Devils 2021 team discussion (news, notes and speculation) - part XXIX

[Ryaduesu]

Would much rather use assets and trade for boeser instead of signing palmieri.

Would love to but I see no reason they move him

they have many other players they can move for cap space. Id take JT Miller for one

 

[Tao Jersey Jones]

i think the athletic dropped the ball on this then - they should've had a replacement doing coverage

Mirtle hates us.

No he doesn't.

 

[Richer's Ghost]

How can you not get even a little excited about these kids?

Lots of downers saying this is the worst we've been in decades but I don't feel that way. This legit feels like a foundational rebuild with kids truly growing into future roles with promise for once to me. Other years felt like kick the can down the road 2 more years with retreads and mediocre UFAs.

If we could just get special teams squared away I'd feel so much better.

Blackwood with the post-Covid play should be an abberation that resolves itself.

 

[TheDuke93]

Lots of downers saying this is the worst we've been in decades but I don't feel that way. This legit feels like a foundational rebuild with kids truly growing into future roles with promise for once to me. Other years felt like kick the can down the road 2 more years with retreads and mediocre UFAs.

If we could just get special teams squared away I'd feel so much better.

Blackwood with the post-Covid play should be an abberation that resolves itself.

This is the best I have felt since the 2010-2011 season after Lemaire took over into the 2011-12 playoff run. We can finally feel the team building coming together.

 

[Oneiro]

Last season there was zero pushback. This year, things have been ugly, but ugly in the way watching your baby nephew shit himself is ugly. He's trying and you have a suspicion that he'll figure things out.

Very curious to see the top 6 play against NYI and see if they've adjusted.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Lots of downers saying this is the worst we've been in decades but I don't feel that way. This legit feels like a foundational rebuild with kids truly growing into future roles with promise for once to me. Other years felt like kick the can down the road 2 more years with retreads and mediocre UFAs.

If we could just get special teams squared away I'd feel so much better.

Blackwood with the post-Covid play should be an abberation that resolves itself.

They play hard even when the games are meaningless, and clearly got talent.

Need some glue guys around the roster to tie it together.

A good backup that won't retire a day into camp would help Blackwood out a ton. He isn't Marty and shouldn't be asked to be pulling a Marty level workload.

Also the first time in forever we have a bunch of kids playing well together that should stay together for years.

Previous flashes with Hall or Palms playing well always had the question mark of would they fit the timeline.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Assuming we miss out on the big 3 on the blue line, I want Fitz to get aggressive on the trade market for a young top 4 D.

We have lots of promising forward talent and our own first will add another if all the D is gone.

Shop that Isles pick and whatever else to get a good RD to be apart of this core.

Holtz, Mercer, and our 1st would be high end potential. Foote and Clarke not far behind them. Yegor and Kuokkanen establishing themselves.

That's not bad. Get some blueline help for these kids.

 

[NJDevs26]

Zacha 12 points in his last 11 games

And Nico’s return coincides with that (eleven games) funny how that works out. Once and for all we’re finally giving Zacha extended run on the wing

 

[Ripshot 43]

Yea, they need to get away from reverting Zacha back to Center when there are injuries. It wasn’t making us win and it derailed a successful transition season for Zacha. Keep him on wing and let the young guys/prospects we have slot higher or get a chance.

 

[SJinNewJersey]

I think Dell and Wedgewood need some starts.

 

[Blackjack]

Yea, they need to get away from reverting Zacha back to Center when there are injuries. It wasn’t making us win and it derailed a successful transition season for Zacha. Keep him on wing and let the young guys/prospects we have slot higher or get a chance.

I don't know if I've ever seen a player so transformed by a position change. Zacha might be a better defenseman than center, he should never play there again.

 

[Saint Beaurivage]

did some more interesting # digging (5v5 situations for this season)

Rango is up there in terms of HDCF/60, and if you filter out people with <500min, he's good for 5th on the team (behind mcleod, hughes, wood, bratt). The great thing about rango is he's 2nd on the team in terms of shots/60 (5v5)

other interesting tidbits:

- wood is pretty f***ing good this season
- bastian is a very interesting case - smaller sample size but he create a lot of danger (prob bc he crowds thet net).
- bratt has a disgustingly low s%, but we all knew this (i think... )
- boqvist seems to create on 5v5 as well, but he hasn't had a lot of gameplay time. looking forward to see how he develops, but it'll be hard for him to crack top 6
- if we had nico for longer this season, i think we'd have a lot more points

On Sharangovich, you nailed it. He has raw power on his shot and needs a little fine tuning but is one real interesting player. Dare I say a young Mogilny in the making? This kid impresses me more than anyone. He is always open and bullying his way around the net. Just wait until he fills out. We have a beast here.

