The New Jersey Devils announced on Wednesday that Jack Hughes would miss the rest of the season after sustaining a shoulder injury over the weekend against the Vegas Golden Knights. This is the worst possible news for a team barely holding onto a playoff spot with just days until the NHL Trade Deadline.
It also feels like Groundhog Day. The Devils shut Jack Hughes down last season after a shoulder injury that required surgery. It basically put the Devils in the dirt, and they were looking towards next season. But that's not all that went wrong last season. We actually did a Power Rankings for everything that went wrong last season, and go ahead and tell me which one of these look familiar.
10. Timo Meier's struggles
9. Coaching lineup decisions
8. Special teams
7. Michael McLeod's arrest
6. Dougie Hamilton injury
5. Struggles in back-to-backs
4. John Marino and Jonas Siegenthaler fall off a cliff
3. Jack Hughes injury
2. Coaching system
1. Goalies
When looking at the list, it’s a lot of repeated bad luck. The Devils did fix the goalies, and John Marino was traded for positive assets, but despite Jonas Siegenthaler’s return to form, now he’s out for the foreseeable future. Dougie Hamilton was also injured again, and he’s reportedly out week-to-week now. Michael McLeod was never replaced. Erik Haula and Curtis Lazar replace the players who fell off a cliff. Timo Meier has struggled mightily this season.
All the same things are going wrong, or at the very least, adjacent things are going wrong. The big difference is the start of the season has them in a playoff spot. They went off and looked like a contender for the Metropolitan Division. Now, they would be incredibly lucky to make the playoffs at all.
The Devils are just four points ahead of the Columbus Blue Jackets and six points ahead of the New York Rangers. Both those teams have played fewer games than the Devils. We’ll see what happens next, but Jersey’s Team is in serious hot water. So, we have to ask:
Are the New Jersey Devils cursed?
The Devils have done a great job building this team the “right way.” They learned from their mistakes, made a few really good draft picks (although some major misses), continue to trade for players who perform well on the team, and have great talent evaluators. On top of that, they hired the best coach on the market to replace Lindy Ruff in Sheldon Keefe. Everything was working swimmingly, but then Christmas happened and the team went into the tank.
There is no real reason why the Devils fell off a map in January. They just played much worse, and they were losing games they were winning just a month earlier. There were some calls that were unexpectedly going against them. Some players didn’t perform like they should. There were injuries to Siegenthaler and Jacob Markstrom before Hughes and Hamilton, but none of this should have led to this.
The season has ebbs and flows, so there was no reason to panic. They had been in a playoff spot since the second the season started.
This team just needed to sustain. Keep themselves in the spot while some of their players get off the schneid. Just keep yourself in a playoff spot.
And to be fair, they did stay in a playoff spot, but now there’s no hope for a Stanley Cup. Heck, if they do somehow make the playoffs, most fans wouldn’t have hope to win a playoff game.
Most curses have an origin story. What would the Devils’ origin story be? Is it firing Ray Shero? Did he put a voodoo curse on this franchise? Actually, that sounds like something Lou Lamoriello would do. Did this start with Martin Brodeur putting on a St. Louis Blues uniform? Was it the Ilya Kovalchuk contract they tried to get past the league?
Maybe it’s something the fanbase did. Maybe this is our fault. We’re running out of ideas at this point, but there’s one thing that absolutely needs to happen. Every Devils fan must bring sage to the arena on Friday. We need to exorcise these demons. Invite all the local priests to get this arena cleansed. The bad luck must end.