Was it really still less than a week ago where the Devils beat Boston in an impressive 2-1 OT thriller, following that up with a fun 6-3 win at Columbus during fathers and mentors weekend? That was at least the second time this season I dared to think maybe the Devils had finally found their footing and would start to live up to expectations. And the second time I’ve been proven dramatically wrong in the space of a few weeks. 

I’m not even as upset as I could or should be at the moment, given the fact I was too annoyed at the end of my football team’s season to watch the Devils no-show against the Ducks in a listless 5-1 defeat on Sunday, and I thankfully had other plans last night during their woeful 6-3 loss to the Oilers which saw one goaltender (Akira Schmid) get pulled just 5:24 into the game, while the other (Vitek Vanecek) coughed up three goals in a sixty-nine second span early in the third period, turning a 3-2 lead into a 5-3 deficit before you could blink an eye. If any night was the nadir of New Jersey Devils goaltending this season, last night may well be it though I wouldn’t bet on the undynamic duo somehow topping that.

What’s particularly striking about the above is that we have the same two goalies this year compared to last year and the one guy – Mackenzie Blackwood – who was a bit of a drag on those numbers in 2022-23 is gone now. So what changed…are they both one-year flukes that somehow shorted at the same time? If it were just Vitek struggling, maybe you could attribute it to his playoff meltdown, but Schmid too after a solid rookie season and his great first round against the Rangers? This is why I’m loath to rip the goalies to the point of only blaming them for this team being a flat out underachiever this season.

Especially when you take into account Tuesday night’s game against the Flyers, where all three goals against were the result of either dumb decisions – Brendan Smith’s pinch on goal #1 – or dumb turnovers in the defensive zone (by Jack Hughes, no less) on goals #2 and #3. If any game threw the Devils’ season under a proper microscope it was that one, the Flyers proved once again they’re a team that’s everything we aren’t…a team, rather than just a collection of individuals trying to win on talent. Coaching, goaltending, structure and teamwork – all of those are reasons why the Flyers have surprised the league with their unexpected hot start, and the lack of all of the above in Newark are why the Devils are driving fans like me to our last nerve before the holiday season.

As much as I wanted to believe after the Boston game last Friday, I’ve still never bought fully into this year’s Devils team to be honest. How could I, when even most of this team’s wins aside from the aforementioned Bruins comeback have either been due to the power play or early-season Jack brilliance? But our power play has cooled off a bit (somewhat expected that they wouldn’t stay around 40% the whole year, especially once Dougie Hamilton went on the shelf) while Jack…looks a bit distracted, shall we say? Tuesday’s turnovers were bad enough, from what I read it sounded like he also lost his cool during Sunday’s game with the Ducks due to penalties not getting called on him, so he took two dumb penalties in the second period himself. Bear in mind this is the same Jack who got Lady Byng votes for taking two minor penalties all last season. He matched that total in one period on Sunday.

I mean if something innocuous like that is gonna set you off, maybe you’ve got other things on your mind right now. If it were just a matter of Jack not scoring a lot recently that’d be one thing – you can’t expect him to be AS dominant all the time as he was in many games early in the season, but don’t compound a scoring slump by either being petulant like on Sunday, or just flat out stupid like Tuesday. Turnovers in the offensive zone is one thing, at least you’re trying to make something happen and the defense has time to recover. But when you have two idiotic turnovers in your own zone leading to high-danger chances that wind up in the net, questions need to be asked. ’Make a save Vitek (or Akira)!’ only goes so far when you also have to overcome nightly nonsense like this. Jack is far from the only offender here, but when you’re in some ways the most important player, that kind of stuff coming from you is gonna stand out more.

Judging by the goals last night, there’s certainly a lot of stupid going around the locker room at the moment. For the second time this season Schmid was pulled before the first period was over, and unlike the Caps game a month or so ago where he gave up two clunkers, neither goal was really on him last night. You could claim that Lindy Ruff did it to provide a spark, and you can even make the case it worked for a while as the Devils scored the next three goals but really they were outshot 18-6 in the second period and 29-14 in the last two…some spark, goals or no goals. I almost wonder if they treat Schmid with kid gloves just because they know what kind of defense this is and don’t want to ruin him, but they don’t have another option in net at the moment given that Nico Daws just came back a couple weeks ago from major surgery.

Of course, now we get to coaching…if you are that worried about a second-year guy in Schmid, then maybe just maybe you should simplify this system and not try to go firewagon hockey all the time. Strangely, it seemed as if the Devils had tightened up the approach last week when they were on the road then playing the Bruins last week back at home. If you have a defense with kids and one kid goalie plus a fragile vet you would think you’d look for ways to take pressure off of them. Yet, too often we opt for this insane high-tempo, high-risk system that accentuates all our negatives and doesn’t really help our positives five-on-five. I haven’t even bagged on the new-look defense as much as I should, cause really the defensive woes are just indicative of the overall team woes at the moment to a large degree although vets like Jonas Siegenthaler and John Marino are on the clock as far as their own play deteriorating. But as we saw Tuesday, defensive breakdowns aren’t just caused by the defensemen on this team.

It’s not even just the system that you can slag the coaching for, but ultimately the coach has to be responsible for this team’s continuing to come out for game after game completely flat. As if they’re waiting for their great talent to win games alone. I really get the feel as if this team was young and hungry to prove a point last year, especially after getting booed off the ice on Opening Weekend, with chants of ‘Fire Lindy!’ echoing from the stands during intros. How Lindy handled that personally, and how the team bounced back from it was a feel-good story last year, and quite frankly is probably the only reason we haven’t heard similar chants at this point in the current season, fans don’t want to have egg on their face again. But this year they’re playing like a team that’s fat and happy over proving a point and beating the Rangers on top of it last year, as if they won a Cup and could coast now.

This season does feel like the beginning of the second Major League movie, where after the fictional Indians came out of nowhere to win the division against their hated rivals – then the next season their heads were in all the wrong places much to the exacerbation of manager Lou Brown.

Lou: You guys won last year, just to spite her! Maybe she’s just what we need

Jake: Aw skip, they were a different team last year

I’d referenced this movie in a couple prior posts thinking we’d already reached the point where the team had started to turn it around but nope, we’re still in the same old malaise we’ve been for much of this season and quite honestly we’re at the point where at least one big change needs to be made. Whatever that is, GM Tom Fitzgerald needs to do it asap…none of the sitting on your hands nonsense that Joe Douglas did to ruin the football Jets’ season. It’s getting early late in this division.

I was tempted to break out the old Wargames DEFCON 1 clip, except I’m paranoid we haven’t yet seen rock bottom at this point. With two more home games looming over the next few days around the Christmas break, I’m really worried about losing tomorrow and being in an ugly pre-holiday atmosphere. Ironically, we play the same Detroit Red Wings team that roasted us in the aforementioned home opener last season. Maybe we’ll hit rock bottom against the same team in the same building two seasons in a row, only hopefully this isn’t too late to have a turnaround. Especially with seemingly everyone else in the Metro winning against non-Metro teams, and having three-point games against each other.