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Devils discussion (news, notes and speculation) - part III

Not many people have given him credit for this but fitz has set us up EXCELLENTLY to take advantage of the rumoured cap skyrocket this offseason.

If it does go to 97 mill, we will be sitting PRETTY.

We don't have a ton of UFAs we need to bring back (great, because the prices on UFAs this year I expect to be sky high)

This is a baseline of what it would look like.

In: Arseni, Nemec, Daws,
Out: Tatar, Kovy, Allen, Dowling

We'd have 5+ mill to upgrade the dowling spot (3C) and or go after a goalie better than Daws.

It would also be the perfect time to sell hamilton if you want, with a ton of new money coming available to teams, and no other great RD options to spend it on.
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dgibb10 said:
From a brief look it looks a like a bit of an unlucky season for saad.

at 5v5: 7.1% on ice shooting %, 0.891 SV% behind him

Individually shooting 9.3% this year after shooting 16.5% for the half decade previous
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Most of his individual numbers look good relative to recent years, sog rate, icf rate, hdcf rate etc. The down stats that I can see are, as you mention shooting %, but also giveaways and a now miniscule hit rate.

His on ice numbers, especially defensively, are terrible. From corsi against to actual goals against. Right there as worst on the team amongst fwds.
 
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Devils731 said:
As a relatable, do you think Florida and Toronto fans are seriously concerned about making the playoffs? They’re in a similar spot as the Devils.
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They're not in a similar spot, they're in front of multiple teams by several points and would have to get passed by two of them to fall into the wild card mix, we only have to get passed by one. Plus their teams are better and they have more of a track record of recent success - at least in the regular season with Toronto. And their division competition isn't anywhere near as good as the Metro.
 
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NJDevs26 said:
They're not in a similar spot, they're in front of multiple teams by several points and would have to get passed by two of them to fall into the wild card mix, we only have to get passed by one. Plus their teams are better and they have more of a track record of recent success - at least in the regular season with Toronto. And their division isn't anywhere near as good as the Metro.
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The Devils have to be passed by 3 teams to drop out of the playoffs. Toronto has to be passed by 4. That’s not dissimilar, unless every 1 spot means you can’t relate.

The winning percentages of the 3 teams are all similar and the Devils have the best goal differential.

MoneyPuck has the Devils and Florida at about the same odds to make the playoffs and the Devils have better odds than Toronto. I think that’s reasonable based on goal differential.

So I do think they’re similar in terms of “worry about missing the playoffs”
 
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theoptimist said:
View attachment 969606

It's interesting to me, but why did PK not mutually terminate his contract? He stayed with us for the season and just retired afterward. We were doing worse in 2022, then the Blues are today. He's never won a cup, he played 77 games that season, and appeared healthy (unless I'm missing something). He couldn't force his way to a contender on league minimum like Saad? We were open to making hockey trades and we had the cap too. I remember Fitz saying he thought his phone wasn't working because people weren't calling him back.

Is Saad's contract really that atrocious? STL could have traded him this summer. How did we violate the spirit of the CBA and get fined but the NHL allows teams to get out of their big contracts let alone signing them to it? That contracts are 'mutually' terminated. What's stopping teams from diluting roles of guys they want out? It can be 'mutual' but I still don't believe a guy who won 2 cups is worth league minimum and Palat, 2 years ago, signed a $36M contract. Maybe he's going the Toffoli route (contender this year, developing team next year)....

There is no one to blame here, I'm just in disbelief that the Blues couldn't trade the guy. I learned today the Blues have been trying to trade Saad for some time. And nothing? There wasn't a single hockey trade, even with retention? It's just too on the nose for him to go to EDM.
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It’s not that complicated.

Saad is a one-way scoring winger that needs to play with top six players to produce and he’s stopped scoring. Maybe he can score more elsewhere, but if he’s cooked then he’s not remotely a 4.5m forward or even a 2.25m one.

Who knows what kind of potential trades didn’t happen.

