New Jersey Devils: A Familiar Disease Is Impacting The Team Once Again

Many years ago, the New Jersey Devils were adversely impacted by an outbreak of a familiar disease known as PDBS. The adverse effects of that debilitating malady are once again rearing their ugly head within Prudential Center.

Five or so years ago, the likes of Adam Larsson were routinely confined to the Infinity Suite Level in Prudential Center on game nights. At the same time, several Devils such as Michael Ryder and Bryce Salvador were given regular playing time despite being at the end of their careers with production levels which were clearly below par. The reasons for these choices were always a bit unclear.  That is, until the familiar disease PDBS was discovered.

John Hynes needs to factor in current performance into his ice time allocations in the second half.

Now, you may be wondering, what actually is PDBS? You may be thinking, hey, to be honest I’m not familiar with that. Well, if you are not, here’s a quick primer.

PDBS stands for Peter DeBoer Syndrome.  It is a neurological disease whereby a NHL coach suffers from the following symptoms.

• An obsession with providing veteran players with playing time based on their bubble gum card, not current performance.
• Impaired judgement.
• An exceptionally short fuse as it relates to playing time offered up to younger players who make certain types of mistakes during the course of a NHL game.

Sadly, it would appear John Hynes has recently been diagnosed with the familiar disease known as PDBS. While, at the beginning of the year, actions such as selecting Brian Gibbons and Blake Coleman to make the squad made it obvious his judgement was impartial and well founded, his personnel choices relating to the Devils are getting increasing odd and lacking in acuity as the season rolls on.

Some of the more perplexing decisions made by Hynes in the past month or so include the following.

• The amount of playing time given to Travis Zajac. That topic has been beaten to death by many, so I’ll refrain from expanding on it here.
• The disappearance of Steven Santini. Too bad the old CBS show Without A Trace is off the air, that would be a great episode. Santini is clearly better than Ben Lovejoy, sending him to a suite every night is ridiculous.
• Ben Lovejoy in the lineup each and every night. Really?
• Blake Coleman benched for a few games. He’s a spark plug who plays as hard as anyone on the club. He needs to play.
• Jimmy Hayes. The fact that he is in the NHL at all is borderline criminal. Please, get him off the club!
• And lastly, where art, where art thou be Nick Lappin? I can find no words to articulate my thoughts when Kevin Rooney was recalled instead of Lappin to play against Nashville. Truly hard to believe.

Next: Lineup Decisions Loom Large For The Devils

One can only hope there is an antidote for this dreaded disease. The Devils are truly suffering from this most recent outbreak of PDBS. They can’t just keep putting out a group who is not the best possible group night after night after night. We need a voice of reason to step in and get John Hynes rerailed again. This is truly getting ridiculous. Let’s hope after the All-Star break that rational thought returns to Newark and we start seeing our best 20 on a regular basis. The Devils need this disease to be brought under control as quickly as possible.