New Jersey Devils: Checking On Preseason Predictions
By Rob DeLuca
Well, New Jersey Devils fans, this stinks. The team stinks and everything about this season has been pretty negative. Tuesday night’s attendance numbers came in at 10,382 people which is just under 63 percent full. And that number seems generous. Nobody wants to go watch this team play hockey and certainly not spend their hard earned money on it. People did not even want to buy the six dollar tickets going on Stubhub. Anyway, there is nothing worth talking about with this team currently, So, let’s go back to the Pucks and Pitchforks staff preseason predictions. We are only going to break down mine.
Where will the Devils finish in the Metropolitan Division?
"“6th place. This is of course not good enough for the playoffs. The team will be significantly improved from last year and will meet expectations of competing right to the end of the season and just fall short of playoffs. 87 points.”"
Believe it or not the Devils actually only sit two points out of fifth place. So I am very much on pace to be correct with their standings finish. What I am clearly going to be way off about is their point total. They will most certainly not be picking up 52 points in the second half of the season. Goaltending held this team back too much, if they got even league average goaltending they would be flirting with the wild card. So I will give myself half credit for this one.
Name a Devils player that will surprise people.
"“Yegor Sharangovich. Or should I say SharanGOALvich? Bad puns aside, the kid is ready to explode this season. He looked explosive in the preseason and his shot looks so much better than last season. With Jack Hughes on his line, he will have a big year on the stat sheet.”"
Whoops. That was a massive miss on my part. He has gotten better as of late now that he is finally playing with Jack Hughes again as I did say that would be a major contributing factor, but he is still well below expectations of what I had him doing. Keep him with Hughes and Jesper Bratt and let them continue to tear it up and be the one bright spot that this team has. I will take the loss here.