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

[SteveCangialosi123]

So May 16th is Binghamton’s last game? Idk if they’re still rescheduling games or whatever

 

[Tao Jersey Jones]

So May 16th is Binghamton’s last game? Idk if they’re still rescheduling games or whatever

Yes.

Depends on Lehigh Valley. They stopped indefinitely but their team and staff got vaccinated today. Binghamton added two games with WBS. Lippolis said he wasn't sure if there was enough time left in the season to reschedule the missed games, but I think he may just be tired of living in a hotel.

 

[Triumph]

The sneaking reality is that Castron hasn’t hit home runs on any of his top picks outside of possibly Smith (and even there, I think Smith vs Miller could be a real debate).

Of all the issue plaguing the franchise at the moment, the lack of success at the top of the draft is what hurts most. Everyone likes to talk about Castron’s 5th and 6th rounders. Those would be awesome if they didn’t need to cover for his top of the draft.

McLeod, Bastian, Zetterlund, Boqvist, Walsh, Anderson, Gignac. Not a great run.

This is pretty insipid given that you've listed 1 1st round pick, 2 2nd rounders, and 3 3rd round picks.

Let's look at the 2016 draft, shall we?

The 2016 2nd round has produced 7 players who have played 100+ NHL games. In light of that, Bastian is a miss, but it's still early and he's earned an NHL role IMO - I don't think he would pass through waivers were he put on them. Some of these 100+ game players seem like pretty low upside players like Ryan Lindgren and Dylan Gambrell.

The 2016 3rd round has produced 1 player who has played 100+ NHL games - Adam Fox. Joey Anderson is 2nd in games played.

I shouldn't even bother with 2017, a draft where the results aren't even close to out yet, but just to note that collectively, the 3rd round in 2017 has played 70 NHL games, 25 of which are by Morgan Geekie, an overage pick. Boqvist might miss but he wasn't a whiff.

 

[TheDuke93]

What else can we evaluate on?

nico is clear. I just didn’t want to bring it up again. Three superstars in that draft. The Devils came out with a good but not great player.

We can wait and see on his 2019 and 2020 drafts, but this mirrors his performance in Columbus.

Who are the three superstars if Nico is a good not great player?

 

[AfroThunder396]

We have done Boqvist absolutely no favors with the constant yo-yoing of him in and out of the lineup. It was a huge mistake by Hynes last year to keep him on the team when we didn't have a spot for him to play.

Clearly guys like Kuokkanen and Sharangovich have leapfrogged him but that doesn't mean he's a bust. He's still only 22. I'd like to see him on a line with Nico before the end of this season.

 

[Blackjack]

The sneaking reality is that Castron hasn’t hit home runs on any of his top picks outside of possibly Smith (and even there, I think Smith vs Miller could be a real debate).

Of all the issue plaguing the franchise at the moment, the lack of success at the top of the draft is what hurts most. Everyone likes to talk about Castron’s 5th and 6th rounders. Those would be awesome if they didn’t need to cover for his top of the draft.

McLeod, Bastian, Zetterlund, Boqvist, Walsh, Anderson, Gignac. Not a great run.

We haven't had our own 2nd round pick since 2016 and 2017 (Bastian and Boqvist). Bastian seems good for a 41st pick. We missed DeBrincat by two picks. Yes, he missed Sam Girard, but so did the whole league. Nashville traded him for Kyle frickin Turris. You can criticize the Boqvist pick, fine, but it's not like a whole bunch of really good NHLers went after him.

Zetterlund (63rd), Anderson (73rd), Gignac (80th) and Walsh (81st), are hardly "top of the draft" players. You're really stretching to make your point there.

 

[ChicksDigTheTrap]

We have done Boqvist absolutely no favors with the constant yo-yoing of him in and out of the lineup. It was a huge mistake by Hynes last year to keep him on the team when we didn't have a spot for him to play.

Clearly guys like Kuokkanen and Sharangovich have leapfrogged him but that doesn't mean he's a bust. He's still only 22. I'd like to see him on a line with Nico before the end of this season.

