Devils: 6-3 Start Marks Hopeful Season of Change After Repeated Struggles

Things haven’t been easy for the New Jersey Devils over the past few NHL seasons. Well, more than the past few, but that’s beside the point. It seems like a decade ago now that Martin Brodeur, Adam Henrique, and company led New Jersey on a magical run to the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals, falling short to an 8th place Cinderella LA Kings team.

I can imagine it had felt even longer for current head coach Lindy Ruff and crew after the situation surrounding them and the Devils less than ideal performances over their first two games, to the start the 2022-23 NHL season.

The Devils have pretty much been in a limbo of sorts in terms of their future ever since the departure of once-expected Franchise forward Taylor Hall in the 2018-19 season. After being acquired from the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for struggling first round project Adam Larsson, Hall literally and figuratively put the Devils on his back with a ridiculous 93-point campaign in 2017-18, leading New Jersey into the playoffs, earning the Hart Trophy as league MVP in the process.

Ultimately though, the relationship couldn’t last, and in spite of continued production it seemed clear the Devils simply couldn’t afford Hall, shipping him to the Arizona Coyotes where he’s since played for both the Buffalo Sabres and Boston Bruins.

Since then, the Devils haven’t come close to sniffing the playoffs, despite having built up a roster comprised of high-priced free agent signings and a promising if underused prospect pipeline including Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, and Nico Hischier. Ruff has had little, if any success lighting a spark the past seasons under what is a doubtlessly high potential roster, and it seems as though this lack of contention had reached a boiling point with both the Devils fans and the players early on in this season.

In a 5-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings in the Devils home opener earlier this year, the cheers for assistant coach and former Florida Panthers bench boss Andrew Brunette in the pre-game ceremony were offset by a parade of boos for Ruff, whose recent track record New Jersey fans have clearly grown tired of.

Yet, in spite of that, that 0-2 start seems like a distant memory now after a 7-1 win against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday put New Jersey at 6-3 on the season and 6-1 in their last seven.

Safe to say, little has gone right for the Devils the past few seasons, and this frustration has now reached both the fans, the coaching staff, and the players themselves.

It goes without saying that New Jersey has been far removed from the powerhouse team they once were in the height of the NHL’s dead-puck era, running a defensive-heavy, neutral-trap-oriented system perfectly to three Stanley cups in 1995, 2000, and 2003, behind one of the greatest to ever do it in goaltender Martin Brodeur and a balanced, consistent offense.

From 1987 to 2012, the Devils missed the playoffs just three times (yes really), despite a revolving door of head coaches comprised of Pat Burns, Larry Robinson, and Jacques Lemaire. Patrik Elias, Scott Stevens, Brodeur, Petr Sykora, and the numerous long-time veterans that formed the team’s consistently contending core, quickly became a distant memory following that surprise Cup Final run in 2012. Since then, New Jersey has missed the playoffs in nine out of the past ten seasons, with Hall’s inexplicable 2017-18 campaign being the only outlier.

With a promising 6-3 start to the 2022-23 season, the New Jersey Devils are looking to make change after years of repeated struggles.

While they’ve been middling at best over the majority of this stretch, the past two seasons have only further emphasized how far this team has truly fallen. A former long-time Buffalo Sabres bench boss in Ruff was expected to bring change into the Devils locker room after the mid-season firing of long-time coach John Hynes.

While Ruff has a respectable and proven track record, he, unfortunately, hasn’t seized control of the room, not the fans, though with the recent run the Devils have been on, things seem as though they’re finally picking up remains to be seen.

After playing the waiting game with their prospects with little to no results, the point-per-game performance of Hughes last season has led into a solid start to this year where at long last, things seem to be clicking. Bratt has begun to finally evolve from an intriguing if inconsistent former sixth round pick into a true Franchise player for the team, with 4-11-15 totals over 9 games to start the season. Hughes, Hischier, and even Hamilton have picked up the pace to start, and fellow prospects in Dawson Mercer and Yegor Sharangovich have rounded things out nicely.

To say this NHL season has been up and down in terms of expectations and success for certain teams would be a gross understatement frankly, and this is something the Devils have taken advantage of, turning a less-than-ideal start into one that looks as though it could finally lead them back into the post-season with more than just Taylor Hall to thank. Had it not been for the sheer misery teams like the Montreal Canadiens and Arizona Coyotes suffered last season with a lack of offense, defense, coaching, goaltending, or even an arena in the Coyotes’ case, the Devils would’ve been seen as a lot worse than a team that simply got somewhat lost in the mix.

I say somewhat because, at the end of the day, New Jersey still used a whopping seven different goaltenders and had an overall, if not complete lack of production from a prized free-agent signing in Hamilton.

By season’s end, the Devils crease was a who’s who of once-brief NHlers most had thought had retired or gone overseas, from Jon Gillies to Andrew “The Hamburglar” Hammond himself. Yet, again, with Mackenzie Blackwood and Vitek Vanecek having seemingly solidified things for the time being, change seems to be coming in New Jersey at long last, and it’s something these fans have been patiently waiting for, to the point that that same patience very nearly ran out.

As the 2022-23 NHL season continues to barrel onwards, the numerous surprises and breakout performances that come with this time of year have found their way into nearly every franchise, from the basement dwellers to the contenders, and after sitting in the middle of the pack for seemingly far too long, it looks as though the New Jersey Devils, are finally trending, in the right direction.