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

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Casey Jones said:
How is that question supposed to help your argument? Timo has been extremely mid and he is paid a fortune. We would have been better off not drafting Shak and not trading for Timo. Plus zetterland was a good player too.

Fitz drafted too many D. He is not an elite drafter. There why this team has no forward depth.
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Ridiculous.

You guys would be screaming that we need a high volume shooting power forward.
 
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Hisch13r said:
They’ve played at a 70 pt pace since Christmas despite getting ELITE goaltending. WC2 right now is pacing for 90. We’d have to up out pace from Christmas back to .500 just to hit 90 and now we’re down our best player, another guy who is arguably the next most important player on the team, and our best offensive weapon on the backend. It’d be a semi miracle if they even still make the playoffs. They’re f***ing horrific.

This stretch since Christmas is the worst hockey the Devils have played since 19-20. Even 2021 and 21-22 was more respectable hockey even if the results were shit.
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The writing has been on the wall all of 2025.
 
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NJ07102 said:
Exactly that. That is precisely why I hated everything Fitz did at the deadline. There was not a single deal he made that imho was good and made a lot of sense. Not one. Everything was reactionary and lacked any kind of vision or plan.
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We have no idea what was being asked in a trade. We just lost Jack and Dougie for an extended period of time during the same game and as I said before, it would be an absolute dereliction of duty by any GM that didn't try to squeeze the heck out of Fitz.

The problem isn't the deadline deals themselves, it's not making a move before the deadline when it was apparent they were having scoring issues and then having to make crappy deals because you are trying to show the team you still believe in them while also trying to avoid getting raked over coals.

Anyone being honest with themselves knew this team had issues months ago. There were too many issues to fix.
 
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But he could have tried to bring in someone on Jack's wing and moved people down a bit, or even just went for a 3C to see if that helped. Regardless, this team has a lot of dead weight and it was being carried by a couple of players on a nightly basis.
 
Jersey Fresh said:
The writing has been on the wall all of 2025.
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I’ve literally never seen anything like this. For a whole month before Christmas they had a 63% xG which was like 5 pts better than 2nd in the league and that was a larger gap than liken2 and 11th or something like that. They were playing absurdly well. They still couldn’t finish for shit so record wise it wasn’t to the level it should’ve been but still they were a contender and especially if they shored up the forward group. Then Christmas hits and they immediately turn into one of the worst teams in the league. It’s not like the goaltending fell off or the shooting fell off. They just started playing god awful hockey. A switch flipped over Christmas and they went from legit contenders to legit basement material.
 
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Glass should be an upgrade over Haula.

It’s just a matter of if they’ll give him that kind of icetime and reduce Haula’s even more.

We are at the point where Haula is the worst every night forward on the team. Maybe it’s Lazar. It’s not really worth even debating who is worse. Dowling is a 34 year old who hardly played in the NHL prior to this year. MacDermid hasn’t played in a while.

I would say the only positive to this death march is that they haven’t tried to make MacDermid happen. Like Cam Janssen in 13-14 or Kurtis Gabriel in 18-19 junk time.
 
Also if they can't beat a Philly team with nothing to play for off a back to back, then I don't know what else to say here.

That would also be 3 losses in 4 games against them.
 
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Bleedred said:
Glass should be an upgrade over Haula.

It’s just a matter of if they’ll give him that kind of icetime and reduce Haula’s even more.

We are at the point where Haula is the worst every night forward on the team. Maybe it’s Lazar. It’s not really worth even debating who is worse. Dowling is a 34 year old who hardly played in the NHL prior to this year. MacDermid hasn’t played in a while.

I would say the only positive to this death march is that they haven’t tried to make MacDermid happen. Like Cam Janssen in 13-14 or Kurtis Gabriel in 18-19 junk time.
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Oh god. Never mind.

Looks like for all of his troubles, Glass gets to play with Haula on the wing. Haula won’t be the liability he has been, but they won’t be creating enough offense if I had to guess.

Actually, Sprong gets saddled with him too lol. That’s both of their penalties for being brought here.
 
Its Always Sundstrom said:
It’s not about the trades themselves, it’s how they appear optically. They have no plan or vision. No matter what we thought of picks like Traff and Graham (who’s out for the season) what does it say about TF trading them less than a year of drafting them after making a big deal about “getting bigger” and all the other crap, to then dispose of them in nothing trades?

He got pants by Verbeek, plain and simple. In no trade market, and you can argue about green banana picks and prospects all you want, does a 33yo Dman with no term merit a 2nd and a prospect, none. f*** retention, especially when he didn’t do dick with it.

It’s about the whole cycle of TF. The TDL was just a microcosm of his inane vision. How do you f*** up a team that set a franchise record for points and was a scoring machine and turn it into this?

