Confirmed with Link: Devils acquire Vitek Vanecek and 46th Overall pick from WSH for 37th Overall pick and 70th Overall pick

[NjDevsRR]

Hate Fitz but this is a good deal. Way better than giving 5x5 to Campbell or something which carries too much risk

How do you hate a GM two years in when he has made a bunch of good signings and trades?

Absolutely bizarre.

 

[Peter Sidorkiewicz]

Ruff has to be better next season in managing goalies.

There is no doubt he rides the 'hot' hand too much and overworks them.

Even when Daws was in net. Quite clearly he was better than Gilles who couldn't stop a beachball but Daws shouldn't be forced to start back to backs just because the backup sucks. You have to still give him a rest. Daws was doing a solid job for this team but got overworked by Ruff and his form then went to shit as a result. So Ruff basically created two out of form goalies because he overworked one and didn't get the backup a chance to play himself out of form. The situation was so bad that Fitzgerald had to go out and trade for Andrew Hammond of all people.

So I hope with the Vanecek-Blackwood pairing that both goalies get consistent weekly starts. They don't need to rotate every other game but if there is 4 games a week, then both goalies should see a game in that week. Even if one goalie has won 3 in a row, your backup should play at least once. And no goalie should be starting both games in a back to back, unless we are in the final month of the season and a playoff spot is on the line and its clear who the better performing goalie is.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Ruff has to be better next season in managing goalies.

There is no doubt he rides the 'hot' hand too much and overworks them.

Even when Daws was in net. Quite clearly he was better than Gilles who couldn't stop a beachball but Daws shouldn't be forced to start back to backs just because the backup sucks. You have to still give him a rest. Daws was doing a solid job for this team but got overworked by Ruff and his form then went to shit as a result. So Ruff basically created two out of form goalies because he overworked one and didn't get the backup a chance to play himself out of form. The situation was so bad that Fitzgerald had to go out and trade for Andrew Hammond of all people.

So I hope with the Vanecek-Blackwood pairing that both goalies get consistent weekly starts. They don't need to rotate every other game but if there is 4 games a week, then both goalies should see a game in that week. Even if one goalie has won 3 in a row, your backup should play at least once. And no goalie should be starting both games in a back to back, unless we are in the final month of the season and a playoff spot is on the line and its clear who the better performing goalie is.

* @Bleedred likes this post*

 

[LoktionovMVP]

How do you hate a GM two years in when he has made a bunch of good signings and trades?

Absolutely bizarre.

It's pretty easy

- Doubling down on Lindy Ruff, retaining Recchi/Nas all season
- Missing out on DeBrincat, Fiala
- Hammond trade
- Shakir pick
- Butcher trade

I'm sure he'll give us something else in a few days. I do give him credit for Dougie signing and Mercer, but the Ruff thing and missing out on the wingers is indicative of an unserious GM. If he can land JG and offload Zacha I'll sing his praises.

 

[Bleedred]

Blackwood was awful at shootouts. I've never seen a goalie bite so easily at fakes before, it was quite embarrassing honestly.

I’ve seen worse for sure, but yeah he’s no good.

His career shootout save percentage being 65% is probably just a little below average. Cory Schneider’s couldn’t have been too much, If any better though.

I thought the league average shooting percentage in the shootout was 33%. At one point it was, perhaps that’s changed in the last several years. If 33% is an average shooting percentage than I’d assume 67% is the average save percentage. Just because it’s just one goalie and one shooter one on one and there’s no such thing as an empty net shootout goal like there are in games.

One of the worst was Cam Ward for a long time. Ward’s shootout save percentage may have come up later in his career (nothing else did) but I remember it being dreadfully had at one point around 2012 or so.

 

[Bleedred]

Ruff has to be better next season in managing goalies.

There is no doubt he rides the 'hot' hand too much and overworks them.

Even when Daws was in net. Quite clearly he was better than Gilles who couldn't stop a beachball but Daws shouldn't be forced to start back to backs just because the backup sucks. You have to still give him a rest. Daws was doing a solid job for this team but got overworked by Ruff and his form then went to shit as a result. So Ruff basically created two out of form goalies because he overworked one and didn't get the backup a chance to play himself out of form. The situation was so bad that Fitzgerald had to go out and trade for Andrew Hammond of all people.

So I hope with the Vanecek-Blackwood pairing that both goalies get consistent weekly starts. They don't need to rotate every other game but if there is 4 games a week, then both goalies should see a game in that week. Even if one goalie has won 3 in a row, your backup should play at least once. And no goalie should be starting both games in a back to back, unless we are in the final month of the season and a playoff spot is on the line and its clear who the better performing goalie is.

1 out of 4 games minimum is a fine number. It’s probably gonna be more than that unless someone starts over 60 games.

I don’t think Daws playing so much overworked him and caused him to play poorly. I think he just wasn’t ready for the NHL.

I do think we overplayed him though and I thought it was bullshit.

May or may not have f***ed his future in the NHL up.

