The 2023-24 New Jersey Devils season opens in just 47 days (at the time of the writing). On October 4, the Devils will be fighting the Buffalo Sabres in Prague, Czechia. To get ready for the season, we're doing a daily piece countdown of all the numbers of the Devils sweaters and moments in Devils franchise history. Since we are 47 days away, we will focus on one Devil who could’ve lived up to the hype when he was drafted but has entirely regressed in #47 John Quenneville.
Quenneville was drafted 30th overall in the first round by the Devils in the 2014 NHL Draft. Before he was drafted, Quenneville played for the Brandon Wheat Kings and had a solid 2013-14 season with 58 points. After he was drafted, he spent the next two seasons there, as his best season came when he was selected as alternate captain before the start of the 2015-16 season, where he scored 73 points, the 3rd highest on the team that season. When that season ended, Quenneville came to training camp for the 2016-17 Devils season. However, he didn’t make the roster, so he went to the Albany Devils for now. In December 2016, he was called up for two games against the Chicago Blackhawks and Nashville Predators, where he got limited ice time and did not make an impact in the games. After those games, he was sent back down to Albany, but he would get called up again in March of 2017. Quenneville would play just nine games during his second call-up. However, he did make himself noticeable for a little bit by scoring his first NHL goal on March 21, 2017, at home against the New York Rangers.
The major downside was that it was the only goal he scored in a four-point season. It gets even worse the following season when he was only called up for two games in the 2017-18 season in February 2018, against the Calgary Flames at home and the Columbus Blue Jackets on the road, and he didn’t get a single point. Quenneville spent most of the time in Binghamton, putting together an excellent 46-point season.
Quennville’s 2018-19 season had to be where he improved, and he did have an excellent 39-point season in Binghamton, but in the 19 games he played in the NHL that season when he was, he only scored one goal that season on March 13, 2019, in Edmonton against the Oilers. At the end of the season in June, due to low production, Quenneville was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for John Hayden during the 2019 NHL Draft. After arriving in Chicago, he was placed on the injured reserve to start the season.
When he returned, his numbers declined more, as his numbers in the AHL dropped to 22 with the Rockford IceHogs in the 2019-20 season, and in 9 games he played with the Blackhawks when he was called up, he did not score a single point. In the 2020-21 season with the IceHogs as the alternate captain, he scored 2 points that season. After his tenure in Chicago ended that season, Quenville would play in the Switzerland league NL with ZSC Lions; his numbers improved slightly when he had a 37-point season with them in 2021-22. In 2022-23, Quenneville would go to the SHL with the Leksands IF and, in 19 games with them, scored 12 points.
In that same season, he would be called back to the AHL with the Belleville Senators and have a 15-point season. Quenneville is in NL again with the HC Lugano and has had a 10-point season so far. Quenneville was a player with a lot of promise in the later half of the first round of the 2014 NHL Draft, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out for the Devils. I hope he improves his numbers to get back to the NHL.