Bad news broke on Wednesday afternoon, when it was announced that veteran forward and second-year New Jersey Devil Connor Brown would miss the first two games of the season due to a minor injury sustained at practice. Head coach Sheldon Keefe noted that it is a lower-body injury and that Brown will undergo further imaging and reevaluation.
Brown, 32, scored 43 points in his inaugural Devils campaign, with 18 goals and 25 assists in middle-six minutes. 21 of those 43 points came in the final 25-game span, in a stretch that saw him playing alongside Jesper Bratt and post-Olympics Jack Hughes.
Brown was projected to be a staple on the Devils’ fourth line to open the season, getting penciled next to Cody Glass and Amadeus Lombardi in the practice he supposedly sustained the injury.
Last season, this would have already spelled early disaster for New Jersey, given that their forward depth was putrid by every definition of the word. However, thanks to the depth that Sunny Mehta and company have added, Brown’s absence will be absorbed without the lineup taking much of a hit. That isn’t to say that losing him won’t hurt the Devils — Brown is certainly the best option the team has for the fourth-line right-wing spot. However, having a three-player fight for the 12th forward slot has allotted the Devils with versatility if a bottom-six option goes down.
See, while Lombardi has seemingly won the battle for now, he’s been fighting with veteran NHLers Jesper Boqvist and Stefan Noesen for the fourth-line bid. Having those options in the pipeline should allow the Devils to perfectly absorb Brown’s injury without taking a huge blow, as they would have just one season ago. We are all too familiar with the team being one injury away from icing Justin Dowling or any other career AHLer.
Of course, the hope is that the Devils — who have been plagued by the injury bug in seasons past — remain healthy for the most part. However, they’re more set to absorb injuries than they have been in quite a long time. They have options from the bottom-up, and their new additions up front have created a crowded group that can pivot endlessly in the event of any player going down.
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