Andrew Gross | NorthJersey

Andrew Gross/NorthJersey.com

NEW YORK – There will be far fewer Devils in training camp come Wednesday night’s preseason finale at Washington.

It will be hard choices on Tuesday as the second round of camp cuts are made. The Devils will likely trim their 51-player roster down to a more manageable 30 or so but the competition for spots is noticeably more intense this year and the Devils’ practices and preseason games have shown better intensity and pace of play than almost all of last season’s disappointing performances.

Kathy Willens, AP

Which meant that Monday’s split of split-squad games – the A-lister Devils thrashed the Senators, 8-1 in the Kraft Hockeyville game on Prince Edward Island behind while a less experienced group lost to the veteran-laden Islanders, 3-0 at Barclays Center – were some players’ last chances to state their cases.

“I think it is hard to not think about it but it doesn’t do you any good thinking about it,” said forward Blake Speers, 20, who played against the Islanders on Monday night and played three NHL games last season after making the Devils’ opening game roster with a head-turning training camp. “You just go in and play your game and you can only control the things you can control.”

“It’s all part of the bigger picture,” said assistant coach Geoff Ward, who ran the bench at Brooklyn along with fellow assistant Alain Nasreddine with coach John Hynes at P.E.I. “The fact that they get one more opportunity to show it in tonight’s games is huge and we’re going to make sure we’re doing some real good evaluation.”

Veteran Drew Stafford scored twice against the Senators while Pavel Zacha and John Quenneville each had two power-play goals. No. 1 overall pick Nico Hischier had a goal – his third in three preseason games – and an assist.

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While the goalie tandem is set, barring injuries, with No. 1 Cory Schneider, who made 17 saves against the Senators, and backup Keith Kinkaid, who stopped 42 of 44 shots against the Islanders, there is tight competition among both the forwards and defensemen.

For instance, forwards such as Speers, Nick Lappin, 24, Joseph Blandisi, 23, and Blake Coleman, 25, all who saw action for the Devils last season, are in tight battles for playing time.

Frank Franklin II, AP

For Coleman, facing the Senators on Monday was “doubly important” after logging just 2:30 in Thursday’s 4-1 win at Montreal before being knocked out of the game when he blocked a puck with his chest.

“It makes this game doubly important, kind of a two for one for me,” Coleman said. “My goal at the end of the day is to give them hard decisions to make.”

The eye-opening play of Hischier, the addition of Stafford as a free agent and the push veteran right wing Jimmy Hayes has made to earn a contract off his training camp invite has only increased the number of forwards likely on the roster bubble.

“I’m sure everyone has that in the back of their mind a little bit,” Lappin said. “I try not to think about it. But I can definitely see why, especially for the young guys coming up, it might be a little difficult to deal with.”

Mel Evans, AP

Not just the younger guys, and not just the forwards.

The play of college free agent Will Butcher, the Hobey Baker Award winner, and Mirco Mueller, acquired from the Sharks – both 22 – along with returning veterans Andy Greene, Damon Severson, John Moore and Ben Lovejoy, means there might only be one or two spots open among the defense corps.

“It’s a deep crew,” said former Islander Brian Strait, 29, who played at the Barclays Center for the first time after spending almost all of last season with Manitoba (AHL). “It’s a battle. That’s our job, to make decisions tough on management.”

Many of those decisions come Tuesday.

BRIEFS: Center Michael McLeod, the 12th overall pick in the 2016 NHL Draft, was helped off the ice limping at 13:27 of the first period and did not return, with the Devils terming it a lower-body issue. McLeod was not touched on the play and may have gotten caught on some soft ice. …The NHL suspended the Rangers’ Andrew Desjardins two preseason games for his illegal check to the head of Miles Wood in the Devils 2-1 win on Saturday.