New Jersey Devils: Metropolitan Division 2019-20 Season Preview
The New Jersey Devils play in one of the league’s best divisions and they are going to need to bring it every night to keep up.
There is a chance that the New Jersey Devils are good enough to compete in the Metropolitan Division this season. It looks like it is better than the Atlantic division as far as teams from top to bottom, but they aren’t as top-heavy. The Atlantic has three teams that are significantly better than everyone else whereas the Metro has eight teams who could surprise us with a deep playoff run.
The Devils are always looking to be a better team and the most important division to play well against is the Metro because those are the most frequent matchups. The division also features the two biggest rivalries that the Devils are a part of and there are always some really intense battles when the Devils meet these teams. This division also has some of the leagues best players and a few generational talents.
This division has also produced three of the last four Stanley Cup Champions which is remarkable. Five of the eight teams have played in the Stanley Cup Final in the 2010s which is also pretty remarkable. No other division has more than three. The Metro is very storied and every team believes that it has high standards.
There are a few teams in this division that you would call playoff locks but the rest of the division that you might call bubble teams. The Devils have a good chance at being a playoff team based on their roster and they should believe in themselves. Here is how they will stack up against the rest of the Division:
Carolina Hurricanes
Everybody remembers the “bunch of jerks” that were the Carolina Hurricanes in 2018-19. It turned out to be one of the more fun stories across the National Hockey League last year and this year everyone will find it much less fun. They were 46-29-7 for 99 points and fourth place in the Metropolitan Division. It was a really good season for Carolina that saw them make it to the postseason for the first time in a decade.
They defeated the Washington Capitals in an epic seven-game first-round series and then followed that up with a second-round win over the New York Islanders. They were swept in the Eastern Conference Final by the Boston Bruins, but in a season that began with limited expectations, you can say it was a great season for them.
The Devils took four out of a possible eight points from them by going 2-2-0 against them last year. They are both going to be in contention for the playoffs once again and after the way last year went, there is no reason to believe they can’t make a run. They are both improved teams and they are going to need to be good against one another in their head-to-head matchups.
The Hurricanes have a really good defense as they added Jake Gardiner to join a good core with guys like Dougie Hamilton, Jaccob Slavin, and Justin Faulk. They have some great scorers in guys like Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen and Andrei Svechnikov. This is a team that is going to be dangerous as long as they get decent goaltending.
Columbus Blue Jackets
The Columbus Blue Jackets had what many would consider a terrible offseason. They lost a lot of key players in free agency like Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky, Ryan Dzingel, and Matt Duchene. They still have some really good players like Seth Jones, Zach Werenski, Cam Atkinson, and Pierre-Luc Dubois to be excited about but they might have a tough season.
Obviously, it is not impossible for them to come together and have a good season where they find themselves in the playoffs but I wouldn’t bet on it. Last year they moved in all of their chips to go for it instead of dealing their free agents. It was looking like it may be worth it when they swept the top-seeded Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the playoffs but then they lost to the Boston Bruins in the second round.
The Devils were pretty terrible when they matched up against them as they earned one out of a possible eight points with a record of 0-3-1. It is a team that the Devils often have trouble with but they need to fix that this year. They appear to be a stronger team on paper but they need to go out and prove it this year. Nobody wants to hear that cannon so hopefully, the Devils can earn some more points than the Jackets this season, especially head to head.
New York Islanders
The New York Islanders appeared to be in a world of trouble two summers ago when they lost their captain and franchise player in John Tavares. They appeared like they would have a tough season but they came together and proved everyone wrong. They are the reason you might not want to take Columbus lightly after they lost Panarin. Sometimes, a good coach can help a team use their strengths to their advantage.
That happened for the Islanders when they hired Barry Trotz to be their head coach right after he won the Stanley Cup. He has come in and turned them into a defensive machine that scores just enough goals to win the game and then they suffocate you and make it so hard to play against them. Generating offense against the Islanders since Trotz took over has basically been impossible.
They also got elite goaltending from Robin Lehner who was a Vezina Trophy nominee. He left in free agency and they replaced him with Semyon Varlamov. They have some really good players like Anders Lee, Mathew Barzal, and Jordan Eberle but they might have a tough time repeating what they did last year without Lehner.
The Devils were pretty terrible against them last year as they earned two points out of eight with a 0-2-2 record. They are going to need to be much better against the Islanders because collecting two out of eight points against any division rival is unacceptable. The Islanders are a good team and have some great players, but there is no reason to think that the Devils aren’t just as good of a team.
New York Rangers
The New York Rangers are the Devils biggest rival and nobody likes them. With that being said, they had a really good offseason. They traded for one of the best defensemen in college hockey history this summer when Adam Fox was traded over by the Carolina Hurricanes. Like the Devils, they had some draft lottery luck as they won the second overall pick where they selected Kaapo Kakko. They also acquired former Winnipeg Jets defenseman Jacob Trouba and signed superstar winger Artemi Panarin in free agency.
