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The 2021 New Jersey Devils were a Bad Team. They have finished in a worse position this season (29th) than they did last season (26th). They ran through a compressed regular season schedule in an incredibly tough division, suffered a Coronavirus outbreak that surely impacted player performance and compressed the schedule further, performed terribly on special teams, dropped all shootouts, turned the Rock into Fort Rarelywin, hung their goaltenders out to dry more often than not, and were effectively out of the playoff race in the third month of the season. Achieving mediocrity would have required a massive upgrades in most aspects in the game.