New Jersey Devils: 5 Ways It Could Be Worse

The New Jersey Devils have been awful to start the season, and have lost in every single way possible. So, we will try to make you laugh (or cry) by giving you scenarios where this could be worse.

So, the New Jersey Devils are really bad to start the season. Nothing is working, and the fanbase is not happy with the team’s performance.

This, after one of the “biggest offseasons” in team history. The Devils added P.K. Subban, Jack Hughes, Nikita Gusev and Wayne Simmonds all in one summer. Add onto that, Taylor Hall returns from a knee injury that took most of the previous season. Cory Schneider looked very good, and Mackenzie Blackwood was more than a serviceable backup.

Then, the games started to count. The Devils are getting railroaded every single night. No lead is safe, but if the team goes down, they can’t seem to respond.

So, since we don’t have anything nice to say, we won’t say anything at all about that. Instead of talking more about what has gone wrong, let’s talk about how it could be worse. There are some franchises that are dealing with worse. Even in the New York Metropolitan Area, there are teams putting them through awful times despite the talent on the roster.

There are many ways that things could be much worse, but we chose five that really stuck out. Remember, this is supposed to be in jest, so let’s take it as such. When you’re dealing with a season like this, sometimes we all need a laugh.

Selling The Team To The Wilpons

New York Mets fans will tell you what it’s like to have Fred Wilpon as the owner of your team. He ended up turning a 1% stake in the Mets into majority ownership thanks to money made during the Bernie Madoff scandal. Now, they are forced to treat the Mets like a small market team.

The Mets spend money, but in all of the wrong places. They are paying Yoenis Cespedes close to $30 million next season. Tell me (baseball fans only) if you even remembered he was still in the league. The Mets spend like the Yankees on two or three players, but then spend like the Miami Marlins on the rest of the roster. It’s a really bad situation, one that will lead to heartbreak for fans all around.

Basically, if the Devils were to be sold to the Wilpons tomorrow, we would see a lot of moves that would look great five years ago because they are names they heard of. We could see them trading for Milan Lucic and David Backes. Think about those mid-2000s teams that were some of the oldest in the league.

It would also be an issue we saw when Jeffrey Vanderbeek owned the team. Well, except actually liking them as people. Vanderbeek was very cash poor when it came to owning an NHL team. Now, the Wilpons aren’t poor by any means, but having a $500 million net worth is close to nothing when it comes to league ownership. Josh Harris is worth $4.2 billion. David Blitzer is worth around $1.3 billion. Not only that, but the Devils owners let GM Ray Shero make the moves he wants to make while allowing him to spend when he feels the time is right. This offseason, the Devils added $9 million P.K. Subban, $4.5 million Nikita Gusev and $5 million Wayne Simmonds. The Wilpons would have given $15 million to Sergei Bobrovsky and traded Taylor Hall for a 3rd-round pick.

Rangers Buy Prudential Center Devils Play Games At American Dream Mall

This one is a mouthful, but this would definitely make things worse. New York City is desperately trying to force the New York Rangers and New York Knicks out of Madison Square Garden because they want to make it a fancier train station or something.

That’s going to leave the Rangers homeless and unable to live in their train station anymore, ironically. We could see James Dolan making a crazy offer to Josh Harris to buy the Prudential Center, leaving the New Jersey Devils themselves without an arena to call home. Now, they would have to find a new place to play.

After like a decade or two in development, the American Dream Mall is set to open in the next two weeks. They really need as much as possible to get people to show up. Bringing the Devils to play on their ice skating rink would be one way to do it. It would be an interesting concept for the owners, getting paid by the mall to have their hockey team instead of worrying about ticket prices and things like that.

It would make losing better if there were distractions from a mega mall, but then us fans would have to find a way to get to and from The Meadowlands again. Please no. We loved watching the Devils in the 90s and early 2000s, but what we didn’t like was figuring out the parking situation and shuttle buses of the parking lots. Don’t even think about Uber or Lyft. It would be a nightmare to get to and cost close to a whole paycheck just for the ride.

Jack Hughes Claims Canada, The Country He Grew Up In

One of the coolest things for a lot of New Jersey Devils fans about drafting Jack Hughes was that we got the next American star. Team USA has been building a really good crop of players for years now, but Canada is still dominant in international play. However, possibly led by Hughes, we are hoping to see the Americans finally take the gold medal in 2022 from those from the Great White North.

That is, unless Jack Hughes says he actually claims Canada as his home country. Hughes already has dual citizenship between Canada and U.S.A. because he was raised north of the border when his father Jim worked in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. All he would have to do is claim Canada, and he’s on the team.

Canada is already stacked up and down the middle. Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, John Tavares, Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Toews are all Canadians that play center. Hughes would have to show he can stay with these players, but we expect him to make major jumps in production each year all the way until 2022.

Canada does not need our teen phenom. They have plenty of talent, and even if they are getting old, they’ve won enough. We need more winning, because that’s the American way. It’s not good enough that we win all of our sports, but we need to win all of your sports too. That means our good American boy becoming a good Canadian boy would break all of our hearts worse than blowing a four-goal lead in the home opener. (Shoot. Sorry, this was supposed to cheer us up.)

When asked why, Hughes will tell us he’s already used to wearing red and black and didn’t want to switch again. Shoot, this is our fault.

John Hynes Implements A System That Uses Sneakers, Not Skates

John Hynes is not the flavor of the month for this Devils fanbase. It’s not a surprise, as he’s led this team to an 0-2-2 start. He’s tried everything to provide a spark to this team. He switched up the lines. He switched up the lines again. The lines were switched mid-game. They were then switched pre-game. Lots of line switching for Coach Hynes.

Now that he sees he needs to think a little outside the box to get things going, he decides that this team is too skilled, and he needs to slow the game down for everyone. He does that by literally putting his players at a disadvantage. He makes every player stop using their skates, and switch to a New Balance brand of sneaker, their new sponsor.

This will get them to really think before making passes on the ice, as it will take players more time to get set up. Sure, there will be a couple more 2-on-1s, but Cory Schneider and Mackenzie Blackwood are used to those.

Now, fans are forced to watch Jesper Bratt trying to gain traction on the ice with his new sneakers. Even if Miles Wood somehow finds a way to fall more, at least this time he won’t be going 30 miles per hour and put him in jeopardy of getting hurt. This would also help get Wayne Simmonds going. He’s been caught flat-footed on a couple of shots in front of the net, but now his feet are literally flat. He will be ready the next time it comes in.

Again, this is all to make us laugh. The Devils have been thoroughly disappointing, and we will have a lot of coverage on that specifically, but we wanted something a little positive after another loss.