In many ways, the Devils’ disappointing 2025 came to a head yesterday after what can be charitably described as a puzzling, incomplete trade deadline by our joke of a general manager, which was capped off by yet another predictably dreadful performance in front of the home fans with a 6-1 loss to Winnipeg team that barely broke a sweat in their third game in four nights. We are now past merely a crisis point, this is full out panic city time.

Don’t bother telling me the Devils are still five points up on a playoff spot (though the teams behind us all have at least a game or two in hand), that they just cleared the hardest part of their schedule, and the rest of the East is basically trying to make sure our rotted corpse gets in the playoffs. Does it even matter at this point if this team makes the postseason? I thought it would matter to our arrogant, clueless GM but evidently not by enough since Fitz was in hibernation for months before yesterday and basically settled for playing the deadline halfway. Overpay for a middle-pairing defenseman in Brian Dumoulin by having the Ducks retain on the contract just to tease everyone thinking a bigger move was coming, then coming out of deadline day with the likes of Cody Glass and Daniel Sprong, offering nothing but politically charged excuses and loser rationalizations for why he didn’t do more.

If you’re going to not do anything that makes a difference, then don’t insult our intelligence by giving off the illusion of competing and just do nothing at all. Or even perhaps sell minor pieces and admit this just isn’t going to be your year, even I’ve pretty much accepted that at this point. Replacing Jonas Siegenthaler – confirmed out for the season by our brilliant GM – with Dumoulin while doing nothing to fix the offensive issues that were a problem ‘before’ Jack Hughes was ruled out for the season with a separated shoulder and Dougie Hamilton was confirmed out for the next several weeks is putting a band-aid on a paper cut while letting a gaping wound go unattended. I don’t want to hear about Fitz letting down the room when the room has been putting in disappointing performances one after another the last two months though, he mostly let down the fans this season by his inaction throughout. Go big or go home, but trying to go halfway is politically charged junk.

Giving up a second rounder and one of the Devils’ few forward prospects (2024 3rd rounder Herman Traff) that looked like he had a pulse for twenty games of Dumoulin, while getting the Ducks to retain heavily on his contract suggested a bigger move was in play for yesterday. Of course, one never materialized in what was perhaps a fitting coda to the Devils’ embarrassing 2025, a season that’s now at best giving off shades of 2009-10 where the team had a 31-win first half, followed by a dismal, unhappy second half where they muddled around .500 and then got humiliated in a five-game first round loss to the Flyers. At this point I’d take that ending, cause the alternative is a 2007 Mets-like flameout of the playoffs. Maybe Fitz and the players truly deserve the latter though, perhaps that’s the only way meaningful change happens here.

Although I’ve slagged the players a lot in recent weeks, I really didn’t expect more from last night with us playing one of the three best teams in hockey accounting for all the players now missing from the lineup. If you don’t think injuries matter, just look at the Devils’ second power play unit last night with four guys who shouldn’t be anywhere near a power play. My prediction to a friend at puck drop was they get down 3-0 and are booed off the ice after the first, I was only off by one period on that one. Yesterday was mostly an indictment of the GM though, with everything from the actual deadline (including failed picks like Chase Stillman getting dealt off, in another reminder of Fitz’s horrible drafting in recent years) to the strange timing on an extension for Jonathan Kovacevic – who hasn’t looked like the same player since the injury to Siegenthaler – to the Simon Nemec situation, which clearly has come to a head.

In many ways, Nemec’s arc mirrors that of the entire organization the last three seasons – so much promise for most of last year followed up by so much disappointment this year. It’s a pointless parlor game at this point to assign blame or even assess why that’s happened, you could point to any number of things starting with learning a new system, his shoulder injury in Olympic qualifying over the summer followed by Kovacevic beating Nemec out for a spot on the roster in the early part of the season and getting him sent down to Utica. Our own player development hasn’t exactly been infallible in recent years – just look at other high picks who’ve washed out, or in the case of Dawson Mercer regressed from two years ago.

That said, Nemec needs to take responsibility for his own season too. I knew the minute I heard that quote in a Slovakian newspaper a few weeks ago to the effect of (paraphrasing) ‘I’m not happy I’m in the minors but I’m not asking for a trade yet‘, then you know he’s already at least thought in those terms, which is incredibly entitled. Just because you were a high pick who was an NHL regular last year, doesn’t mean you’re above getting sent to the minors now. Plenty of guys have been sent back down after playing as a young rookie, it’s what you do with adversity that’ll define you. Nemec did nothing to earn a roster spot early, he was dreadful then and was even worse when he came back up before being benched and ostensibly having a good road trip once he got back in the lineup.

Then came last night.

While the highlights themselves aren’t exactly great viewing, focus on the last two and a half minutes from about 7:30 on. One mistake after another from Nemec in a performance so bad you’d think he had a Fan Duel bet on Winnipeg goals and was point shaving. Lazily and mindlessly giving away the puck on the fourth goal, getting deked out of his skates on the fifth and outworked on the sixth all suggest a guy who is either bad, or just doesn’t want to be here. Even the broadcasters were struggling to polish up that turd of a game. The first one was enough to get me to storm out of the arena last night, I winced when I heard about the two more that happened after it. Even coach Sheldon Keefe dispensed some hard truths about Nemec’s game in the postgame presser:

Maybe he was better on the road trip because he thought he was getting traded, then after not getting traded and having his main competition Kovacevic sign a five-year deal, he decided to sulk around now that the writing is seemingly on the wall for at least one of Nemec or Seamus Casey to eventually be traded with all the money the Devils have committed to the right side.

I’ve cooled down a little from some of my off-blog ranting on Nemec last night but I’ll reiterate this…if that kid didn’t at least apologize to the room last night and take ownership of his horrible effort both in front of them and in front of the media, then I don’t want to ever see him in a Devils uniform again. Sure they were gonna lose last night anyway even before Nemec decided to seemingly shave points, but the guys in the room who at least tried in the game deserved better than to be railroaded by a sulking 20-year old from mere defeat against a good team into an utter embarrassment of a loss in front of the home fans.

As far as the rest of the game, I don’t really want to bother commenting much on it except to say Jacob Markstrom was also lost last night, giving up a soft goal at the end of the second period, having a couple of puck handling mishaps including one that caused the power play which led to the second goal against and overall playing like a guy that knows he’s gotta hold the opposition to one goal at most every game now with the state of this offense. Our goaltending is our main hope of survival the last few weeks of the regular season, if that even starts to go south forget it.

Things are so depressing at this point I’m past ranting territory, at least for the moment. I’m sure I’ll have more of it if – when? – this collapse becomes official, but for now the less time I waste on this joke of an organization the better. Even if I’m currently scheduled to go to about 7-9 of the remaining home games left including Tuesday’s four-pointer against Columbus, which is likely to be another disaster. They’re the inverse of us, a team with no expectations and less talent finding a way to win on grit and perseverance. I already feel like the result of this playoff ‘push’ is preordained. It’s up to the core in the room to prove me wrong. Nico, Timo, Jesper…time to lead and prove that the Devils aren’t a one-man show a la the Atlanta Thrashers in the days of Ilya Kovalchuk.