Devils move up in Lottery, choose second in draft

   After a season that seemed so bad that it was soul-sucking but still finished with only the fifth-worst record in the NHL as their 63 points were more than Montreal, Arizona, expansion Seattle, and Philadelphia, the New Jersey Devils were rumored to be floating rumors that the Devils could be persuaded to move their first-rounder in a move that would attempt to settle the worst goaltending situation in the league.

Instead, after yet another change to the process in how the NHL version of the lottery works, the Devils moved up from fifth to second in June's draft and will add another chance to draft an impact player.

Montreal with the league's worst record won the lottery and is expected to select Canadian center Shane Wright with the selection.

Entering the lottery, American center Logan Cooley was the slight choice for the second-rated player of the class with Slovakian winger Juraf Slafkovsky as the best wing in the draft but when you consider that the Devils already have two young centers locked down for the first two lines with long extensions that New Jersey and general manager Tom Fitzgerald could select Slafkovsky as a better fit on the organization's depth chart.

I'll have a bit more draft talk closer to the draft but to the few readers that wondered why I didn't cover the teams so much this year, besides my issues with time due to working so much, I wasn't able to watch as many full games but I tried to watch as many condensed games as I could and there were two other factors.

Rachel has gotten busier with her job and watching a terrible time has taken its toll on making the time from work to watch.

In addition for me personally, the absolutely awful goaltending situation just made some of these games hard to watch.

Normally, I can sit through bad teams and bad seasons, but there was something so putrid about watching a team with the heritage of goaltending and defense as the Devils have, struggle with such issues as this year's teams found it hard to watch.

I'm sure that I'll be watching more often in 2022-23.