When the Devils play their first game against an actual opponent this year, it will count in the standings.
An already abbreviated training camp doesn’t feature any preseason games. So for a team featuring a majority of players who haven’t competed in a game in nearly a year will be going into the season cold.
Fortunately, Devils head coach Lindy Ruff has some ideas to solve that dilemma.
“Boy, we’ve discussed that at length. We’ve put together schedules within the last week that changed on a daily basis,” Ruff said. “How can we build in a schedule of practices and games in this segment of time that can get us ready for game one against Boston?
“And I think our final answer was, almost all these players have been skating for months. Most of our players haven’t, with a few exceptions, played real hockey for 10 months. At the end, we decided that if we could play a few more games at camp — serious games, where we get basically NHL competition type of play — it would serve our team the best, that they get to play against each other.”
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So Ruff will integrate several scrimmages into the Devils’ plans over the next two weeks in lieu of preseason games. Ruff said one of those scrimmages will likely take place at night, allowing the players to start adjusting their body clocks for regular-season games that are typically played in the evening.
While the Devils don’t have a ton of formal time on the ice at training camp, the players tried to do as much as possible to gear up in the weeks leading up to the first official practice.
As players started reporting to New Jersey throughout December and went through the quarantine process necessary to enter the team facilities, they started holding informal skates to get ready for training camp and start learning their new teammates.
“We’ve been able to get in some scrimmages, some practices,” center Travis Zajac said. “I think everyone’s excited to just get back to normal, get the season going, get guys acquainted with the new coaching staff and with each other and trying to jell as quickly as possible.”
When the Devils face planted out of the gate in the 2019-20 season, losing their first five games, it set the tone for the rest of the season, and the team never recovered.
If the Devils want to have any semblance of success during the 2020-21 season, a slow start isn’t an option, given the condensed 56-game schedule against only the other seven teams in their newly-aligned division. So the onus is on the players to find as much traction as possible during training camp to be ready for the real thing.
“When you look at (last season), one of the words that came to mind was was how fragile we were,” forward Kyle Palmieri said. “I think as a group, we need to find a way — especially with the way this season’s made up, it’s going to be a lot of games, they’re going to come at you quick. And there are a lot of big games. It’s only inside of our division, so you have to find a way to, even if the game doesn’t go well, you’re going to get another shot at it another day or two later, and the way the schedule works, probably against the same team. So being fragile as a group isn’t something that we have an option for this year.”
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January 02, 2021 at 09:30PM
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How Devils are trying to adapt during short training camp with no games - NJ.com
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