The Devils And The Stages Of Grief

Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images

With a little less than two minutes remaining in the Devils’ utterly predictable desultory 2-0 defeat at Vegas on Sunday night, Jack Hughes drove to the net looking for a rebound of a Nico Hischier shot off a rush.

As he ventured near the right post, New Jersey’s superstar center was slew-footed (my interpretation, not that of the ref’s) by Vegas center Jack Eichel and was sent careening into the end boards. Hughes, who has a history of banging up his shoulder (he reportedly had surgery on his right one in April) hunched over in obvious pain as he glided his way off the ice and straight down the tunnel into the Devils’ locker room.

Devils Head Coach Sheldon Keefe joined Hughes as he was tossed from the game for voicing his displeasure over the non-call. By his postgame press conference, Keefe’s anger evolved through the next stages of grief, namely sadness and acceptance.

Anger, sadness, and acceptance, in no particular order, can also characterize how Devils fans are feeling about the possibility of watching their team complete an All-Time collapse this season should Monday’s evaluation of Hughes’ injury force him to miss significant time. Whereas New Jersey was the second-best team (by points percentage) in the Eastern Conference on New Year’s Eve, a usual harbinger of playoff surety, their margin for error has all but disappeared following their subsequent 9-12-3 slump.

Though Carolina is also struggling to hold onto second place in the Metropolitan Division—the Hurricanes are a mere two points up on the Devils (33-23-6)—Columbus continues to nip into their heels and the Rangers, though apparently selling off assets, are certainly within striking range of booting New Jersey out of the playoff picture completely.

How integral has Hughes been to allow the Devils to at least register wins in alternating games over their last 12 contests? The team has scored 32 goals in this span and Hughes has been on the ice for 22 of them, per NaturalStatTrick.com. In one stretch, it was 20-of-25. Individually, he has recorded 9 goals and 5 assists. No other Devil has hit the back of the net more than three times.

It should be noted that Hischier, New Jersey’s 1A/1B center, missed six of those 12 games while scoring twice and has had an excellent season. Still, if you’re looking for a next man up for Hughes, that guy is probably not on this roster.

You certainly can’t count on third line center Erik Haula. He has been pointless since before Thanksgiving, a 26-game drought. How about fourth line center Curtis Lazar? His insurance goal during Saturday night’s 3-1 victory at Utah was his first since October 25. Typical fill-in Justin Dowling? Don’t make me cringe—in 41 games this season, the waste of ice time has put up a whopping 2 goals and 3 assists.

The bottom six isn’t even generating scoring opportunities at an acceptable rate, according to NST metrics. In the last 12 games, those lines have been rolled over to the tune of sub-30% shares in high danger scoring chances.

This was absolutely foreseeable, which is where the sadness morphs into anger. Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald put this team together with the intention that it would be overly reliant on the Hughes and Hischier lines for production, choosing to fill out the lineup card with guys who were “hard to play against.” How’s that going?

Worse, Fitzgerald has sat on his hands while a team that was built to be in win-now mode has frittered away its cushion and is in peril of an embarrassing placement on the outside of the tournament looking in. The NHL trade deadline is less than a week away; while their competitors have been loading up, New Jersey has been silent. We don’t know what deals have been discussed, only that Fitzgerald has to date failed to pull the trigger on anything that could have helped put the team back on solid footing. Once the season starts, that’s supposed to be his main job.

Good grief. Now it could be too late if it’s determined that Hughes will be out for an extended period. Fitzgerald might as well pull back and wait til next year.

Ah, what will be, will be.

Acceptance.