New Jersey Devils: Checking On Preseason Predictions
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.
Which player won’t live up to expectations?
“Janne Kuokkanen. I like Kuokkanen very much and think he is going to be a very good player in this league. He is not ready to handle the top-six workload that he is projected to get by staying with Sharangovich and Hughes. I would highly recommend switching him with Tomas Tatar on the lines and that would stabilize his production.”
Nailed it. I could not be more correct about this one. Kuokkanen stinks this year! He is barely performing well enough on the fourth line and it is actually depressing to see. It was a good thing they put Tatar in the top six as I recommended because that was paying off very well for awhile. But I am taking the absolute win on this one, get better at this sport soon, Janne.
What is another NHL team you think will surprise people this season?
“Seattle Kraken. I’m going to take this in a different direction though. They are going to be BAD. I mean they will be finishing in 6th place in the pacific level of bad, which is really disappointing considering how weak the pacific is this year. If you are a betting man/woman hammer every point total under for Seattle that you can and bet NO to making the playoffs.”
BOOM! The only thing I got wrong is where they would finish in the Pacific division. They are dead last right now and very likely not climbing out of it. I hope you took this betting advice because I made you a very rich person, you’re welcome. The pacific is a little more competitive than most expected and Seattle simply cannot handle that. Taking another win here and keep on betting against them if you like money.
What is one bold prediction you have about the NHL season?
“The NHL is going to demolish their viewership numbers this season. With TNT getting the piece of the pie and the return to ESPN/ABC people are excited just for the theme music alone to be back. With the addition of streaming services ESPN+ and Hulu coming in as well this can reach a broader audience. It will be good numbers going forward.”
The jury is still out on this. The season is only half over so we still have to wait and see how things finish out. Early indications are putting this in a positive direction and there is still half a season left. It was unclear how all these changes would impact things. For the Devils specifically, it does not affect them much as they have only had seven games on ESPN+/Hulu exclusive and only one more left. They also have one game against the New York Islanders in April on TNT. The other 73 games have remained in the MSG family.
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Overall, I did not do too bad. I already was spot on with two of them, did miss on one unfortunately and the last two will be solved at season’s end.