1. Zach Parise Leaving
Unlike my conspiracy theory on the last one, Parise leaving did send the Devils into a spiraling downfall that they are still in today.
It doesn’t happen very often that a team’s captain elects to leave his team in free agency right after losing the Stanley Cup. If Parise elected to stay, those Devils teams had another crack at winning a cup. Instead, he chose to sign in Minnesota, and the Devils could never fill the hole he left.
It was the most Devils thing imaginable, they make the Stanley Cup, and their star captain leaves in free agency. It’s happened a million times, but for a twelve-year-old me, this was my first time truly experiencing something like this.
Since Parise left, the Devils have appeared in one playoff series and have lost as much as any other team. Only the Arizona Coyotes, who will be playing at an EASHL rink next season, and the Buffalo Sabres, who cannot fill up half of their arena, have more losses than the Devils. In other words, it hasn’t been fun to watch Devils hockey since he left, and that was a decade ago.