Not to get all armchair psychologist about it, but I divorced myself from hope last year when we made a backup goalie look like Patrick Roy and were gutless pukes despite having made a run to the ECFs a year prior, and even in that run, once Tampa shook off the rust we weren't even competitive.
That team is largely unchanged, except older. That's a positive for the young players, but obviously Kreider and Mika are slowing down.
The only way I could cope with last year's catastrophic debacle was to convince myself that in the grand scheme of things, none of this matters. Like "if I lost my job tomorrow I wouldn't be thinking about NHL standings" kind of rhetoric. I think it was easier to be hopeful when the two biggest fans I knew, my dad and my uncle, were still alive. Now it's just me carrying the torch, perennially surrounded by Devils fans here in Central Jersey.