I gotta say, I think the Devils might be the most shocking / surprising team so far this season, imo.
I gotta say, I think the Devils might be the most shocking / surprising team so far this season, imo.
For sure. Refreshing to see.
Yeah, I think at this point the Devils fanbase is pretty pleasantly surprised so far as well. We expected to take a step forward this year, and when the first two games were ugly things got sour pretty fast ("Fire Lindy" chants at our home opener). A few different things playing into this year's success so far:
- Better goaltending. Our puck possession/scoring chance metrics were consistent with at least a fringe playoff contender last year, but we had I think the worst goaltending in the league (if not, neck and neck with Seattle for that distinction). Even without improvement elsewhere, better goaltending than we got last year has been a boon
- Bolstered defense. One thing our GM has done a great job of is picking up defensemen for non-premium assets from teams with a salary cap and/or expansion draft squeeze on their own rosters. We didn't give up all that much for any of Jonas Siegenthaler, Ryan Graves, or most recently John Marino, and all three have worked out very well in NJ.
- Better health (so far, knock on wood). The stat that I think best exemplifies that is that this most recent 12 games we've played are the first time that Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, and Jack Hughes have all played 12 consecutive games together. This is Jack Hughes' 4th year (and the others have been here longer). That speaks to how injury-bitten we've been at the top of our forwards depth chart. Dougie Hamilton is also looking noticeably better this year, we found out afterwards that he played most of last season with a nagging lower body injury.
I don't know that they'll be able to keep up this pace throughout the whole season, but it's been a blast so far. We've got a couple more should-wins coming up to hopefully keep stockpiling early points before some inevitable lulls through the season.