Not to mention him playing W and C.

 

[ChicksDigTheTrap]

Not a huge fan of these types of things but the team has been solid 5v5. Haven't gotten any big saves. It seems like this team is always one step forward two steps back. A good possession team is now being sunk by bad goaltending. It used to be the reverse. Good goaltending being sunk by poor possession. The total lack of ANY finishers is nauseating though.

Thanks for those stats. Improve special teams and start finishing chances. If we get pre COVID Mack next year and our !B does not bail before the season things should dramatically improve next season.

 

[MauDevils]

It would be a terrible idea to move our 1st for a player like Boeser or Garland—but if there’s a deal to be made with NYI 1st as the centerpiece, that’s a trade you have to make.

It's a weak draft, would you really rather take someone who might have a top 4 ceiling over a proven 24 year old basically pacing at 30 goals a season?

It's pointless because Vancouver laughs hysterically at that trade anyway.

 

[billingtons ghost]

Lou was als

If Lou signed Nieds to a long term deal when he should have, in the 2004 off-season, then Nieds would have never become a UFA. The concept of locking up you best elite players before they become UFAs is pretty well understood. And he literally asked for a long term deal then.

And Lou was the one who had trouble seeing
players as humans in negotiations because he kept thinking he could nickel and dime them as RFAs, to the point of taking them to arbitration hearings, and then keep them when they hit UFAs by throwing money at them. After that proved to be unworkable with numerous players, including Holik and Niedermayer, he finally stopped doing that.

The negotiations after the lockout year in 2005 with Niedermayer don’t matter because it was too late at that point. Neids didn’t play hockey anywhere during the lockout so he had a year to meditate on what he wanted out of life while being away from the team. So he probably hit the UFA market pretty mentally prepared to move on. Lou’s failure was to let him get to that point mentally.

If was signed to a 5 year deal, it wouldn’t matter if Niedermayer had later asked for a trade to the West Coast or the contract proved to be too expensive for the team because Lou could have gotten plenty for him in a trade. It’s not “an ax to grind” to point out where Lou screwed up.

The weird part of this is Lou takes a lot of crap for Parise and I don’t think he made much of a mistake with him. The knee injury made giving him a long term deal early almost impossible, I actually doubt Zach would have signed one either way and we made to the Finals with him.

I don’t get why Parise is Lou’s fault when I don’t see how he could have signed him. Parise didn’t want to stay, he never voiced any desire for a specific long time deal while Lou simply was too cheap to pay market price for the 5 year deal Niedermayer directly asked for in 2004.

Lou was also too cheap to give Sean burke, kirk muller, john McLean, Bruce driver, rafalski, Scott Gomez, bobby holik, and many others what they wanted attbe time.

He made a judgement call with a 31 yr old Niedermayer and it looks bad in hindsight because Niedermayer chose to go to a team who 1. was extremely close to winning the cup, which we no longer were with Stevens leaving, 2 happened to have is brother, 3 was a short plane flight from his family, 4 gave him a new start in a big market to be The guy and get the press.

I can certainly add that last one on there, if your assertion is that Nieds left because he was so petty that being forced by a team first GM to go to arbitration because it was best for the team was such effrontery to his ego... Well...

Lou gets wrongly killed for making the right call on Parise. He gets plenty killed for Niedermayer and Rafalski, because those two turned out to be the last pieces of someone else's puzzle. He got plenty killed for handling out a long term deal to some guy you admire who just got traded to the Isles who was in a similar situation to Nieds before signing a 5.25 long term Aav contract. Lou won and lost with these deals, but remained in character. Maybe he learned from the Nieds thing and the result was Zajac?

 

[TheDuke93]

We have done Boqvist absolutely no favors with the constant yo-yoing of him in and out of the lineup. It was a huge mistake by Hynes last year to keep him on the team when we didn't have a spot for him to play.

