The 2023-24 New Jersey Devils season opens in just 51 days (at the time of the writing); at this time, 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 51 days away, we will focus on forward Sergey Kalinin, who had a short stay with the Devils and a brief stay in the NHL.
Kalinin went undrafted in the 2010 NHL Draft, as he spent the next five years in the KHL with the Avangard Omsk, where he only averaged 15 points a season in 3 of the five seasons there. On May 29, 2015, he signed a one-year entry-level contract with the Devils and played his first NHL season playing all 78 games. Kalinin would get his first NHL point, an assist on a Mike Cammalleri goal to tie the game at 2 in a 4-3 Devils win in Buffalo against the Sabres on October 24th, 2015.
Six games later, he would get his first NHL goal to give the Devils a 3-1 lead in a 4-3 overtime win at home against the Vancouver Canucks on November 8, 2015. Four days later, one of his big moments as a Devil came when he scored a powerplay goal to give the Devils a 3-2 lead over the Blackhawks in Chicago, which was the game-winning goal, as the Devils held on to win that game. Later in the season, on February 23, 2016, he scored a breakaway goal to extend the Devils lead to 4-2 at home against the New York Rangers.
Kalinin would end his first season in the NHL with 15 points, eight goals, and seven assists. Despite the low numbers, Ray Shero liked his production, so they re-signed him to a one-year deal worth $800,000 on July 6, 2016. Unfortunately for him and the Devils, his production and numbers dipped, as he only scored two goals that season. Those goals came at home on December 20, 2016, against the Nashville Predators and January 2, 2017, against the Boston Bruins.
Due to the declining numbers, the Devils traded Kalinin to the Toronto Maple Leafs on February 18, 2017, in exchange for defenseman Viktor Lööv. After the trade, Kalinin would spend 19 games in the AHL with the Toronto Marlies, only scoring 4 points. After the season had ended, Kalinin would return to the KHL to play with SKA Saint Petersburg, where he put up a 31-point with 15 goals and 16 assists in one season. Kalin would also spend two seasons with CSKA Moscow and has spent the last four seasons with Traktor Chelyabinsk, in which he averaged more than 15 points in that season, with the previous season scoring four goals and 15 assists for a 19-point season.