 

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

It's pretty easy

- Doubling down on Lindy Ruff, retaining Recchi/Nas all season
- Missing out on DeBrincat, Fiala
- Hammond trade
- Shakir pick
- Butcher trade

I'm sure he'll give us something else in a few days. I do give him credit for Dougie signing and Mercer, but the Ruff thing and missing out on the wingers is indicative of an unserious GM. If he can land JG and offload Zacha I'll sing his praises.

"Missing out on Debrincat, Fiala"

lol. Fiala was ONLY signing an extension in LA from all reports, and Debrincat hasnt even discussed an extension at all. I would not have moved #2 overall for Debrincat without an extension, and no reasonable person should have wanted that

"Butcher trade"

LOL who f***ing cares about Will Butcher? sheesh.

 

[NJDevs26]

Butcher had eight points with a -10 in 37 games this year...yeah we really missed out on that one

 

[NjDevsRR]

It's pretty easy

- Doubling down on Lindy Ruff, retaining Recchi/Nas all season
- Missing out on DeBrincat, Fiala
- Hammond trade
- Shakir pick
- Butcher trade

I'm sure he'll give us something else in a few days. I do give him credit for Dougie signing and Mercer, but the Ruff thing and missing out on the wingers is indicative of an unserious GM. If he can land JG and offload Zacha I'll sing his praises.

 

[Bleedred]

It's pretty easy

- Doubling down on Lindy Ruff, retaining Recchi/Nas all season
- Missing out on DeBrincat, Fiala
- Hammond trade
- Shakir pick
- Butcher trade

I'm sure he'll give us something else in a few days. I do give him credit for Dougie signing and Mercer, but the Ruff thing and missing out on the wingers is indicative of an unserious GM. If he can land JG and offload Zacha I'll sing his praises.

Hammond sucks, but it had to be done because Daws was playing every game.

In the end it was a bit of a useless trade because it seemed to be more about keeping Jon Gillies on the bench than keeping Daws off the ice/sending Daws back to the AHL.

Daws wasn’t sent back until like a week before Blackwood started dressing again.

I backed the trade at the time and it’s really not worth complaining over. All we lost was a good AHL player with no NHL future.

We really needed to get another goalie in there to stop playing Daws so much and to send Daws back, but really the acquisition seemed to be more about keeping Jon Gillies off the ice and not playing Daws EVERY game (but still most games) anymore.

 

[SKNJD9]

"Missing out on Debrincat, Fiala"

lol. Fiala was ONLY signing an extension in LA from all reports, and Debrincat hasnt even discussed an extension at all. I would not have moved #2 overall for Debrincat without an extension, and no reasonable person should have wanted that

"Butcher trade"

LOL who f***ing cares about Will Butcher? sheesh.

Must be the same guy who tried to preach to me on twitter about how cheap our owners are " forcing " a Butcher trade to save $

 

[NJDevs26]

Must be the same guy who tried to preach to me on twitter about how cheap our owners are " forcing " a Butcher trade to save $

It would be cheap to save money by trading away a good player. Saving $3.7 million of cap space on a back-pairing/healthy scratch defenseman is just logical from every standpoint imaginable.

I suppose next we'll hear this deal was about saving money since they didn't want to get involved in the bidding wars with Campbell and Kuemper. Well good luck with that, you'd have to overpay above two contending teams willing to overpay to get them to come here as opposed to going there for guys who aren't real difference-makers.

 

[LoktionovMVP]

Must be the same guy who tried to preach to me on twitter about how cheap our owners are " forcing " a Butcher trade to save $

lol I know who you're talking about - I'm not him but I agree with him. I don't give a damn about Butcher as a player but literally what was the point of that. It's more so an issue with the symbolism of the trade rather than the actual player involved. Like I said, if he can actually add a top 6 winger I'll be super pumped.

 

[Oneiro]

They traded Butcher because he's a human being who would like to continue his career when it wasn't happening in NJ.

 

[My3Sons]

That's exactly what I'm more worried about.

As I've asked a few times, it is possible the injuries are what kept him from struggling to stay above .890%? And not just to stay above .900%-.905%?

His AHL career was rather mediocre and with an AHL career like his, I don't think you're gonna find many goalies that had really long NHL careers that were actually successful.

Now, Vanecek had almost as bad of a year in the AHL in 17-18. The same year of Blackwood's horrible season in the AHL. And both played 32 games that year. Vanecek's AHL career was considerably better than Blackwood's, but he also stayed in the AHL for longer/more years than Blackwood got to.

I don’t have strong disagreemt with you about Blackwood but I will add two spots of nuance -

1- he only played parts of two season in the AHL. He did improve from .882 to .902. He was young and maybe needed more time to develop his game there. That’s on the organization and in retrospect he should have had a full third year in the AHL to play 55-60 games and really refine his technique and learn how to pace himself and Do the heavy lifting before they asked him to learn that on the fly in the NHL. He can thank Schneider for that lost opportunity.

2- he has a history of pretty good playoff runs in comparison which tells me that his issues are concentration related. When he can play in a short burst like a playoff he doesn’t have as much time to sit there and overthink it or get in his own head. He’s got the tools as we’ve seen but I’m not sure if anyone has ever really worked on his toolbox. Last season’s shenanigans suggests to me no one has. Maybe that’s the answer for him.

