The 2016 NHL Draft saw the New Jersey Devils take nine players, acquire Beau Bennett, and ultimately get a lot of value for who they took. Now that five years has past, let us look back to evaluate how the Devils did with that draft.
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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.
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If March was a tough month for the New Jersey Devils, then April was an absolute nightmarish month. They began the month to turn their shootout loss at Boston on March 13 into a four-game winless streak. After winning a game, they lost ten in a row. The Devils went into the final week of their month of 16 games with just one win in April. One. And it was on the road in Western New York. At least the Devils picked up a second and third win in April before April ended. It does not take away much of the pain that comes with a 3-11-2 month. They earned eight points; only two teams in the league finished with fewer points in April. And one of those two teams was Vancouver, who only played seven games due to the Coronavirus. It was a horrible month for the Devils.
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The New Jersey Devils entered The Week of Pity against the Philadelphia Flyers with one win in April and a nine-game losing streak. It is now a ten-game losing streak as the Devils botched a two goal lead in less than 90 seconds before the end of regulation against the Flyers last night. All of the nine losses before that one featured the Devils going down in the first half of games with significant deficits with some comeback efforts that all fell short. As the New Jersey Devils are now flirting with last place in the league standings, their futility has become increasingly noticeable. People understandably want something to blame. And the easy culprit is goaltending.
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I hate the New York Rangers. I refer to them as Our Hated Rivals. However, the New Jersey Devils have two key rival teams that the Devils fans, the People Who Matter, cannot stand. The other team is the Philadelphia Flyers. The People Who Matter who live in southern New Jersey may feel that they are the most hated. Others may have sharper memories if only because of the Flyers’ famously garish orange and black color scheme. For most, myself included, they are second in hate-ability compared to Our Hated Rivals. I have sometimes called them the Second Rate Rivals. Such as in this headline. That is an accurate description of how they stack up in the eyes of plenty of Devils fans around the world. I understand it has not caught on. Just like the Philadelphia Flyers have not caught on as a big hockey team.