4 Big Questions for the New Jersey Devils in 2020-21

Two words, New Jersey Devils fans: Player development.

As a die-easy New Jersey Devils fan who unfortunately got into the team just after their last Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 2012, I have incredibly mixed feelings about the 2020-21 NHL season.

On one hand, hockey is back. Yay. After 10 months without a meaningful game of Devils hockey gracing my NHL.TV Monthly Pass, I – and the rest of the fanbase – get to watch MacKenzie Blackwood and the boys take the ice once more.

Then again, how soon will that excitement turn to frustration?

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Why? Because the Devils are going to be bad this season.

After giving the Taylor Hall-era one last college try before shipping him out to Arizona last spring, the Devils are entering a full-on rebuilding phase where player development gets the nod over winning enough games to make it to the playoffs. Granted, it’s not like the Devils would have a particularly easy time making it to the postseason, as the new-look East Divison is a brutal collection of players who will surely punish Lindy Ruff‘s squad for all 56 games of their intradivision-only schedule, but at least they have an excuse for the losing.

But hey, even if the team doesn’t win a lot of games – giving their 2012-13 lockout-shortened season’s win total a real run for its money – that doesn’t mean the Devils can’t still make waves and show glimpses of a bright future in the not too distant future. They just need to answer a few questions before any sensable fan should open their hearts up to hope for a playoff run, even if they secretly know it’ll all but surely end in heartache.

4. When will we see Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt?

In a cruel twist of fate, the New Jersey Devils will be without two of their brightest young players to start out the 2020-21 season – one rather predictably and the other anything but.

As the regular season inched closer and closer and Jesper Bratt remained in restricted free agency limbo, it felt like a borderline foregone conclusion that the Devils would be without their 2016 sixth-round pick for at least the first few games of the 2020-21 NHL season.

Could this situation have been handled better, maybe agreeing to a deal back in December with plenty of time to spare? Sure, but that’s neither here nor there. With Bratt now having to fly over from Sweeden, quarantine for 7-10 days, and then get acclimated to Lindy Ruff’s system after signing a two-year, $5.5 million deal, it may be weeks before we see the 22-year-old sharpshooter on the ice in a Devils uniform.

That, unfortunately, was predictable. What wasn’t, however, was that Nico Hischier would arrive in the Garden State with an ankle injury that could keep him out of action for the foreseeable future.

Granted, at least Hischier is in New Jersey, that’s half the battle, and received an off-ice education in Ruff’s scheme, but coming back in late January versus late February could make for a significantly different season for the Devils.

On one hand, a lineup without Hischier and Bratt makes room for players like Jesper Boqvist and Nathan Bastian to see meaningful on-ice time, but at the same time, it’s still important to see if two top-six players can take steps forward and become even bigger parts of the Devils’ ‘Process’ moving forward? If this season is all about player development, isn’t it kind of important to see how the players on the ice actually develop? Boy, what a novel concept.

3. Can Scott Wedgewood replace Corey Crawford?

When Corey Crawford announced his out-of-the-blue retirement mere days into New Jersey’s training camp, it left the Devils in a weird place.

While everyone, and I do mean everyone, should wholeheartedly support Crawford’s decision to hang up his skates once and for all if he truly believes it’s the right call, doing so within two weeks of the start of the 2020-21 season left the team with very few external options to address the situation.

Sure, the Devils could – and very well still may – claim long-time goaltender Cory Schneider, as the New York Islanders still haven’t filed his contract and could still subject him to waivers, but that’s a lot of moving parts. Schneider does have a ton of experience netminding in a red jersey, but after buying out his contract, that’d sure look a bit embarrassing.

No, the most likely scenario is that the Devils will enter the regular season with MacKenzie Blackwood as their unquestioned starter and Scott Wedgewood as their top reserve.

Now to be fair, Wedgewood isn’t some unknown commodity. He was drafted by the Devils in the third round of the 2012 NHL Entry Draft and appeared in 20 games for the Arizona Coyotes as recently as 2018. By all accounts, the 28-year-old looks great during training camp, and the Devils clearly liked him enough to avoid adding external competition so far this calendar year.

If Wedgewood can provide 20ish starts yet again in relief of Blackwood and at least split them 50-50, it’ll go a long way to keeping the Devils competitive in 2020-21. But if he struggles? Then it becomes a whole lot harder to judge the rest of the roster for 20ish percent of the season.

2. Just how big a step forward will Jack Hughes take?

There’s a small but incessant segment of hockey twitter who believes Jack Hughes is a bust.

I know, I know, it’s a crazy take barely worth any of our time, but hey, why not humor them for a moment? Could be fun.

Did the middle Hughes boy have a rough start to his professional hockey playing career? Most definitely, some would go so far as to call it the worst rookie season of any first overall pick in recent memory, but does anyone really believe that makes the 19-year-old a lost cause?

Yeah, if you genuinely believe that, you need to take a page out of my good friend Michael Jeffrey Jordan‘s handbook and “stop it, get some help“.

No, the question really isn’t will Jack Hughes take a step forward, but how big a step will it be?

With playing time at top-line center fully freed up thanks to Hischier’s injury, Hughes will not only be given a chance to fully test his mettle alongside the best and brightest the Devils have to offer, but do so on a loose leash without fear of being kicked onto the wings if he starts to struggle.

If offseason reports and the Devils’ social media accounts are of any indication, Hughes is returning a bigger, stronger player with a newfound chip on his shoulder. If he can use that chip to double his rookie production, it’ll go a long way to silencing his detractors.

And if he can throw up 50-plus points, the most by a Devils center since Hischier during his rookie season, well, New Jersey’s playoff window may be a whole lot closer than we may have initially assumed.

Huh, scoring 50 points before he’s old enough to buy alcohol legally in the United States? Maybe Jack Hughes has the makings of a golden boy after all.