Ranking Most Painful New Jersey Devils Moments Of Last Decade

10. Drafting Pavel Zacha

As the trade deadline nears and more rumors begin to pick up, it seems as if Pavel Zacha’s tenure with the Devils is soon coming to an end. Whether it’s Devils’ fans holding a grudge against him because he was picked ahead of a few all-stars or the contract debacle he had with GM Ray Shero back in 2019, Zacha’s Devils tenure was never smooth. In the 2015 NHL Draft, the Devils selected Zacha with the 6th overall pick. Right after him, three all-stars were selected, and three more all-stars a few picks later. Zacha has done nothing but under preform in New Jersey and is often criticized by fans for his lack of hustle. He’s also one of the many first-round misses the Devils front office have made dating back to 2004 when they selected Zajac.

9. The three own goal game vs the Ducks

Over the last few seasons, the Devils have been known to score a few own goals, but in a matchup against the Ducks in December of 2018, they did the unthinkable and scored three of them. Stefan Noesen got the party started after a pass caromed off his skate and into an empty net to make the score 1-1.

The third period is when the party got out of control. The Devils owned a 4-3 lead with 11:25 to go in the game when a Ducks player threw a backhanded floater from the blue line that resulted in Ben Lovejoy doing his best Jalen Reagor impression. Lovejoy failed to catch the puck, causing it to oddly deflect into the net. Five minutes later, Andy Greene decided to try and hit a fluttering puck over the net and instead whiffed on it completely, knocking it into the net. As if the game wasn’t a microcosm of the Devils’ play this decade, the Devils lost this game in a shootout.