You keep using Palat as an example and his contract was a ticking time bomb the day it was signed.

He’s not worth 6m now and I consider him basically untradable. I assume we’re stuck with him next season and will buy out his last season.

And what’s stopping teams from “getting out of their big contracts” with mutual contract terminations?

Players usually want their guaranteed money and will play in the AHL to get it. NHL teams can only bury up to 1.125m of a player’s cap hit in the AHL, and usually don’t like paying guys millions to not play, so they buy players out.

You mention Subban, but I don’t see him as a comparable since this only happened because Saad was unclaimed on waivers and didn’t want to play in the AHL.

A better example is Cory Schneider since we bought out his last two years. We can assume he wouldn’t have terminated his contract over that since he went on to play on the NYI’s AHL farm team for 3 years after the buyout.

We had the cap space to send Schneider down in 2020-21, so we could’ve avoided being stuck with 4 years of 2m in dead cap space by waiving him. The buyout saved us a few million however, that’s presumably the main reason we did it.
 
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Guttersniped said:
It’s not that complicated.

Saad is a one-way scoring winger that needs to play with top six players to produce and he’s stopped scoring. Maybe he can score more elsewhere, but if he’s cooked then he’s not remotely a 4.5m forward or even a 2.25m one.

Who knows what kind of potential trades didn’t happen.

You keep using Palat as an example and his contract was a ticking time bomb the day it was signed.

He’s not worth 6m now and I consider him basically untradable. I assume we’re stuck with him next season and will buy out his last season.

And what’s stopping teams from “getting out of their big contracts” with mutual contract terminations?

Players usually want their guaranteed money and will play in the AHL to get it. NHL teams can only bury up to 1.125m of a player’s cap hit in the AHL, and usually don’t like paying guys millions to not play, so they buy players out.

You mention Subban, but I don’t see him as a comparable since this only happened because Saad was unclaimed on waivers and didn’t want to play in the AHL.

A better example is Cory Schneider since we bought out his last two years. We can assume he wouldn’t have terminated his contract over that since he went on to play on the NYI’s AHL farm team for 3 years after the buyout.

We had the cap space to send Schneider down in 2020-21, so we could’ve avoided being stuck with 4 years of 2m in dead cap space by waiving him. The buyout saved us a few million however, that’s presumably the main reason we did it.
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Real question to me is why the mutual termination thing doesn't happen more often.

In Saad's case, it's not a huge issue. His contract is a backdiving deal - but not in a huge way. He really is risking about $5 million - $5.5 million.

But, I could see a player with little money left and a big cap hit agreeing to "mutually terminate" their contract and actually come out ahead. For instance, Hamilton's only going to make $5.25 in his last year. If he could get 3 (or 4) x $4 million at age 34, he'd come out ahead, and the Devils would get out of the last year of a $9 million cap hit. Is it worth the risk of injury, drop off in play, etc. for him to play out that last year? And it's obviously a huge win for the Devils if he doesn't.

Obviously, this is against "the spirit of the CBA". But, what's the difference between what just happened with Saad and what might happen with Dougie? Is it just that Dougie would need to go through regular waivers first?
 
tailfins said:
Real question to me is why the mutual termination thing doesn't happen more often.

In Saad's case, it's not a huge issue. His contract is a backdiving deal - but not in a huge way. He really is risking about $5 million - $5.5 million.

But, I could see a player with little money left and a big cap hit agreeing to "mutually terminate" their contract and actually come out ahead. For instance, Hamilton's only going to make $5.25 in his last year. If he could get 3 (or 4) x $4 million at age 34, he'd come out ahead, and the Devils would get out of the last year of a $9 million cap hit. Is it worth the risk of injury, drop off in play, etc. for him to play out that last year? And it's obviously a huge win for the Devils if he doesn't.

Obviously, this is against "the spirit of the CBA". But, what's the difference between what just happened with Saad and what might happen with Dougie? Is it just that Dougie would need to go through regular waivers first?
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The reason this doesn't happen is because players go on waivers first in order to terminate their contract, and if a team well below the salary cap wants Dougie, that plan is not going to work out well. It's also exceptionally rare that a player meets the criteria you're describing.
 
