The New Jersey Devils ended their season on Apr. 15 with a 4-0 defeat against the Boston Bruins in Boston.
The result closed out a challenging year for the Devils, who finished with an overall record of 42 wins, 37 losses, and three overtime losses, collecting a total of 87 points. The team split its results evenly between home and away games.
Boston took control early in the game, scoring twice within the first seven minutes. Morgan Geekie found the net just 53 seconds after puck drop, followed by Mark Kastelic at the six-minute mark. Kastelic added another goal before Viktor Arvidsson scored late in the first period to give Boston a four-goal lead that held for the remainder of the contest.
Reflecting on the season’s outcome, Devils 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.”
Despite missing out on playoff contention, several individual achievements marked New Jersey’s campaign. Hischier reached his milestone of over one thousand faceoff wins during this final game—making him not only league leader but also surpassing all other National Hockey League players by more than one hundred victories at faceoff dots this season.
Jack Hughes led New Jersey in both assists (50) and points (77) across sixty-one games played; Jesper Bratt joined him as another seventy-plus point scorer for the team with seventy-one points overall. Five players scored twenty or more goals: Hischier (28), Hughes (27), Timo Meier (24), Bratt (22), and Dawson Mercer (20). Hischier also led his teammates in game-winning goals and power-play tallies.
Looking ahead after elimination from postseason contention, Connor Brown said: “Some major growth needs to be done, and there are going to be a lot of changes here. But I’m very optimistic that we got lots of pieces in here to turn this around a lot quicker than people think.”
