2013 New Jersey Devils (Team News, Player Discussion - Part X)

[MartyOwns]

I wouldn’t mind missing the playoffs. not for a better draft pick, that’s a bonus, but to force LL to look at the team he’s constructed and make some huge adjustments.

 

[Devils Dominion]

I wouldn’t mind missing the playoffs. not for a better draft pick, that’s a bonus, but to force LL to look at the team he’s constructed and make some huge adjustments.

It should not take missing the playoffs to make Lou see this team is mediocre.
He has to know it even if they sneak into the playoffs.

If he doesn't see that we need big improvements in a few areas, I'd like to see Jeff ask him to step down.

 

[Tundra]

It should not take missing the playoffs to make Lou see this team is mediocre.
He has to know it even if they sneak into the playoffs.

If he doesn't see that we need big improvements in a few areas, I'd like to see Jeff ask him to step down.

I agree. Eventually, this organization needs a fresh outlook. Not saying that he didn't do a phenomenal job but eventually it's time.

 

[Banana Sandwiches]

Hopefully we get some major personnel changes next year, specifically on the blue line. I want Merrill, Gelinas, and Urbom on the team next year.

 

[Richer's Ghost]

I ain't even mad. I think I've passed through denial, anger and acceptance and I am on to recovery.

For all the places to lay blame, I feel Pete is the least deserving. Pete's system will work like magic if Lou feeds him the right talent mix (and he gets a legit PP coach to help that). Until that means getting some young wheels with quick hands that can give and take a hit, it's not going to be pretty. We need more than just A SNIPER winger in Kovy, A heady PLAYMAKER in Elias, and nothing else thanks to the departure of your energy guy in Parise.

Remember the cup winning teams? They had two lines of firepower, a grinding line that could score and penalty kill and a 4th line that could at least hold water.

Right now we have 1 line of firepower spread out when not injured, a lot of filler and a 4th line playing 3rd and 4th line roles when not broken up.

Holes galore. No more band aids. Time for a liquidation sale, retool, draft deals, RFA deals, whatever it takes but they need to get legit firepower, legit speed, and legit size and grit. The goalie situation speaks for itself - time for Marty to groom a replacement. He's the man and still can put up good numbers on a normal season's schedule, but the transition plan needs to be engaged with a young backup that can potentially take on the starter load if needed.

The team that found themselves in the finals last year is long gone. Players have regressed to their natural abilities and stopped playing out of their minds. When you can't recreate the magic in a shortened season, that speaks volumes to me about what the core of this team - it was a bubble that surfaced at the perfect time but burst a few games too soon.

This season is the pig without the makeup and lipstick. It only took two injuries to knock this team to their knees. The other injuries just knocked the wind out of them, but missing Marty and Kovy for a few weeks each just killed them. The cup winning teams would have been able to scrape together a .500 record during that stretch with a strong backbone of skill imo. I don't care about names - everyone has their goats. I just want the duplication of mediocrity cut out like a tumor, an I.V. drip of skill brought in, and for crying out loud, some skilled size to run the punishing forecheck on the heavy teams like Boston.

I've never seen such a perfect storm scenario unfold in back to back seasons - first the wind was with us, now it's against us and the ship has taken on too much water. We need a bigger boat Lou.

 

[Tundra]

I wonder what the odds of Lou taking a team president role and letting Brian Burke run the day-to-day ops as GM??? At some point, Lou has to realize that this is far too much aggravation for him at this age. Burke has proven to build quality teams (see Vancouver & Anaheim) despite the drama that took place in Toronto.

 

[MartyOwns]

It should not take missing the playoffs to make Lou see this team is mediocre.
He has to know it even if they sneak into the playoffs.

it shouldn’t take Gomez for Lou to figure out to re-sign Parise during the season. yet, here we are.

 

[CerebralGenesis]

Hopefully we get some major personnel changes next year, specifically on the blue line. I want Merrill, Gelinas, and Urbom on the team next year.

If that happens we'll be forfeiting the #1 pick next year.

 

[BrodeursCups]

If that happens we'll be forfeiting the #1 pick next year.

Right? At the most we will see one of those three on the blueline..

 

[Devils Dominion]

it shouldn’t take Gomez for Lou to figure out to re-sign Parise during the season. yet, here we are.

