I’ve been wringing my hands for two months with this Devils team, not wanting to go completely off the deep end in part because of how awful the bottom of the East is – after all, the team is still in a good position to make the playoffs in spite of being sub .500 since Christmas – and in part due to perhaps a misguided hope eventually they’d find a way out of the wilderness one way or another. Even when the team failed to win all of six games on their post-holiday trip or when they lost defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler and goalie Jacob Markstrom to long-term injuries just before the Four Nations break (Markstrom only came back for last night’s game, Siegs should be out a while longer after an undisclosed surgery), overall things were still more in the annoying than alarming column.

Now, however? We’re basically into DEFCON 1 territory after last night’s 2-0 loss to Vegas, not that the loss itself was unexpected or that the team’s been bad on this most recent road trip – beating Nashville and Utah while getting pumped in Colorado and shut down by Vegas is pretty much par for the course, no better or worse. But now we’re about to pay the price for two months of excuses and underachieving, because it was in Vegas where franchise center Jack Hughes had to leave last night’s game late with an apparent serious arm (wrist/shoulder?) injury.

Given both the reaction of brother Luke Hughes – who was reportedly distraught in the locker room after the game – and coach Sheldon Keefe, who was ejected arguing with the officials and sounded somber in the postgame when discussing Jack, it seems like we’re not going to see the franchise MVP again anytime soon, if at all the rest of this season, which has about six weeks to go before the playoffs. Whether the Devils make the playoffs at this point sadly is no longer a fait accompli. It’s not just because of Jack’s injury though, I don’t want to hear this nonsense in April if the unthinkable happens and the team completely crashes out of the postseason. Jack’s injury is just the bill coming due for ****ing around the last two months.

This is why you don’t take a nap for two months and hide behind every excuse imaginable. Losing games while you had a mostly healthy roster took away your ability to lose them one you no longer have that, and you can never count on having the good health we had the first half of this season. I don’t want to hear about how the whole team had a virus for two months, how tough the schedule’s been at times with all the games up front and the back-to-backs, or how many injuries they’ve had now. One of the biggest injuries – that to Markstrom – wasn’t even a factor due to the goaltending of both vet backup Jake Allen and prospect Nico Daws during this stretch. If it wasn’t for all three of them, the team’s sub-.500 record since late December would be even worse.

How bad is it for the Devils? They don’t have a single regulation win over a playoff team since late December. That certainly fits in with the vibes currently surrounding the team. And we’re past the point of blaming coaches here, we had two different coaches last year, Keefe is the third different coach in the last two years and we’re still seeing the same inconsistencies with this group. While I have issues with him being too stubborn with his lines and d-pairings most of the time, at some point you have to look other places to solve the problem, either above Keefe or below him.

If any single player epitomizes the Devils on the whole right now, it’s Timo Meier, talent and potential up the wazoo but results severely lacking on the ice. To say you need more than sixteen goals and thirty-nine points in 61 games from a guy who’s been a 40-goal scorer in the NHL and making nearly $9 million a season is an understatement. I was actually somewhat excited when Timo finally scored the other night in Utah to break a long drought, but it was kind of a bad goal for the goalie to give up to be fair. Something’s wrong when you’re getting excited about a clunker of a goal.

Much like with the team itself, the excuses with Timo individually need to end. I don’t want to hear about him playing on the wrong wing, on his stats not being as good because he’s not on the top power play (as if his play has even merited it), on him getting chances as if that’s the same thing as actually converting on it. At some point we need to see more from Timo, his only truly dominant stretch in two years as a Devil to this point was his junktime surge late last season. Not that Timo’s been the only underachiever in the room, Dawson Mercer pales in comparison towards the player we thought was a borderline star in the making two years ago with a 27-goal, 56 point season. Last year’s 33 point, -26 crashout has been followed by a meh 26 points in 61 games this year. Not to mention the fact he can’t play center has severely hindered our depth down the middle, which will be even more of a joke now without Jack.

