Injuries Aren’t The Reason the Devils Are Worse This Year

Many Devils fans and writers, myself included, have talked about this season as a lost cause, at least in part, due to the near comical wave of injuries we experienced. After all, this was a thing for a little while, there.

But is that narrative accurate? How much of this season can reasonably be blamed on injury?

One way to look at this would be to see how the team has performed relative to their injury situation. NHL Injury Viz makes a viz for every team’s injury progression vs. their xGF%(adj.). The Devils’ is shown below:

The top half of the graph shows CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).