Lou may have done everything in his power to lock Zach up long term two seasons ago.
If he did, then what can we say.

But if he really did not, it was an inexcusable failed policy of not negotiating during a season.

 

[The Devil In I]

Hopefully we get some major personnel changes next year, specifically on the blue line. I want Merrill, Gelinas, and Urbom on the team next year.

Sooo, I take it not being able to score isn't enough and you want to suck defensively as well?

(Not saying these players are bad prospects, but ****, a d corps made up of half rookies would be atrocious)

 

[BrodeursCups]

Lou may have done everything in his power to lock Zach up long term two seasons ago.
If he did, then what can we say.

But if he really did not, it was an inexcusable failed policy of not negotiating during a season.

I'm not going to comment either way because we will never know what discussions took place. Parise could've refused to sign long-term, Lou may have wanted the one year deal to see how he came back after the major injury, Parise couldve wanted the one year deal to wait for Suter to hit free agency. We just don't know, that's why it's uninformed to drag Lou through the mud for losing him.

 

[MartyOwns]

I'm not going to comment either way because we will never know what discussions took place. Parker could've refused to sign long-term, Lou may have wanted the one year deal to see how he came back after the major injury, Parise couldve wanted the one year deal to wait for Suter to hit free agency. We just don't know, that's why it's uninformed to drag Lou through the mud for losing him.

parker sucks

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

For all of you saying the Devils suck:

If you apply last year's shootout winning percentage to this year, we're 22-14-3, and the 5th seed.

And in that scenario I don't envision nearly as many of you complaining about all our "problems".

How are you still clinging to your sentiment about this team? It's been months since we've been on a decent win streak and I believe are on the longest losing streak in devils history. We suck.

 

[BrodeursCups]

parker sucks

Beaten to the edit. Haha

And yeah, parker sucks on the cycle and has a weak shot.

 

[Rhodes 81]

parker sucks

my name is parker

 

[tycobb]

If that's really your argument, then that's cool. But the majority of people are inventing reasons why we suck, rather than simply acknowledging that this team's actual performance is not very different from last year save for the shootout.

This year 5on5 Goals per 60 minutes = 1.8 (Last in the league)
Last year 5on5 Goals per 60 minutes = 2.2 (25th in the league)

This year 5on5 Goals allowed per 60 minutes = 2.2 (12th in the league)
Last year 5on5 Goals allowed per 60 minutes = 2.4 (12th in the league)

This year 5on5 Shots for per 60 minutes = 26.2 (27th in the league)
Last year 5on5 Shots for per 60 minutes = 26.2 (29th in the league)

This year 5on5 Shots allowed per 60 minutes = 23.4 (1st in the league)
Last year 5on5 Shots allowed per 60 minutes = 26.3 (2nd in the league)

Pretty similar but Goals for which can be explained by Parise and Sykora being replaced with crap.

 

[DEVILS ALL THE WAY*]

I'm not going to comment either way because we will never know what discussions took place. Parise could've refused to sign long-term, Lou may have wanted the one year deal to see how he came back after the major injury, Parise couldve wanted the one year deal to wait for Suter to hit free agency. We just don't know, that's why it's uninformed to drag Lou through the mud for losing him.

If Lou offered Parise a one year deal, making him a pending UFA in the same process, he should be fired on the spot for one of the biggest and dumbest mistakes a Gm could ever do to their team.

Let's be real here, Lou isn't stupid enough to do that AND allow him to be captain of our club at the same time. The fact that it took close to 3/4 of the summer to get that deal inked is enough for me to say that Lou wanted something long term and Parise didn't. Zach didn't want a long term deal and when all was said and done, that's exactly what he got, wich saw him bolt elsewhere the very next summer.

The way Lou has been doing things over the past couple of years is pretty alarming IMO. He managed to sign a bunch of players to mediocre contracts (Volch, Hank, Sal, Moose* and possibly Zajac), he's banking on certain prospects to produce and when he sees they aren't able to do the job he adds more scrubs via the waiver wire, our 8 d-men rotation is a absolute joke, we have no replacement for Marty so we have to rely on Moose to "save the day" when our pending HOF'er goes down with a injury and we're relying on Patty + Kovy to do everything offensively while there's nothing in our pipeline to say "We can tough it out one more year and then we'll have player x, y and z coming up to pick up the slack".

