The league's return still is far from certain, but there is a plan in place with an unofficial agreement with the players, so now it's a matter of things falling into place for these playoffs to take place.
Under these terms and the additional eight teams making the "Postseason", the New Jersey Devils still did not qualify, which places them in the draft lottery for the third time in the last four seasons.
The Devils will hope for a lucky draw as in their previous two lotteries, New Jersey won the whole damn thing (Paraphrasing Jake Taylor in Major League) allowing them to select Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes with those picks.
New Jersey will have a 7.5 percent chance of pulling the top pick in the draft and could have as many as three first-rounders or only their own first-rounder as the Devils await the results of the Arizona vs Nashville and the Vancouver vs Minnesota series to determine if the Devils will receive picks from Arizona ( from the Taylor Hall trade) and Tampa Bay ( the Vancouver pick was acquired through Tampa Bay in the Blake Coleman trade) in this draft or wait until the 2021 draft.
New Jersey's own pick could range from first to eighth, depending on how the lottery balls would bounce.
New Jersey would receive the Arizona selection unless the Coyotes would lose in the first round of the playoffs to Nashville and then make their way into the top three picks.
Should that occur, the Devils would have to wait until 2021 for that pick to arrive.
Arizona is the eleventh seed and the underdog to the sixth-ranked Predators, who finished with four more points in one fewer game played.
As for the pick added from Vancouver (Through Tampa Bay), if the Canucks win their series against the Minnesota Wild, New Jersey would add the Canucks 2020 first-rounder.
Should Minnesota pull the mild upset ( Vancouver is seeded seventh to Minnesota's tenth, but Vancouver finished with only one point more than the Wild ), the Devils will be receiving the 2021 top pick of the Lightning.
The perfect scenario for the Devils would be the Coyotes losing in the first round and not reaching the top three in the lottery, which would see the Devils pick as high as eighth (this would take Montreal and Chicago winning in the first round), ninth (Montreal OR Chicago winning in the first round), or tenth (should Montreal and Chicago both lose).
The wrench in the works could be one of the first-round losers winding their way into the top three lottery picks and dropping that pick by one spot.
As for the Vancouver pick, I'm rooting for the Canucks to win that series because even though that means that pick would be between sixteenth and twenty-third, I still think that will be a more desirable pick than Tampa's 2021 choice, which I would think would be near the bottom of the first round.
The Devils finish the disappointing and abbreviated season with 68 points, which placed them firmly in the basement of the Metropolitan Division and eleven points behind the closest team in the New York Rangers.
However, the team was playing well when the season was interrupted and had they won their final game in Pittsburgh against the Penguins, the Devils would have slid into the playoffs ahead of Montreal for the twelfth spot which would have paired them against Pittsburgh.
I may do a season recap for the Devils later, but in case I do not- Kyle Palmieri led the team in goals and points with 25 and 45, Nikita Gusev led the Devils in assists with 31 and of players that played more than 45 games and remained with the team, Kyle Palmieri finished with the best plus/minus at negative four and led in power-play points with eighteen.
Damon Severson led the defensemen in goals and assists with eight and twenty-three as well as power-play points with twelve.
Mackenzie Blackwood led the goaltenders across the board in his first season as the number one netminder with twenty-two wins, a save percentage of .915 and a goals allowed average of 2.77.
The Devils would win only six games that Blackwood did not start with Cory Schneider and the departed Louis Domingue splitting the half-dozen victories.
So, I do have an interest in those two first-round series, should the league manage to make its way back to play due to their effects on the Devils draft.
It was a disappointing season for New Jersey, one that I had hoped would have seen possibilities for a playoff berth.
Instead, it was a season filled with losses and one that seemed to only to tease with promise.
The late-season rush did give me some hope, but there is a longer path to walk than I had hoped to see and the Devils will need to address gaps before I get excited again.
Not sure whether the next post will be another Friends and Family, inbox cleaning, or boxing ratings, but I'll be back tonight!
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