Clearly guys like Kuokkanen and Sharangovich have leapfrogged him but that doesn't mean he's a bust. He's still only 22. I'd like to see him on a line with Nico before the end of this season.

He was forced to stay up was the thing, it was NHL or SHL so they chose NHL. I want Boqvist to stay in the 3c slot and playing with some more talent see how he does.

 

[TheDuke93]

It's a weak draft, would you really rather take someone who might have a top 4 ceiling over a proven 24 year old basically pacing at 30 goals a season?

It's pointless because Vancouver laughs hysterically at that trade anyway.

You can just as easily say would rather take a chance on young #1 defensemen. Or from what a lot of people are saying 4 potential young #1 defensemen.

 

[Bleedred]

We have done Boqvist absolutely no favors with the constant yo-yoing of him in and out of the lineup. It was a huge mistake by Hynes last year to keep him on the team when we didn't have a spot for him to play.

Clearly guys like Kuokkanen and Sharangovich have leapfrogged him but that doesn't mean he's a bust. He's still only 22. I'd like to see him on a line with Nico before the end of this season.

I don’t really have much hope for Boqvist being more than a 4th line C/shootout specialist, but I do agree completely that he shouldn’t have made the NHL last year or at the very least the cord should have been cut by about the 20 game mark and not the 30+ game mark.

I hope they don’t do the same with Thompson, who has been a complete waste playing 6-7 minutes a night.

 

[TheDuke93]

Lou was als


Lou was also too cheap to give Sean burke, kirk muller, john McLean, Bruce driver, rafalski, Scott Gomez, bobby holik, and many others what they wanted attbe time.

He made a judgement call with a 31 yr old Niedermayer and it looks bad in hindsight because Niedermayer chose to go to a team who 1. was extremely close to winning the cup, which we no longer were with Stevens leaving, 2 happened to have is brother, 3 was a short plane flight from his family, 4 gave him a new start in a big market to be The guy and get the press.

I can certainly add that last one on there, if your assertion is that Nieds left because he was so petty that being forced by a team first GM to go to arbitration because it was best for the team was such effrontery to his ego... Well...

Lou gets wrongly killed for making the right call on Parise. He gets plenty killed for Niedermayer and Rafalski, because those two turned out to be the last pieces of someone else's puzzle. He got plenty killed for handling out a long term deal to some guy you admire who just got traded to the Isles who was in a similar situation to Nieds before signing a 5.25 long term Aav contract. Lou won and lost with these deals, but remained in character. Maybe he learned from the Nieds thing and the result was Zajac?

I just don't think a GM should Nickle and dime every single player yet alone one of the best and most important in franchise history.

 

[Omar Little]

I don’t really have much hope for Boqvist being more than a 4th line C/shootout specialist, but I do agree completely that he shouldn’t have made the NHL last year or at the very least the cord should have been cut by about the 20 game mark and not the 30+ game mark.

I hope they don’t do the same with Thompson, who has been a complete waste playing 6-7 minutes a night.

Boqvist should be the #1c in Utica next year playing alongside Holtz and Street. Just let him spend the whole year down there and then see where he is

 

[NJDevs26]

Lou gets wrongly killed for making the right call on Parise. He gets plenty killed for Niedermayer and Rafalski, because those two turned out to be the last pieces of someone else's puzzle. He got plenty killed for handling out a long term deal to some guy you admire who just got traded to the Isles who was in a similar situation to Nieds before signing a 5.25 long term Aav contract. Lou won and lost with these deals, but remained in character. Maybe he learned from the Nieds thing and the result was Zajac?

I think it was more the Parise disaster that influenced the Zajac deal if anything.

I just don't think a GM should Nickle and dime every single player yet alone one of the best and most important in franchise history.

Context needs to be remembered here, pre-2005 CBA and cap guys were stuck with Lou’s hard line approach till either they were 31 or Lou deemed you expendable enough to exile to Western Canada.

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

Not a huge fan of these types of things but the team has been solid 5v5. Haven't gotten any big saves. It seems like this team is always one step forward two steps back. A good possession team is now being sunk by bad goaltending. It used to be the reverse. Good goaltending being sunk by poor possession. The total lack of ANY finishers is nauseating though.

