’ll know if the Devils are on time.
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