With the Flyers doing the rounds of the Metropolitan Division of late, they’ll be seeing (and have already seen) a lot of both the New Jersey Devils and the New York train-station...I mean Rangers. Both of these teams were heavily discussed in the run-up to the start of the season, pegged as “winning” the offseason. Safe to say that offseaon success hasn’t quite worked out for them, right?
A unifying factor for these franchises was an expectation placed upon their recent draft picks to make an impact immediately. For the 2019 #1 overall pick, Jack Hughes of the Devils, and #2 overall pick Kappo Kakko of the Rangers, their seasons have been okay by rookie standards, but they have certainly been outshone by others (Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar, and Dominik Kubalik to name a few).