Speed, gone, overall finish, gone, middle 9 and 4th line depth, gone. Better coach with better structure now, sure but even SK to me is a question mark with all the shutouts and lack of finish. He’s coaching what he has and he doesn’t have control over the roster building, so pass for him for now.

But the team apparently ate too much Christmas ham and never recovered. Injuries aside, what happened to team that set a record for shots against in multiple games? When the team was drowning at the end of January/early February, what was his plan? Accrue cap space? Bullshit. But wait, didn’t he say he hated deadline deals? Why couldn’t you try and add one 3rd line player then and see? Get Cody Glass back then? (Not looking at cap
implications back then, and frankly don’t care. Don’t f***ing @ me with crappy pedantic crap).

Beyond Lenni and Grits, who no way are guarantees to be good NHLers, there’s zero organizational forward depth. That’s five years of drafting! Three D top picks:

Holtz: I don’t know, drafted around where expected but scouting his skating and intangibles should have been a priority for team vision fit. To be clear, I wanted Rossi especially for the Asti Spumante memes.

Stillman: Enough with the COVID draft excuses, we could’ve all drafted better at that spot. That guy has a hard on for NHL lineage and went with that. Clear as day now. He was a reach anyway you cut it and we all knew it then when the pick was announced. We all shouting “Stankoven” “Zelleweger”. Heck I wanted Ham and Salami!

Luke: right call, that wasn’t a hard one to make but he did have a hard on when he did it.

Nemec: he got caught with his pants down when MTL took JS, plain and simple. Then overcorrected and drafted 27 RDs. Why hasn’t he traded any of those as throw aways? We were all shocked, I was unsure of Wright thanks to our local draft geeks, but no idea who I wanted at that point.

Silayev: good pick/potential “unicorn” DDM but realistically he’s not contributing as a fully developed player for another 4-5 years. A forward pick there could be contributing in 2-3. But knowing him he would’ve f*** that up too. I wanted Nygard, would’ve settled for Helenius or a trade down.

Looking at the overall picture, he has no plan, the trading of players you just drafted shows that. “Get bigger and get to the net for dirty goals” is not a plan. You can’t plug that in and hope for the best. The organization has no skill at all and the little that it has from his poor drafting, he gets rid of it. So what’s the message to the fan base? What’s the message to the team and where it’s going, building for a cup?

Are only hope is that one or two of Bratt, Nico, Timo, maybe Luke, and maybe Markstrom puts the team on their backs and go on a Original Kovy or Hall like run and muster something for us to cheer about.

Is TF a low IQ dunce? No. But is he a championship caliber GM/Prez, whatever his dumb title is? Not with loser talk like, “we tried”. f*** him. Lindy wasn’t it and now this guy isn’t it.

And stop f***ing trading with Pittsburgh or ex-Pens. You f***ing myopic jerk off!

No more effort from me to watch nor attend games.

Edit: and f*** everything having to do with McDoofus too. f***ing moronic 3 year deal. Idiot. You f***ing idiot.
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Go off king

1741454911962.gif
 
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Good

f*** Cotter

I’m glad Keefe (appears to be) scratching him. I’m sick of him. At least he’s still here for dirt cheap next year. I’d probably not qualify him if he was actually due a raise.

But honestly, I’d rather see Haula scratched over Cotter. Maybe that’ll be the next move.
 
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Bleedred said:
Good

f*** Cotter

I’m glad Keefe (appears to be) scratching him. I’m sick of him. At least he’s still here for dirt cheap next year. I’d probably not qualify him if he was actually due a raise.

But honestly, I’d rather see Haula scratched over Cotter. Maybe that’ll be the next move.
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At least Haula doesn’t have C duties
 
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Hisch13r said:
I’ve literally never seen anything like this. For a whole month before Christmas they had a 63% xG which was like 5 pts better than 2nd in the league and that was a larger gap than liken2 and 11th or something like that. They were playing absurdly well. They still couldn’t finish for shit so record wise it wasn’t to the level it should’ve been but still they were a contender and especially if they shored up the forward group. Then Christmas hits and they immediately turn into one of the worst teams in the league. It’s not like the goaltending fell off or the shooting fell off. They just started playing god awful hockey. A switch flipped over Christmas and they went from legit contenders to legit basement material.
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The shooting did fall off. But yeah, Luke turned from the best D in the league to one of the worst, and Haula turned into complete garbage when he returned from injury. Some other stuff happened but those are the two biggest things, imo.

Mgd31 said:
So they are going to go 4LD and 2RD which f***s up the pairings. Thanks a lot Nemec.

I can't believe Hamilton got hurt again.
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L-L is at least something that happens regularly.
 
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