Add all of those things and you have what we're seeing today... a team with no real identity who's looking for answers more then anything else.

* The Moose contract is far from being brutal but to rely on another 40+ year old to come in a step up in case of a "emergency" isn't a solid plan at all. There's a couple of solid youngsters who are available and option should've been our #1 choice instead of resigning Hedberg. The price might be a little steep but when talking about adding a player at a position of great need, you deal with it and give up the assets in order to secure a up and coming netminder. I really doubt that the goalies we currently have in our system are solid enough to do just that in the next couple of years but that's just my opinion... and the fact that Moose got all the starts when Marty was injured speaks volume IMO.

 

[Volodya Krutov]

Hindsight is 20/20.



Salvador's contract is the only one that looked awful since day 1.

 

[DEVILS ALL THE WAY*]

Hindsight is 20/20.



Salvador's contract is the only one that looked awful since day 1.

Meh... maybe so but we got Volchenkov and Tallinder just because we lost Paul Martin and when you do that via free agency, you'll overpay 99.9% of the time. The fact that Lou was giving NTC's like candy hasn't helped our situation one bit either.

Like I said earlier, I wouldn't of resigned Moose to a 2 year deal and would've prefered for us to land someone like Bernier/Lindback/Bishop/Schneider/etc... a young netminder with some potential, to learn from the best that ever played the game.

Now, we'll be lucky if we can ever do that since both our goaltenders will probably retire at the same time.

 

[Volodya Krutov]

I hope Marty has a one more season left in him after next season. He's playing so well, too bad we're so awful.

 

[mcbain942*]

its over, lets do an islander and get picks, I think we have to win at least 8 games now to get in

 

[DEVILS ALL THE WAY*]

I hope Marty has a one more season left in him after next season. He's playing so well, too bad we're so awful.

Marty is still playing terrific hockey for us, we're just not helping him by scoring 1 or 2 goals per game. Brodeur isn't the issue here, it's the fact that we don't have a youngster backing him up, cause at his age and with the games he's played at the highest of levels for the past 2 decades now, it's only for him to wear down and get injured.

What isn't normal is that we have a backup who's just as old and isn't starting material.

 

[Volodya Krutov]

I really don't want to trade picks or prospect for a goaltender though. I'd largely prefert to sign a free agent.

 

[GameSeven]

It's really sad to see that this team has produced one truly solid week of results :

Also, as it's come to the fore because of this recent precipitous drop, the lingering issue of the Kovalchuk penalty is a big issue IMHO.

To have hold on to the Matteau pick most likely implies that the team brass thought, especially after the Finals run, that this team was poised to take a step and *at worst* the pick we'd give up would be a 20+ pick.

Now, with the possibility of this year's being a Top 10 pick and a tremendously uncertain next year, it is a needless distraction and worry. Should we be forced to keep this year's pick after this gong show of a season, imagine where we'll be in a year if we are, again, a bubble team or worse.

I'm not exceedingly thrilled by this year's FA crop, and there is a dearth of goal-scoring acumen in the system at present (fingers crossed for Boucher, though I do not want to rush the kid). The only hope is that we deal from our defensive corps and bring in a goal scorer or two, but I think we'd hoped that last year, too.

Another thing about the Matteau pick... While I like the kid more than I expected and hope he becomes a solid member of our club's future, I doubt any of us would miss the pick or wonder "what could have been" had we given it up. Instead, we've got to hope this downward trend can be righted so we are not faced with giving up an asset considerably more valuable.

Hell, perhaps not drafting Matteau would have opened up the possibility of being more aggressive in the FA market or for a trade for a top 6 forward. I know, it takes two to deal, but if keeping Matteau as an integral part of our top 6 was the *best* plan available, we're screwed.

For two years, we've been punting our issues. Zach was given a one year deal, then lost for nothing. We rushed Matteau to the pros to try to fill in for top-line duty rather than have any real contingency for Zach's departure. We've allowed our D-man heavy roster to linger on. To a lesser degree and perhaps hindsight, re-upping both older goalies for two years is still deferring that issue a bit. Don't get me wrong, Marty's a legend whom I never want to see retire but he is growing more oft injured, and Moose's play has been underwhelming so far. And they will most likely remain our tandem next year.