Last time I wrote, the Devils had at least beaten the Bruins on Jacques Lemaire night, snapping a four game losing streak and hopefully ending the January blues this team went through. Whatever reason(s) you want to attribute the Devils’ ugly stretch of two wins in eleven games – illness, winter doldrums, immaturity – at least the team managed to snap out of it enough to head into the break in a better state of mind after winning five of their last eight. Which certainly sounds more…okayish than spectacular, and we still had our share of dud games through even this latest stretch (headlined by a scary no-show the first two periods at Buffalo and a completely dead on arrival last home game before the break against Vegas), but at least the team’s done what they’ve had to do in steering the ship back towards the right path.

Given the team’s most recent injury issues – which I’ll get to in a moment – that’s no small feat. Even if three of the wins came against Montreal and Pittsburgh, two teams who we’ve had a ton of success against in recent years (including having won a team record ten in a row in Montreal – you mean Marty never did that?). And it took us three tries over a week and a half but we finally beat up the mediocre Flyers once…yay for third time being the charm? Still, winning five out of eight is a lot better than two of eleven, especially when you consider captain and franchise center Nico Hischier, goaltender Jacob Markstrom and defensive stalwart Jonas Siegenthaler have all missed good chunks, if not most of this stretch.

At least in the case of Nico and Markstrom, both should be back after the Four Nations hiatus, proving to be a well-timed break as far as they were concerned (especially since Markstrom may well have played in the competition itself, not Nico since Switzerland’s not in this…mini-invitational). Siegenthaler’s status is more murky with the official word being that he’s gone for a second opinion on a lower-body injury and they won’t update until after the break – but as usual when it comes to hockey, sometimes the truth comes out with overseas publications and if you believe the scuttlebutt there apparently Siegs had a surgery and will miss weeks.

If true, losing arguably our most reliable defenseman in our own end certainly isn’t ideal from a team standpoint, but at least it gives Simon Nemec more of a chance with the big club after a harsh beginning of the season where he had to play with a rookie on his off side (Seamus Casey) and was coming off an injury suffered ironically in Olympic qualifying. Nemec didn’t play well early, was passed on a depth chart by Jonathan Kovacevic and sent down to Utica, where he stayed until Siegenthaler’s injury at Pittsburgh. Our shootout win in Pittsburgh was also noteworthy on a happier note for the return of Nico Daws in net, a kid I’ve rooted for the last few years and I think he’s been a bit shafted by overworking him with an understocked defense. I was glad to see him get a chance this year with the Devils playing a more structured system, even if he hasn’t exactly had the best of seasons in Utica.

While it was Daws winning the shootout against the Penguins in his first start this season, to be fair it’s been Jake Allen who’s done the lion’s share of work in net since Markstrom’s injury, and he’s played a lot better as the everyday goalie than he did for the previous few weeks in spot duty. At least Allen’s been rewarded with a few wins during this recent stretch, unlike Markstrom who was playing well in defeat the three weeks before his injury. I guess I have to back off assistant GM Martin Brodeur and goalie coach Dave Rogalski this year, as their guys in net look a lot better with a better system in front of them. To be fair, Allen was okay even last year and we haven’t had a goalie of Markstrom’s talent at least since the injury-prone Mackenzie Blackwood early in his career before injuries and off-ice controversy sidetracked his career here. Having a more stable defense and more stable goalies have gone hand in hand with Sheldon Keefe’s system this year.

Ironically the offense has been more problematic than the defense and goaltending as of late, a sentence you didn’t really think was possible to be uttered with this team in the last few years. And all of the above have been more complicated by Nico’s injury which occurred in the second game of this eight-game stretch, at Montreal. So we’ve only been 3-3 since Nico went out, which I guess is the best that could have been hoped for given Markstrom already being on the shelf. While I haven’t watched a full Devils game since the last one I attended – said Bruins game – I’m still glad for the break to come as a bit of a reset for both the team and fans as they lost my interest for a bit with their extended poor play and all the excuses around it.

All that said, our January stretch wasn’t nearly as damaging as it could have been, both because of our strong early season performance and because the teams behind us in the division have started losing enough to re-open the gap on a wild card spot to eight points ahead of surprising Columbus. Ideally nobody else gets injured during this invented tournament (is there really another word for it?), which isn’t the Olympics or even a proper World Championship. It’s just another excuse for the players from four nations to play international games. Good luck to them, ironically the blackout on local TV for actual Devils games have increased the chances of me turning on one of these games from zero to maybe-ish. If it wasn’t for that, I doubt I’d be watching at all tbh but to each their own.

For the Devils, we only have three players in the tournament – Jack Hughes for team USA, Jesper Bratt for Sweden and Erik Haula for Finland. It’s only a four-team tournament with the USA, Canada and the two biggest Scandanavian nations. Leaving out for a minute the more obvious and politically charged omission of Russia and not having a Czech representation either, these days it’s even inconceivable to see an international tournament without Switzerland given the Devils’ heavy Swiss presence of Nico, Siegs, Daws and Timo Meier. Not that any of them would have been playing in this particular tournament aside from Timo (who’s had one goal in the new year) but still, they’ve certainly made more of a mark on the world stage in recent years as a hockey nation themselves.

Whatever happens in this tournament, the Devils won’t be playing until next Saturday in an early evening home game against the Stars, before going on the road for another five games (by then, we’ll have seen the NHL trade deadline come and go). Hopefully this dumb MSG-Optimum war over Devils telecasts will die a painful death by then too, before the casual fan forgets we exist. Without much likelihood of the Rangers or Islanders making the playoffs this year at this point, the Devils may well wind up being the only locals people care about in March, but it’ll be hard to hold everyone’s attention through the spring months without TV coverage given the buzz around both baseball teams and the NBA Knicks, not to mention St. John’s in college basketball lately! Maybe with the team playing better and getting healthier, I’ll be more into listening to the games on radio if it comes to it, though to be fair if the Devils are comfortably in a playoff spot by then it’ll be harder to bother to pay attention to games until the playoffs actually begin – and we know they’ll be on TV.