When ownership becomes involved in hockey personnel decisions and its prime acquisition is presented as a social-media marketing vehicle, there is little time and little patience for slow starts.

This is the case in New Jersey, where the Josh Harris-David Blitzer combination at the top of the directory enthusiastically encouraged — how’s that for a euphemism? — general manager Ray Shero to pull off the deal for the Spirit of 76, who arrived with a boatload of charisma and as one half of a sports celebrity power couple with fiancée Lindsey Vonn.

There is PK Subban, there is first-overall draft selection Jack Hughes, and there is Taylor Hall, one of the league’s elite players who is a pending free agent and who certainly isn’t going to sign up for a program that doesn’t produce results.

Hall has been in the playoffs once since entering the NHL with the Oilers in 2010. The Devils have been to the playoffs once since 2012. Coach John Hynes has taken the team to the postseason once since taking over to start the 2015-16 season.

There is top-end talent coursing through the Devils’ veins, and that is why just a couple of weeks ago I projected them as a playoff team. It was a brilliant pick through 39:48 of the opener, when the Devils charged to a 4-0 lead against Winnipeg …

Before losing that game, 5-4 in a shootout … before losing three more times, once in the skills competition, to carry an 0-2-2 record into Boston on Saturday night. Four games is a foolishly small sample size off which to leap to conclusions, it might be better to wait a wee bit for Hughes to better acclimate himself to the league, and to give this some time to breathe.

But time is generally not measured through a scale of ownership when ownership becomes as invested — dual meaning — as this operation has become. It is difficult indeed to blast out a social marketing campaign focused primarily on one individual in a team game if the team is out of sight in the standings.

That is why it is important for Hynes, about whom everyone raves, to generate some early success here. Or at least ensure the Devils don’t fall into a hole out of which they’ll be digging all year. It’s too hard.

And again, the organization needs something to entice Hall — who very well could attract offers of $12.5 million per year if he hits the open market following a healthy season — to sign on. Subban may be the off-ice face of the franchise, Hughes may be the future stud, but Hall is the team’s best player and most important asset.

Shero was not a quick-fire GM throughout his eight-year tenure in Pittsburgh. He inherited Michel Therrien at the start of 2006-07 and stayed with him through midseason of 2008-09 before dismissing him and replacing him with Dan Bylsma. The Penguins won the Cup that year. Shero stayed with Bylsma until his own dismissal following the 2013-14 playoffs in which the Penguins lost the second round in seven games to the Rangers after holding a 3-1 series lead.

The GM is a loyal man. He first hired Hynes to be an assistant coach for the Penguins’ AHL team in 2009, elevated him to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton top job a couple of years later and then brought him to New Jersey in 2015.

But there is urgency here. The Devils have a complement of high-risk, high-reward players. But the individual at highest risk at this exceptionally early point of the season is Hynes.

So I was thinking about possible candidates to replace Hynes if and when the time should come and happened to flip on the NHL Network and there he was: Scott Stevens.

It wasn’t quite the Yankees-Kansas City A’s dynamic of the 1950s, but not sure what exactly was going on with the Rangers and Red Wings during the 1970-71 season.

For Emile Francis made four separate trades with Detroit in just over four months that year — the first three when Sid Abel was GM and the last after Ned Harkness had replaced the Hall of Fame center of the Production Line that had Ted Lindsay and Gordie Howe on the wings.

And if you combine three of the deals into one, it becomes one of the great trades in franchise history: the Blueshirts acquiring Pete Stemkowski, Dale Rolfe and

Bruce McGregor for Arnie Brown, a couple of months of Larry Brown (who came back), Mike Robitaille, Tom Miller and Jim Krulicki.

But you have to apply an asterisk because the fourth, well, in the fourth one, Emile sent Don Luce to the Wings for Steve Andrascik.

And look, the Rangers had Jean Ratelle-Walt Tkaczuk-Stemkowski down the middle and the point was winning the Cup rather than retaining pieces in the pipeline, but Luce (and Sheldon Kannegiesser) for Andrascik, Syl Apps Jr. for Glen Sather, and Curt Bennett for Ron Harris?

Woah.

Not suggesting cause and effect, and I’ve always advocated in this space for Ilya Kovalchuk and believe that the Devils would have beaten the Kings and won the 2012 Cup if No. 17 had been healthy in the finals, but, man, his NHL teams (Atlanta, New Jersey, Los Angeles) have a combined record of 410-428-116 (410 victories in 954 games) with him on their respective rosters.

It went better in Russia, though.

The Candy Canes have ridden the momentum from last year’s surge into this season — a deep, talented industrious team that is playing with a swagger and an edge in opening 5-0 with Friday’s victory over the Islanders.

The 1995-96 Devils began that way, capitalizing on the previous year’s Cup victory to catapult out of the gate at 5-0 and were clearly the NHL’s most superior team, before descending into dysfunction and missing the playoffs.

Finally, neither the NHL nor NHLPA objected to participating in the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi that provided a platform to glorify Putin’s Russia, so why would anyone think that political considerations would prevent the league from participating in the 2022 Games in Beijing if the money is right?

Kid Rock could sing the anthem at the medal ceremony.