Casey Is Out Eight to Ten Weeks. The Devils Don't Have a Spare.

Seamus Casey suffered a lower-body injury that will keep him out eight to ten weeks, and the timing is about as bad as it gets for a team that just clinched a playoff spot with more questions than answers on the blue line. Casey is one of the better defensive prospects in the organization, and losing him before the postseason means New Jersey heads in with whatever depth it has — which, right now, is not much.

The established names up top are fine. Luke Hughes is logging over 23 minutes a night, and Simon Nemec has been one of the few Devils with a positive plus-minus this season. But beyond that pair, the back end gets thin quickly, and Casey was the kind of internal option that could absorb minutes if something went wrong. Something went wrong before the playoffs even started.

What makes this harder is the broader context the Devils are already carrying. The offense has gone quiet at the wrong time, the goaltending situation remains unsettled — Mehta's confidence in September notwithstanding — and the team has been winning close games at a rate that tends to correct itself. Adding a blue-line hole to that list does not change the playoff picture, but it narrows the margin further. The Devils were already a team that needed things to go right. Now they need one more thing to go right.

Lenni Hämeenaho was sent to the AHL to start the year, so that pipeline is not immediately available. Amadeus Lombardi is the name Mehta flagged heading into camp, but he plays forward. My read is that Sheldon Keefe and the staff will have to get creative with deployment early, and the first few weeks of the playoffs will tell us quickly whether the depth can hold.