New Jersey Devils: 5 Ways To Salvage This Season

At Least Two AHLers Show NHL Chops

Three years ago, the New Jersey Devils were in a somewhat similar position. They were sellers at the trade deadline, and there wasn’t much to play for down the stretch. Since there was nothing to lose, the Devils gave extended looks to a few players. Two of those players were Blake Coleman and Miles Wood. Wood especially felt out of nowhere. He was a player we didn’t expect to see make it out of his draft. In fact, we liked Myles Bell who the Devils took in the 6th round of that same draft.

The Devils need another year where they find two to three new players that are going to stick around for a while. Last year, the Devils didn’t add anyone, so we thought they were going to give a lot of these players like Joey Anderson and Brett Seney a tryout, but because of injuries or other issues, they only played limited roles. Then, the Devils made a bunch of moves that left them in Binghamton anyway.

Honestly, the only AHL player that proved himself to be an NHL player was Mackenzie Blackwood. Obviously, that was a huge development last season, but getting a forward in on it would have been nice.

This season, we need to see NHL chops from two of Anderson, Seney, Mike McLeod, Nathan Bastian, Mikhail Maltsev, Josh Jacobs, Nick Merkley, or Fabian Zetterlund. Two players need to show they are making the team next season. Whether it’s a scoring streak, or just nice solid play, we need more than what we’ve seen so far.