That is quite the offseason and they are really the only team that rivals the offseason that the Devils had. No other team in the NHL really had as good of an offseason as either of these two teams. Now, they both need to put it together to try to get back to the playoffs. The last time they both made the playoffs in the same season when the Devils defeated them in six games of the Eastern Conference Finals.
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Last year, the Rangers were the seventh-place team in the Metro with a record of 32-36-14 for 78 points. They had success against the Devils as the Devils went 1-3-0 against them and needed a late-season win vs them to avoid being swept in the season series. The crowd rooting for them to have the worst record possible for draft lottery purposes may have wanted them to lose that game, but the good news is they won that game to avoid the sweep and still won the lottery. They are hoping that the rivalry gets back to where we know it can be this season.
Philadelphia Flyers
The Philadelphia Flyers are one of the hardest teams to read in the National Hockey League. They have a really good-looking roster but they always seem to fail to meet expectations. Last year, they were the sixth-place team in the Metropolitan Division with a record of 37-37-8 for 82 points. They were about as average as you can be as they had an NHL .500 record and 82 points in 82 games.
With a roster that contains players like Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek, Sean Couturier, Ivan Provorov and Shayne Gostisbehere you would think they would be a little better than they have been. They added James van Riemsdyk last summer and Kevin Hayes this summer to round out their top six so you can say they have a nice mix of players. Nolan Patrick has never really reached his potential, at least yet. Nico Hischier appears to have been the right pick.
Last season, the Devils were 2-2-0 against the Flyers which was good for four out of a possible eight points. That is decent based on where the two teams were in the standings but the Devils always want to win the season series against the team down the turnpike. With Carter Hart there to be their savior in net after decades of relatively poor goaltending, the Flyers believe they have a chance this year so the Devils need to be ready.
I would expect many great battles between these two this year. There is always a little bit of nasty when they play and it is also going to be a homecoming for Wayne Simmonds who is one of the most beloved Flyers of all time. He is going to be returning there as a visitor early and often as a member of the Devils so he will have a little extra juice when these two meet.
Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pittsburgh Penguins have been a model of consistency over the last decade or so. They have won the Stanley Cup three times since the 2008-09 season and have been one of the leagues best teams for a while. The Penguins will always be associated with their two best players Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Those two have been some of the best players in league history, especially Crosby who has asserted himself into the conversation for greatest player ever.
They are both on the wrong side of 30 but they are both over a point a game in every year and don’t really show any signs of stopping. Phil Kessel has been traded to the Arizona Coyotes but they still have other studs like Jake Guentzel, Kris Letang, and Bryan Rust. They also have a pretty good goalie with Matt Murray in the net. They let Marc-Andre Fleury go in the Vegas Golden Knights expansion draft but Murray has been pretty good as his replacement.
The Penguins were the third-place team in the Metropolitan Division last season with a record of 44-26-12 for 100. They were eliminated in the first round by the New York Islanders which was a bit stunning. Every time people start to think they are going to fall off as a team, they rise to the occasion and prove everyone wrong. That is how they started their run to back to back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017, as the beginning of the 2015-16 season was a disaster for them.
For some odd reason, the New Jersey Devils seem to play well against the Penguins. They earned six out of eight points with a 3-1-0 record against them last year. Evgeni Malkin has been quoted saying that the Prudential Center is his least favorite place to play because they always lose there. With all of the talent that Pittsburgh ices every night, it is strange that mostly underwhelming Devils teams are able to contain them. The Devils need to continue that trend in a year where they also expect to be a good team.
Washington Capitals
The Washington Capitals are probably the only team in a strong Metropolitan Divison that is universally recognized as a lock to make the playoffs. They have the deepest lineup in the league and they didn’t really need to make many adjustments. They were the Metro Division winners last season as they went 48-26-8 for 104 points. They were stunned in an incredible seven-game series with the Carolina Hurricanes but that doesn’t mean they are in trouble. It is hard to repeat as Stanley Cup Champions but they will be rested and ready to go this year.
They have the best goal scorer in the history of the National Hockey League in Alex Ovechkin leading the way. He is inching closer to Wayne Gretzky‘s all-time goal record and there is a good chance that if he is healthy that he can break it. It will be close but definitely something to keep an eye on. They also have some other stud forwards in Nicklas Backstrom, T.J. Oshie, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Tom Wilson.
Their blue line is pretty solid as well with guys like John Carlson, Dmitry Orlov, and Michal Kempny. They all play in front of Brayden Holtby who is one of the best goalies in the NHL. There is no reason to think that they won’t be one of the best teams in the league once again. If someone in the Metropolitan Division wants to make a Cup run, they are likely going to have to go through Washington.
The Devils, unsurprisingly, had a terrible time overall against Washington last year. They went 1-3-0 against them for two points out of eight. They might be tough to do well against again this year but there is a chance due to the fact that the Devils will be much improved.
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Overall, the Metropolitan Division is one of the best in the NHL if not the best. It rivals the Central Division as a group that could potentially send any five of its eight teams to the playoffs. All eight teams are heading into 2019-20 with expectations to make the playoffs. With the improvement that the Florida Panthers have made along with the big three in the Atlantic, this race to the playoffs in the Eastern Conference is going to be fun and wild.