The New Jersey Devils went into Raleigh last night and managed to come away with a 5-3 victory against their division rival Carolina Hurricanes. It was back and forth for the first two periods of the game, but in the end New Jersey came out on top. This improved the Devils to 3-5-4 and it begs the question, does this win even matter?
The long and short of it is, yes and no. There are ways to see it on both answers and we are going to dive into that right now.
Why It Matters
A win is a win. It does not matter how or when they happen, but you take them. The most important thing here is that this is only game 12 out of 82, which means there are 70 games left. Yes, they are 3-9 but you never know when the “turn around game” could occur. A hard fought win against a division rival can always be a major turning point for any team.
The potential for the Devils to turn the season around will always be there after a win. We have seen the talent on this roster and we know what they are capable of doing. We will see what happens on this Western Canada road trip.
Why It Doesn’t Matter
Yay, we finally won our third game of the season, took long enough. It also took letting the Hurricanes tie the game twice to finally shut the door in the third period. Winning three of 12 games is absolutely terrible with a roster of this caliber.
Changes need to be made. It does not matter that they won Saturday. Stop scratching Nikita Gusev, keep Jesper Boqvist in the lineup and even look into replacing the head coach.
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If the Devils want even the slightest hope of turning it around and making the playoffs, which is looking less likely as time goes on, fire this failure of a coach along with his assistants Alain Naserdine and Tom Kowalsky. If this does not happen by the end of the month, none of it will matter because these kinds of results after 12 games will continue.
An Honest Analysis
Look everyone, this is not a great situation. We are happy we won last night’s game, I hate the Hurricanes. They have put me through hell in my 24 years of life, so beating them is always sweet. But we still have to face the reality that we have three wins in just 12 games, that is absolutely horrible with all of the hype that this team has been given.
On the other hand, we do have to remember there are 70 games left in this season. There is definitely a chance to turn this around it takes on big winning streak to crawl back into this and we know the team can do it. I do believe coaching changes are necessary. This system Hynes has implemented does not work for a roster of this potential. We have seen one good team in five years of this coaching staff and let’s be serious, that playoff team was one more regular season game away from choking the spot away.
The final answer, yes, this win mattered it is the beginning of November and there is definitely a chance to turn it all around. So let’s keep those heads held high and get revenge on the Winnipeg Jets this Tuesday at 8:00 PM.