Special teams being so bad has obviously been huge and cost several games, also the fact that so many of their shots are low danger perimeter shots + the team has below average finishers. All need to be addressed in the offseason somehow. Defensively....the defense seems to give up two golden opportunities at least every period at even strength, will another training camp with Ruff fix that or is it a talent issue? Are we really penciling in Siegenthaler as a top 4 guy as Fitz implied?

 

[TheDuke93]

I think it was more the Parise disaster that influenced the Zajac deal if anything.



Context needs to be remembered here, pre-2005 CBA and cap guys were stuck with Lou’s hard line approach till either they were 31 or Lou deemed you expendable enough to exile to Western Canada.

That is fair I still don't think you do that to one of your all time greats and a guy that you won 3 cups with.

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

Too cheap or had better options? That kid that replaced Sean Burke wasn't shabby. Tough to argue with three Cups and five finals.

Lou was als


Lou was also too cheap to give Sean burke, kirk muller, john McLean, Bruce driver, rafalski, Scott Gomez, bobby holik, and many others what they wanted attbe time.

He made a judgement call with a 31 yr old Niedermayer and it looks bad in hindsight because Niedermayer chose to go to a team who 1. was extremely close to winning the cup, which we no longer were with Stevens leaving, 2 happened to have is brother, 3 was a short plane flight from his family, 4 gave him a new start in a big market to be The guy and get the press.

I can certainly add that last one on there, if your assertion is that Nieds left because he was so petty that being forced by a team first GM to go to arbitration because it was best for the team was such effrontery to his ego... Well...

Lou gets wrongly killed for making the right call on Parise. He gets plenty killed for Niedermayer and Rafalski, because those two turned out to be the last pieces of someone else's puzzle. He got plenty killed for handling out a long term deal to some guy you admire who just got traded to the Isles who was in a similar situation to Nieds before signing a 5.25 long term Aav contract. Lou won and lost with these deals, but remained in character. Maybe he learned from the Nieds thing and the result was Zajac?

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

I can’t imagine many players in their age 19 seasons have had a higher CF% than Hughes (59.3%). Hockey reference used to let you search for criteria like that but it looks like you have to pay for that now.

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

See a lot of proposals for trades on here for scoring forwards but only with the Devils players who either aren't having good years or are unpopular.

Realistically, who would the Devils be willing to trade that would bring back a comparable return?

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

See a lot of proposals for trades on here for scoring forwards but only with the Devils players who either aren't having good years or are unpopular.

Realistically, who would the Devils be willing to trade that would bring back a comparable return?

Zacha seems like an ideal candidate to win a trade with. Decent counting stats this season, big, high draft pick.

 

[TheDuke93]

See a lot of proposals for trades on here for scoring forwards but only with the Devils players who either aren't having good years or are unpopular.

Realistically, who would the Devils be willing to trade that would bring back a comparable return?

Zacha is the only one I can think of, unless they are willing to move one of Mercer, Holtz or Foote and I think that would be moronic to do.

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

Boqvist should be the #1c in Utica next year playing alongside Holtz and Street. Just let him spend the whole year down there and then see where he is

Would rather see him as the two or three center in NJ between Sharangovich and Kuokkanen.

This assumes one of either Jack Hughes or Pavel Zacha playing on the wing.

Suddenly the Devils forward group would look capable of playing with anyone.

 

[Hisch13r]

I can’t imagine many players in their age 19 seasons have had a higher CF% than Hughes (59.3%). Hockey reference used to let you search for criteria like that but it looks like you have to pay for that now.

Matthews and Eichel had their 19 year old seasons their rookie year and Matthews had a 51.45% on a playoff Leafs team and Eichel had a 46.82% on an awful Sabres team. Looking at McDavid from his 19th birthday until his 20th he had a 53.83%. He obviously hasn't produced like them yet but he is heavily controlling the play on the ice