 

[Whaddagoal]

After what we are seeing with continued emergence of kuokkanen and sharangovich.... I dont think we need to think about bringing palms back. Sky's the limit for those guys in near future. Combined with Hughes point curse off his back finally all that awesome work he is doing is finally paying off and shara is cashing in.

Palms is barely getting icetime on nyi... 8 mins in last game. And overa produced about the same over there as here...... Which has been dismal.

Same with our center growth. Zajac is currently healthy scratched for multiple games. I think I agree now Fitz made the right moves strategically... Even if initial chaos was painful. I turned a page over now...

 

[Blackjack]

After what we are seeing with continued emergence of kuokkanen and sharangovich.... I dont think we need to think about bringing palms back. Sky's the limit for those guys in near future. Combined with Hughes point curse off his back finally all that awesome work he is doing is finally paying off and shara is cashing in.

Palms is barely getting icetime on nyi... 8 mins in last game. And overa produced about the same over there as here...... Which has been dismal.

Same with our center growth. Zajac is currently healthy scratched for multiple games. I think I agree now Fitz made the right moves strategically... Even if initial chaos was painful. I turned a page over now...

 

[Whaddagoal]

Our rearview mirror look.

I liked Palms for the bunch of years and of course sad to see our lifer Zajac out of org like that but it now makes a lot of sense. A huuuge reason why we couldnt get goals was this team trying to utilize palms all season long and little came from it. Now Hughes meshing with just about everyone else. We got our new sniper for real. No, not Wood. Govy! The best 17 since....kovy. Or govy has kovy shot reincarnated...

 

[CKPLAYA]

Lots of downers saying this is the worst we've been in decades but I don't feel that way. This legit feels like a foundational rebuild with kids truly growing into future roles with promise for once to me. Other years felt like kick the can down the road 2 more years with retreads and mediocre UFAs.

If we could just get special teams squared away I'd feel so much better.

Blackwood with the post-Covid play should be an abberation that resolves itself.

This is the worst in decades. Harkens back to the inglorious days of the early 80's and might be worse. Trust me I know. The one troubling difference is, back then they knew they were bad and needed to improve and were taking steps to improve, this time around it looks like they actually think they are better than they are and are just running in place.

 

[Blackjack]

This is the worst in decades. Harkens back to the inglorious days of the early 80's and might be worse. Trust me I know. The one troubling difference is, back then they knew they were bad and needed to improve and were taking steps to improve, this time around it looks like they actually think they are better than they are and are just running in place.

I mean, they got sub .900 goaltending for the year, and a pretty good 5v5 team was derailed by one of the worst penalty kills in modern NHL history. People can pretend that Covid didn't play a roll in our results, but every other team that got hit as bad as we were went into a tailspin and is either at the bottom of the league (Buffalo) or is headed there (Vancouver).

Their best players are teenagers and 22 year olds, and after the entry draft they'll have five first round picks that haven't played an NHL game yet. But of course none of this will be the least bit compelling to anyone that wants to throw a pity party and bellyache so...

 

[Ryaduesu]

Lots of downers saying this is the worst we've been in decades but I don't feel that way. This legit feels like a foundational rebuild with kids truly growing into future roles with promise for once to me. Other years felt like kick the can down the road 2 more years with retreads and mediocre UFAs.

If we could just get special teams squared away I'd feel so much better.

Blackwood with the post-Covid play should be an abberation that resolves itself.

Future or not its the worst theyve been in my personal life (post-1993), record-pace wise (worse than 2016-17 by 2-3 wins)

thankfully its a shortened season because thatd be real bad if they had to go another 30+ games with a roster that young against any teams still in the playoff hunt

in the same breathe this is the first time in my personal life they look like theyll be the Monstars in 2-3 years; growing up they already became the Monstars (was told by a few historians the 2000 Devils are one of the greatest teams ever, but definitely NOT on paper lol)

to sum it up; f*** the Rangers

 

[Triumph]

I mean, they got sub .900 goaltending for the year, and a pretty good 5v5 team was derailed by one of the worst penalty kills in modern NHL history. People can pretend that Covid didn't play a roll in our results, but every other team that got hit as bad as we were went into a tailspin and is either at the bottom of the league (Buffalo) or is headed there (Vancouver).