 

[LoktionovMVP]

They traded Butcher because he's a human being who would like to continue his career when it wasn't happening in NJ.

Why shed the pick?

 

[Oneiro]

Why shed the pick?

Because it's still a salary dump from NJ and BUF's perspective. BUF satisfies their curiosity to see if Butcher can provide offense, NJ clears cap (to help sign/add Graves, Hamilton, Tatar, Benier) and makes room for younger players on the left side.

And I don't think losing a 5th is a travesty. It's a sub-5% chance at becoming Will Butcher, let alone a meaningful NHLer.

 

[Devilsgrl35]

View attachment 567161

Next time we make the playoffs you're in charge of avatars.

 

[Triumph]

Because it's still a salary dump from NJ and BUF's perspective. BUF satisfies their curiosity to see if Butcher can provide offense, NJ clears cap (to help sign/add Graves, Hamilton, Tatar, Benier) and makes room for younger players on the left side.

And I don't think losing a 5th is a travesty. It's a sub-5% chance at becoming Will Butcher, let alone a meaningful NHLer.

The Sabres traded a 5th for Simmonds who ended up playing 7 games and then the season stopped back in 2020. It would not surprise me at all if that pick was repayment for that deal, I think this sort of thing is way more common among NHL GMs than people would want, but it's definitely there.

 

[LoktionovMVP]

The Sabres traded a 5th for Simmonds who ended up playing 7 games and then the season stopped back in 2020. It would not surprise me at all if that pick was repayment for that deal, I think this sort of thing is way more common among NHL GMs than people would want, but it's definitely there.

I like this explanation - that's a good point.

 

[Guttersniped]

"Missing out on Debrincat, Fiala"

lol. Fiala was ONLY signing an extension in LA from all reports, and Debrincat hasnt even discussed an extension at all. I would not have moved #2 overall for Debrincat without an extension, and no reasonable person should have wanted that

"Butcher trade"

LOL who f***ing cares about Will Butcher? sheesh.

You’ll hate it when Vsevolod Komarov is a total stud (drafted by Buffalo at #134 with our 5th) lol.

If losing that 5th bothers them I don’t know how they survived the reigns of the previous two GMs without severe PTSD.

“retaining Recchi/Nas all season” yes, there’s a lot of mid-season Assistant Coach firing in the NHL, that’s totally a thing.

 

[PKs Broken Stick]

It's pretty easy

- Doubling down on Lindy Ruff, retaining Recchi/Nas all season
- Missing out on DeBrincat, Fiala
- Hammond trade
- Shakir pick
- Butcher trade

I'm sure he'll give us something else in a few days. I do give him credit for Dougie signing and Mercer, but the Ruff thing and missing out on the wingers is indicative of an unserious GM. If he can land JG and offload Zacha I'll sing his praises.

So basically, you want a gm who makes big splashes. There's plenty of teams who do that. Prob better to go root for them. Did you hate Lou too?

I’ve seen worse for sure, but yeah he’s no good.

His career shootout save percentage being 65% is probably just a little below average. Cory Schneider’s couldn’t have been too much, If any better though.

I thought the league average shooting percentage in the shootout was 33%. At one point it was, perhaps that’s changed in the last several years. If 33% is an average shooting percentage than I’d assume 67% is the average save percentage. Just because it’s just one goalie and one shooter one on one and there’s no such thing as an empty net shootout goal like there are in games.

One of the worst was Cam Ward for a long time. Ward’s shootout save percentage may have come up later in his career (nothing else did) but I remember it being dreadfully had at one point around 2012 or so.

hm yea, I've probably seen worse goalies at just stopping the puck in the shootout but this guy went flopping at the first sign of a deke. Also the infamous million stick handling at slow motion players and he just stands there watching it, no pokecheck.

 

[mdj12784]

"Missing out on Debrincat, Fiala"

lol. Fiala was ONLY signing an extension in LA from all reports, and Debrincat hasnt even discussed an extension at all. I would not have moved #2 overall for Debrincat without an extension, and no reasonable person should have wanted that

"Butcher trade"

LOL who f***ing cares about Will Butcher? sheesh.

I bought in HARD on the Butcher train his rookie year. Cards/Jersey. I’m a sad panda.

 

[HenriquesJawLine]

If he thought we were in a rebuild, he probably could’ve just stayed put and not given up future assets. If I remember correctly, we weren’t in the worst spot to make the postseason.

What the assets given up became is irrelevant, since maybe with those picks we pick a valuable player ourselves, or the prospects become something. Also, the players we got in those trades really didn’t bring anything to us in the end.

In total, in about 1 year, for the Grabner, Maroon, Subban and Gusev trades, Shero gave up:

Y. Rykov
J.D. Dudek
J. Davies
S. Santini
4 2nd round picks
2 3rd round pick

Rebuilding GM’s don’t usually give up 4 2nd rounders and 4 prospects for rentals and aging players.

That's nothing lol, most of those picks were bonus picks too

 

[Guttersniped]

That's nothing lol, most of those picks were bonus picks too

None of those picks were “extra” in that list and Shero traded our own 2nd four years in a row.