The New Jersey Devils ended their season on April 15 with a 4-0 defeat against the Boston Bruins in Boston.
The result closes out a challenging year for the Devils, who finished with an overall record of 42 wins, 37 losses, and three overtime losses, totaling 87 points. The team was unable to recover from mid-season struggles and missed out on postseason play.
Captain Nico Hischier said, “All around just dissapointed. We didn’t play the way we wanted to play this year. I think it was like December, January, where we were struggling a lot, and we just couldn’t get it back. Just couldn’t find our game and then it’s hard, coming from behind. We see how tight it was this year in the East, we’ve got to find ways to be more consistent.”
The Bruins took control early in the game by scoring twice within the first seven minutes of play. Morgan Geekie scored only 53 seconds into the game and Mark Kastelic added another goal at the six-minute mark before scoring again later in the period. Viktor Arvidsson made it a four-goal lead late in the opening frame.
Despite missing out on playoff contention, several individual milestones were reached by Devils players this season. Hischier became the only player in the National Hockey League to surpass both 900 and then 1,000 faceoff wins during regular season play; he finished with a total of 1,008 faceoff victories. Jack Hughes led New Jersey in assists (50) and points (77) over his 61 games played while Jesper Bratt also surpassed seventy points for the year.
Connor Brown reflected on potential changes ahead: “Some major growth needs to be done, and there are going to be a lot of changes here,” Brown said. “But I’m very optimistic that we got lots of pieces in here to turn this around a lot quicker than people think.”
As they look toward next season, team leaders will focus on building consistency after falling short amid strong competition within their conference.