Their best players are teenagers and 22 year olds, and after the entry draft they'll have five first round picks that haven't played an NHL game yet. But of course none of this will be the least bit compelling to anyone that wants to throw a pity party and bellyache so...

It is no surprise that the people least hopeful about this rebuild tend to be people who remember the 80s Devils.

 

[HersheyBob27]

did some more interesting # digging (5v5 situations for this season)

Rango is up there in terms of HDCF/60, and if you filter out people with <500min, he's good for 5th on the team (behind mcleod, hughes, wood, bratt). The great thing about rango is he's 2nd on the team in terms of shots/60 (5v5)

other interesting tidbits:

- wood is pretty f***ing good this season
- bastian is a very interesting case - smaller sample size but he create a lot of danger (prob bc he crowds thet net).
- bratt has a disgustingly low s%, but we all knew this (i think... )
- boqvist seems to create on 5v5 as well, but he hasn't had a lot of gameplay time. looking forward to see how he develops, but it'll be hard for him to crack top 6
- if we had nico for longer this season, i think we'd have a lot more points

Thanks for your work on digging this stuff up. Paints an interesting picture for sure

 

[Triumph]

Future or not its the worst theyve been in my personal life (post-1993), record-pace wise (worse than 2016-17 by 2-3 wins)

thankfully its a shortened season because thatd be real bad if they had to go another 30+ games with a roster that young against any teams still in the playoff hunt

in the same breathe this is the first time in my personal life they look like theyll be the Monstars in 2-3 years; growing up they already became the Monstars (was told by a few historians the 2000 Devils are one of the greatest teams ever, but definitely NOT on paper lol)

to sum it up; f*** the Rangers

The 2000 Devils are one of the greatest teams ever on paper. They don't have a franchise center but they have Elias-Arnott-Sykora (just a reminder for everyone who loves to talk about peaks, Elias was 23/24, Arnott was 25, and Sykora was 23), Holik one of the greatest defensive centers ever for their 2nd line, they had a rookie phenom in Scott Gomez for the 3rd, and an extremely competent 4th line. They subtracted Lyle Odelein for Vladimir Malakhov, an upgrade. Stevens and Niedermayer, obviously, but Rafalski solidified the top pairing, Daneyko was still decent enough to play 2nd pairing, and Colin White wasn't totally out of his depth with Malakhov on the 3rd unit.

They outshot the opposition by 190 in the playoffs despite being 16-7. Detroit's 2008 team is up there at +280 in 22 games, but the 2000 Devils were just a steamroller.

 

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

This is the worst in decades. Harkens back to the inglorious days of the early 80's and might be worse. Trust me I know. The one troubling difference is, back then they knew they were bad and needed to improve and were taking steps to improve, this time around it looks like they actually think they are better than they are and are just running in place.

this is one of the more offbase posts I've seen on here in awhile and that is saying something....whew!

and given the fact that you remember the 80s Devils from 35 years ago, it totally makes sense.

 

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

Palms is a 15-20 goal, 40 point winger now playing top 6 minutes.

If you are comfortable paying $4m per season for that type of player. Then bring him back.

Personally I rather pay more and aim for a better player in free agency like Landeskog, Saad. And if we can't sign those players, then I rather stick with Sharangovich, Kuokkanen in the top 6 and give Holtz and Foote more opportunties than bring Palms back.

I don't see Landeskog getting to UFA and I don't really think Saad is better than Palms

like I said, I'd look to the trade market first...but yeah.

 

[Ryaduesu]

How about Alex Wennberg as a 3C? Scored 25 in 53 so far and is 6'2" 200 so nice size

Philip Danault is another good option

Edit: unless we see McLeod as a long-term 3C, though I dont think that should matter to be honest. And nix the Janmark idea unless we want a 3LW, his faceoffs are garbage I didnt realize

 

[TrufleShufle]

this is one of the more offbase posts I've seen on here in awhile and that is saying something....whew!

and given the fact that you remember the 80s Devils from 35 years ago, it totally makes sense.

LOL, it's cuz he's old amirite?