Also part of the center problem is Erik Haula, who hasn’t scored in over thirty games (and has just eleven points in fifty games overall). I realize the dude’s probably washed but buddy you gotta contribute at SOME point, especially since we’re stuck with him on the books for another year and no other NHL alternative down the middle at the moment. Our bottom six on the whole has completely disappeared down the stretch. Nathan Bastian? Three goals in 44 games. Curtis Lazar? Two goals in 35 games. Tomas Tatar? Six goals and fifteen points in 56 games. Even Paul Cotter after a strong start has pretty much disappeared down the stretch with just five goals – two of them in a loss at Buffalo – since the end of December and a whopping ZERO assists, although that probably has as much to do with the rest of the back six stinking even worse.

While it’s hard to get on the defense for much in spite of the team’s struggles (which have been mostly due to the lack of production from the forwards lately), the fact we have almost zero transition game on our blueline doesn’t really help. Only Dougie Hamilton – who isn’t exactly the force he was two years ago – and Luke even so much as push the play, everyone else is basically a stay-at home D that adds very little to the attack. Granted, that helps our defense actually do its first job of keeping pucks out of the net, but the fact they’re so bad at the secondary part of their job does hinder the offense. And this is where I get to the problem above coach Keefe – our once-again missing in action GM Tom Fitzgerald.

It’s bad enough that Fitz has been a bit of a front runner when it comes to dealing with the media – all too willing to take the plaudits and flowers everywhere from Spittin’ Chiclets to various podcasts early this season or three years ago, but also too willing to go into the bunker when the you-know-what hits the fan a la most of last season or the latter part of this year. Fitz’s media availability wouldn’t even be a big issue if Fitz the GM wasn’t also seemingly in hibernation. At best, he wasted time running the clock to the last week of the deadline with an old-school mentality of waiting on deals when we had the leverage of a team playing well and in good position to address the real issues that were obvious even in January. Whereas now that we’re up against the deadline with the team not playing well for two months and Jack likely out for weeks, clearly the leverage isn’t on our side.

I don’t want to hear that deals weren’t out there in January, clearly they were given all the trades that were done right before the Four Nations tournament. Plus Fitz deserves less of the benefit of the doubt now after waiting too long last year to address a season going up in smoke. Not that his moves have even been working out lately, indeed his contract signings have become more questionable from minor deals like giving Kurtis MacDermid THREE years to play 120 minutes (over twenty-one games) to giving Haula three years last offseason, which looks at least two years too long – never mind the Ondrej Palat deal, which was understandable at the time but clearly hasn’t worked out given we’re in year three of the deal and arguably haven’t had one fully good season from him.

And while his trade for Markstrom this offseason has worked in spite of the fact Kevin Bahl’s playing major minutes in his first season in Calgary, his blockbuster for Timo two years ago hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Even apart from individual moves though, Fitz has clearly changed the direction of the team and not always for the good. Two years ago we were a small, skilled, fast team – clearly not physical or big enough to withstand long playoff runs but at least good enough to win regular season games consistently in 2022-23, and even a playoff series (which would be borderline miraculous this year to be honest).

Instead of merely adding in pieces to replace the departed and fill in around the blueprint already in place, Fitz completely revamped the blueprint and now we’re a slower, more prodding team with a more conservative defense. Not that I would have wanted him to pay the freight to keep guys like Damon Severson and Ryan Graves, or really blame him for trading John Marino after he was one of the players who fell off last season but there was clearly a price to be paid replacing them all with clear stay-at-home guys like Brett Pesce, Brenden Dillon and Jonathan Kovacevic. You could definitely argue that Yegor Sharangovich and Jesper Boqvist were expendable or in Sharangovich’s case, not worth the money Calgary gave him as an RFA this year but they were replaceable players who weren’t replaced. Sharangovich turned into Tyler Toffoli, who turned into a big gap in the top six this year. Bringing back Tatar as a middle six stopgap was a sentimental play that hasn’t worked out.

Part of not being able to replace guys who left goes back to drafting and development, which has been objectively poor in recent years. It’s hard to know whether to blame the former or the latter primarily but when you do see guys like Mercer and Nemec regressing it might be more of the latter, even if there have clearly been poor high first-rounders in recent years like Alex Holtz and Chase Stillman and a questionable process in drafting even more big and slow guys this year.

In summation, this team in its current state is your mess Fitz, nobody else’s. Now start fixing it, before you lose your chance to do so, which may well happen if this team crashes out of the playoffs this year.