New Jersey Devils Spurned Again By Nationally Televised Schedule

The New Jersey Devils were one of the best stories of the NHL last season, making an unexpected run to the playoffs led by the league’s MVP. Still, that wasn’t enough for NBC.

There are 109 nationally televised games in the NHL this season. NBC just released the schedule for all games that can be seen from a nation-wide audience. We’ve seen that New Jersey Devils fans are everywhere, so now they don’t have a chance to watch their favorite team. That’s because NBC decided the Devils fans only deserve two games.

There are 218 teams participating in these games. When averaging it out, each team would get around seven games per season. One would expect a team that made the playoffs last season to at least get the average, but nope.

What’s worse is the Devils two nationally televised games are all the way in March, and they’re within a week of each other. One comes at 9:30 at night against the Edmonton Oilers on March 13th. Then six days later they take on the Washington Capitals. So, if a Devils fan takes week to go on vacation they can miss nationally televised games entirely.

Think about this, NBC could have put the Devils and Tampa Bay back on national TV, like they did last year. The game back in October was great, with the Devils winning the game in a shootout. The game ended 5-4, so this is clearly not your father’s Devils team. Plus, these two played a very exciting first-round series with tempers flaring and goals abound. For a five-game series, it had everything one could want. The Devils play the Lightning once in October, November and December. They literally couldn’t put one on national TV?

The New York Rangers are playing 14 games on national TV. This is a team that’s admitted they are going to tank this season. Yet, they couldn’t put one game against either of their biggest rivals (the Islanders being the other)?

The Devils and the Florida Panthers went down to the wire for a spot in the playoffs, and came within one point of each other. That would be a fun game for everyone to see.

Here’s the thing, the NHL gets a lot of flack for putting the Philadelphia Flyers and Chicago Blackhawks on a Wednesday night and calling it Rivalry Night. However, you have the Devils who legitimately have rivalries with half a dozen teams and you can’t even throw them on the television.

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The only game the Devils have on Rivalry Night is against the Oilers. So, now they have a rivalry with them because they lost the Taylor Hall trade? The only rivalry there is the Oilers against their fans.

Oh, I almost forgot, the Devils have the reigning MVP on their team! Seriously, how do you give the reigning MVP two games? How? Taylor Hall will bring viewers by himself. He’s one of the best players in the league, yet he’s getting no respect once again.

It is what it is. We are once again watching almost every game on the MSG series of networks. Our favorite voice Doc Emrick won’t return where it all started, because he’s likely calling the early game on NBC.

The Devils will likely never get much respect when it comes to nationally televised games. The team doesn’t do the numbers of Chicago or the Bruins, even when they’re at their best. But there are so many storylines surrounding the Devils this season, they couldn’t get at least league average? That’s insane. Devils fans deserve better from this league.