New Jersey Devils: This Isn’t As Bad As It Looks
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils come off a drubbing at the hands of the San Jose Sharks. With a playoff position dwindling, things aren’t as bad as they look on paper.
Well, that didn’t go well. The New Jersey Devils went into the Shark Tank looking for a very important win, and got demolished. Cory Schneider looked off from the start. Keith Kinkaid couldn’t keep it close. John Moore looked like an AHL-caliber defenseman. The offense could not get shots on Martin Jones once they went down. Nothing went right, and the Devils lost 6-2.
That loss puts the Florida Panthers within one point of the Devils playoff spot with two games in hand. This is as close to out of the playoffs as the Devils have been all season long.
Things look very bad right now.
So here I come with a little positive thinking. The Devils still have a good shot at making the playoffs.
The next game comes against the Pittsburgh Penguins. While this team can’t afford to feel good about any opponent, the Devils are 2-0 against the defending Stanley Cup champs. That ends this crazy road trip through some of the best teams in the league. Even if they lose, they took on six playoff teams during a crucial stretch, and came out with three wins.
After that, the Devils play six of their final eight games at home. The Panthers, meanwhile, play five of their next six on the road. Three of those teams are fighting for playoff position and need those wins. The only home game comes against the Arizona Coyotes, who’ve lost seven games since February 8th.
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The Devils also have two full days to think about this loss. These two days will give the team time to get healthy (Miles Wood and Pavel Zacha, especially) and to reflect on everything that went wrong late Tuesday night.
On paper, this looks really bad. The Panthers are coming, the Columbus Blue Jackets and Philadelphia Flyers are running away and the Devils are playing bad at the worst time. However, remember it was just six days ago the Devils blew the doors off of the Vegas Golden Knights. Two days after that, the Devils shut out the Los Angeles Kings. Those are huge wins that aren’t too far in the rearview mirror.
Let’s try to stay positive as Devils fans. Obviously, it’s easy to feel doom and gloom when looking on the schedule, but remember this wonderful game is played on ice, not on paper.