Mea culpa…I thought the Islanders game on Tuesday night would be the start of the Devils getting back to being the Devils circa last season’s version. Instead it seems to have only been a pit stop on the way back to being the 2021-22 Devils, the team with no leadership, no goaltending, no defense and an offense that for all its talent can go into prolonged shooting slumps. Thursday in Philly was bad enough, albeit they got two points in the end but only after blowing a late two-goal lead in a game where they allowed close to fifty shots against a team that shouldn’t have anywhere near that kind of offense. You’re not going to have Luke Hughes in a three-on-three situation winning a gimmick OT game in the playoffs – if there are even playoff games to worry about.

Yes I’m now at the point where the playoffs are back to being an if rather than an expectancy. Way to go boys, you ramped down expectations again! Really this team should have the talent to make the playoffs, even after the unfortunate injury to Dougie Hamilton that seemed to come out of nowhere Thursday night but ultimately resulted in pec surgery that’ll put him out for at least the next few months. I figured the injury news wasn’t good with Dougie when the Devils called up 2022 #2 overall pick Simon Nemec yesterday, it seemed as if they didn’t want to use him at this point unless there was a long-term injury, well here we go.

At least for his part, Nemec was calm and cool in his NHL debut, even after his first shift ended in a nightmare goal against. He managed to put up two assists including one on the power play and actually led the blueline in icetime (by six seconds over Luke) last night. Afterward, he joked – maybe – that the most nervous he was came on his rookie lap in warmups. If you’re looking for positives from last night…Nemec was pretty much it.

As for the rest of the game…it was total rubbish. I thought it couldn’t get worse than that shambolic loss to the Blue Jackets a couple weeks ago, or both home losses to the Caps – clearly I was wrong. Losing to the Sharks at home is just flat-out inexcusable (even if they have played a bit better since their back-to-back ten goal embarrassments earlier this year led to GM Mike Grier having some words with the roster). You’re talking about a Sharks team that had six goals on the road ALL YEAR – ten games and two months into the season. They had six goals in those ten road games and matched that in a mere sixty minutes last night, that’s pretty much all you need to know.

I don’t want to hear about a 47-18 shot advantage, that’s nonsense. You need to convert more than three of those chances against the backup goalie for the San Jose Sharks. We don’t score when the PP or Jack Hughes doesn’t get involved and sure enough, the PP and a Jack breakaway goal accounted for two of the three last night. Of course with only two total power play chances in the game and Jack on the whole being just as sloppy as anyone else on the team last night, we weren’t going to get many more continuing to play the way we have most of the year.

Put Timo Meier at the front of the list, yes he was just coming off the injured list if you want to find an excuse for a poor game against his former team last night but what’s been the excuse the rest of this year as his plus minus has gone down at about the same rate as our goalies’ save percentages? He really does remind me of Ilya Kovalchuk during his first year here, getting empty points but overall not living up to the contract – hopefully the next couple years are better like the Kovalchuk cause it can’t get much worse right now. Timo, and defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler were both culpable on the first goal with sloppy play that was a harbinger of the rest of the night, and fitting cause they’ve been among the biggest underachievers this year.

Not that they were alone in brain-dead plays last night. Even Luke had a non-sensical turnover on goal #2. It’s one thing to turn the puck over in the offensive zone when you’re trying to make a play, it’s another just turning it over being sloppy in the defensive zone. Luke’s turnover there was sloppy and again, was a harbinger of things to come. His big brother got pickpocketed in the neutral zone leading to goal #3, a one-timer from none other than Anthony Duclair (I didn’t realize he was still in the league hah). Probably not a great goal for Akira Schmid to allow, as he looked like a statue getting over for the one-timer but it just goes to show how bad judgements up the ice and bad goaltending have become symbiotic this year.

Of course, what was Schmid doing even playing the night after a nearly 50-shot game in Philly? After an entire season where we continually looked for ways not to play Schmid, NOW we push the envelope on a back-to-back coming off a three-game winning streak?! Almost seemed like we were setting him up to fail. Of course it’s also possible they could have just been afraid of the crowd reaction the minute Vitek gave up a goal last night given how bad he’s been. Consider that even after Schmid coughed up five goals on eighteen shots last night, his season numbers are still clearly better than Vitek’s.

If they wanted to avoid a crowd mutiny last night, mission not accomplished. Last night produced the loudest non-ref or opposition heel boo I’ve heard in quite some time from the end of the second period to the final horn, about thirty seconds’ worth, or so it seemed to me. You can scapegoat the goalies all you want – and I was as annoyed as anyone when Schmid coughed up quick goals each time in the third period we did get it back to one goal, albeit one on a breakaway where Kevin Bahl pinched for no reason and John Marino getting abused but the other came on a rebound that he created with poor puck handling.

Both goalies have been awful, I make no bones about that. But to be honest, it’s the general sloppiness and arrogance of the rest of the team that annoys me more than one kid and another middling vet being over their heads in net. The rest of the team is supposed to be a strength, other than Jack most of the time they don’t play like it. Especially against the garbage of the league, we’re only a quarter way into the season and already dropped basically double-digit points just at home against junk like the Blue Jackets, Sharks, Coyotes, over the hill Capitals, etc.

With a four-game road trip coming up this is a pivot point. If we return to the road warriors we were last year, great – maybe last night will truly be a blip in our return to form. If we continue with the sloppy play and can’t find an answer to dumpster fire goaltending, then this season is going to go right alongside 1995-96 and 2010-11 in terms of massively underachieving Devils years.