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As was pointed out earlier with Palat, a lot of guys with big money contracts also have NMC's. Guys on smaller deals usually can be traded or waived somewhere.
 
.Not sure how much of a needle mover Saad would even be. Would rather spend the assets to get someone like Frederic or O'Connor who are younger and may have bounce back potential in a different situation.
 
dgibb10 said:
Not many people have given him credit for this but fitz has set us up EXCELLENTLY to take advantage of the rumoured cap skyrocket this offseason.

If it does go to 97 mill, we will be sitting PRETTY.

We don't have a ton of UFAs we need to bring back (great, because the prices on UFAs this year I expect to be sky high)

This is a baseline of what it would look like.

In: Arseni, Nemec, Daws,
Out: Tatar, Kovy, Allen, Dowling

We'd have 5+ mill to upgrade the dowling spot (3C) and or go after a goalie better than Daws.

It would also be the perfect time to sell hamilton if you want, with a ton of new money coming available to teams, and no other great RD options to spend it on.
View attachment 969673
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Getting rid of Dougie and keeping Kovacevic for $4M or less would be ideal IMO. I don't know if we would be able to trade Dougie tho. Though the actual cash after the signing bonus would be under $5M a year so if there was a team that didn't expect to be a cap team and was part of his 10 team trade list, it could work out. Having $8-10M would give us room to make a big addition though not sure what would fit.
 
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Guttersniped said:
It’s not that complicated.

Saad is a one-way scoring winger that needs to play with top six players to produce and he’s stopped scoring. Maybe he can score more elsewhere, but if he’s cooked then he’s not remotely a 4.5m forward or even a 2.25m one.

Who knows what kind of potential trades didn’t happen.

You keep using Palat as an example and his contract was a ticking time bomb the day it was signed.

He’s not worth 6m now and I consider him basically untradable. I assume we’re stuck with him next season and will buy out his last season.

And what’s stopping teams from “getting out of their big contracts” with mutual contract terminations?

Players usually want their guaranteed money and will play in the AHL to get it. NHL teams can only bury up to 1.125m of a player’s cap hit in the AHL, and usually don’t like paying guys millions to not play, so they buy players out.

You mention Subban, but I don’t see him as a comparable since this only happened because Saad was unclaimed on waivers and didn’t want to play in the AHL.

A better example is Cory Schneider since we bought out his last two years. We can assume he wouldn’t have terminated his contract over that since he went on to play on the NYI’s AHL farm team for 3 years after the buyout.

We had the cap space to send Schneider down in 2020-21, so we could’ve avoided being stuck with 4 years of 2m in dead cap space by waiving him. The buyout saved us a few million however, that’s presumably the main reason we did it.
Click to expand...

Very helpful. Thank you.
 
RSeen said:
Getting rid of Dougie and keeping Kovacevic for $4M or less would be ideal IMO. I don't know if we would be able to trade Dougie tho. Though the actual cash after the signing bonus would be under $5M a year so if there was a team that didn't expect to be a cap team and was part of his 10 team trade list, it could work out. Having $8-10M would give us room to make a big addition though not sure what would fit.
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If the cap goes up to 97 million I see no reason we should have even the slightest bit of difficulty moving Hamilton if we so desire.

That would be each team getting an extra 9 mill in cap compared to this year (so off the bat, that's a dougie hamilton worth of space)

Dallas, Florida, stick out as key warm sunny contenders in need of a RHD.

Colorado (looked in on seth jones), Philly (have you seen their PP), Detroit, Carolina also come to mind (assuming burns retires, also their PP isn't quite clicking this year compared to years previous).

Other sneaky teams: Vancouver if they're clearing out a bunch of high priced space (certainly need a RHD), Boston and NYI (sub 14% PPs), Minnesota, WPG if they lose Pionk, MTL trying to take the next step,
 
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