New Jersey Devils: Rock Bottom Doesn’t Even Describe Where We Are
The New Jersey Devils just put on the most pathetic performance of this rebuild. It doesn’t matter the bad performances against the New York Rangers, the losses to the Buffalo Sabres, the losing streaks to the Washington Capitals, or the comebacks they’ve allowed to teams over the last decade. On Wednesday night, the Arizona Coyotes came into the Prudential Center and just put the wood on the Devils. Well, that’s what the final score says. They left with a 4-1 victory. However, it was the Devils who controlled play.
How did this happen? Mackenzie Blackwood was terrible, for one. The blame can’t go solely on his shoulders because the Devils only scored one goal. Sure, the Coyotes goalie stopped a ton of shots, and he made some quality saves in the first period. The Devils have been “goalie’d” before this season, but the effort in the third period doesn’t let them off the hook with that easy excuse.
To be completely honest with all of you, I’ve stared at my screen a lot here. I don’t know what else to say about this team. It’s sad to be a New Jersey Devils hockey fan right now. Should I try to make everyone feel better? Is there anything to feel better about? Those prospects that everyone said should make other fanbases envious of us are here, and most of them aren’t carrying this team to anywhere envious.
This is probably all emotion. Losing to a team like the Coyotes in the way that they did is just going to put everyone down. However, this franchise has been in the tank for too many years, and every time they take two steps forward they take 25 steps back. There’s no end in sight, and they might have to find a way to revamp the entire roster again.
This loss doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. They aren’t making the playoffs. That dream ended last month when the Boston Bruins started going on a run. The dream Tom Fitzgerald had at the beginning of the season of being competitive in the last month of the season is already over. What happens now?
There will be talks of firings and of benchings, and those conversations at least deserve to happen right now. Losing this badly to a team like the Arizona Coyotes deserves everything on the table. Who knows how the Devils come back from this. All we know is the second the Devils went down 2-1, it felt over. Then, things just kept getting worse. Something needs to happen. We just don’t think it will.