It was this past September, training camp for the Devils, and before they could even get on the ice, they were buried under predictions picking them to finish last. First-year general manager Ray Shero walked in, shoulder-to-shoulder with first-year coach John Hynes. They didn’t hide the press clippings, but put them in the face of the players so they knew everything that was out there.

“Even to the prospects,” Shero said, recalling his message in a phone conversation with The Post this week, “if you think you’re the answer, The Hockey News has you rated 30th. So we’re all in this together basically. Where is it going take us? And at the end, people are going to write a story, and it’s already been written. But you have a chance to rewrite it.”

So how’s this for a revision: After Thursday night’s 6-3 drubbing of the Senators at Prudential Center — a game in which they were up 5-0 in the first period — the Devils were in the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. They’re 24-19-5, having played a conference-high 48 games, and have more points than the Penguins and Canadiens, just to name two powerhouses currently out of position.

Surprising?

“I don’t know,” said center Travis Zajac, a Devil since the organization drafted him with the 20th overall pick in 2004. “I think the coaching staff has done a good job since the first day of camp. Give them a lot of credit for getting us ready and not letting us get away with coming to the rink and not putting in the effort. I think that’s how it started. You’ve seen some of the results because of that.”

Hynes made his debut behind a NHL bench with the regular-season opener on Oct. 9, and didn’t win his first game until nine days later, when his team took a 2-1 overtime victory against the Rangers at the Garden. It was a slow start, but the results weren’t exactly the sole objective at the beginning.

“When you’re coming from a John Hynes standpoint, you’re going to have this group of guys that figure out in three of four days if you’re a coach or not,” Shero said. “They figured out in three or four days that this guy is a coach, and they saw it and they bought in right away. If it went the other way, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

The same could be said for Shero, whose career started not just from his famous father, Fred, but on the backs of successes as an assistant GM in the expansion cities of Ottawa and Nashville, followed by his eight-year run as the man in charge of the Penguins as they drafted Sidney Crosby and won a Stanley Cup in 2009. But he was abruptly fired in Pittsburgh after the 2014-15 season, and was driving around without a job when his phone rang.

“I saw that Lou Lamoriello was calling, and my first thought was, ‘Holy s—t, what did I do wrong?’” Shero said. “Then I’m like, ‘Wait a second, I don’t even have a job. I didn’t do anything wrong! So why is he calling me?’

“So I called him back and that was the start of discussions.”

Lamoriello had been the boss of the Devils since leaving Providence College and coming to New Jersey in 1987, ushering in three championships and arguably the most stable and productive era of any New York-area general manager in history. He handpicked his successor in Shero — and then two months later left to take a job with the Maple Leafs under team president Brendan Shanahan, once a skinny winger for the London Knights when Lamoriello drafted him with the second-overall pick in 1987.

“For 28 years, he was the caretaker for the franchise,” Shero said. “His whole life, pretty much, was, ‘What’s good for the Devils?’ At some point, maybe [he thought], ‘What’s best for Lou?’ That’s maybe one time in his life that he thought, ‘What’s better for me?’”

Most notably, Lamoriello sold Shero on the ownership group of Josh Harris and David Blitzer — theybought the team out of the debt-stained hands of Jeff Vanderbeek in 2013 — being people that he could trust and believe in. Even better, as Shero noted: “We have one of the greatest assets you can have in this league, and that’s cap space.”

Right now, that stands at about $8 million in space. This summer, the Devils have nine unrestricted free agents and five restricted. With willing owners, it’s a general manager’s dream. And they are not building from scratch, as Hynes already has begun to raise expectations with how the first half of this season has gone.

But back to that day in September, and the way Shero answered the question of: “What is a successful season?”

“What I said in September is the exact same thing I said yesterday: A successful year for us, our last game of the regular season, whether we’re skating off for the playoffs or we’re not in the playoffs, our fans appreciate the team — the work ethic — and they see a direction that we’re going,” Shero said. “Whatever that is.”

Seems that direction is pretty clear.

“It’s exciting,” Shero said. “It’s something to talk about.”

A violent decision

Hockey is a violent game, played by often-violent people. So what happened to Brian McGrattan on Wednesday in an AHL fight — the 34-year-old former NHL enforcer was knocked out cold by Daniel Maggio of the San Antonio Rampage — is inevitable somewhere. He was taken off on a stretcher, but was OK — so fine, in fact, “that doesn’t change anything for me,” he said.

McGrattan is a grown man, and once you get paid to play the game, you understand the risks. It can go wrong at the lower levels, when crazies like this referee and trainer got themselves a viral video.

It’s a fine line between what is allowed and what should be allowed, but there’s no question that fighting is only justified at the pro level — and even then, only marginally so.

Karmic retribution … in the cojones?

On Thursday night in Dallas, the Oilers’ Matt Hendricks was playing in his third game back after a three-game suspension, the result of a bad hit he administered to the Panthers’ Aaron Ekblad on Jan. 10. Late in the second period, Hendricks was cycling to the high slot on defense, and before he could get out of the way, Alex Goligoski let go a slap shot that hit Hendricks right where the sun don’t shine.

He hobbled off — he was OK, eventually — and posted this tweet of his mangled protective cup after the game.

Stay tuned …

… for the All-Star weekend, starting Thursday in Nashville. Listen, it’s silly, it’s nonsense, it doesn’t mean anything — but it’s still fun (or funny). Like it or not, John Scott is going to be there, playing 3-on-3, so that should at least be reason for levity. Though there’s lamentably no more drunken draft, hopefully there will be some nice insight into the personalities of the league’s marquee players. It’s worth at least checking out on a Sunday without NFL.

Parting shot

Just in case the Panthers weren’t likable enough, or superlative 19-year-old defenseman and rightful reigning Calder Trophy winner Aaron Ekblad wasn’t likable enough — now comes this video, done with the help of ESPN. I’m a sucker for deadpan humor … and seashells. Just watch.