I was miserable enough those 3 weeks Esa Tikkanen was on the team.
Devils team discussion (news, notes and speculation) - 2022-23 season thread part III
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AfroThunder396
[citation needed]
Any other old timers remember that bogus Alex Semin for Brodeur trade rumor that was going on sometime around 2007?
So my man...I dont think Boeser is the answer either....He wouldve been a throw in for his recent struggles and distain for his team. Horvat is the main piece and Horvat is a finisher for a center. Hughes just needs to shoot more on the PP.
Im thinking how do we keep this team competitive long term. Boeser is signed to a relatively cheap contract for a number of years and only 25. Lets not forget...Has more career goals than Hischer and Bratt. Dude been consistent putting up at least 20+ on bad teams. I wouldnt totally write him off like you are.
Bratt is demanding more than Hughes and Hishcer. That is just whats going to happen. I really only looked at those two since they are the only names available. I really dont wanna be the Leafs that have these FWDs signed long term to big deals and cant even afford bottom 6 guys.
If I had my pick, Id be going after O'reilly and Senko for rentals. Real winners on the team with Palat. Teams PP is garbage since their isnt a shoot first mentality. We get our chances, but we are making that one extra pass.
If we can't sign Bratt by deadline, Id ship him out. Unless Hughes starts winning faceoffs, we need a true 2nd line center that would be willing to play wing. He would just be taking faceoffs. I like Haula A LOT...but not the answer long term.
Team has too many assets. Yes, you can never have enough depth. But, it doesnt mean we arent wasting value there. We still have holes that need to be identified..sometimes its not better to wait to answer them.
The Eklund special
- Dec 20, 2018
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This escalating rental talk will be the death of me.
Better Call Sal
Salnalysis
I don't even want to link to it, but the Athletic ranking the 99 greatest players other than 99 series just dropped Scott Stevens in at 49 and spent the entire article shitting on his legacy whether it was on-ice and how his hits wouldn't be legal today or off-ice.
Glad I read it outside of the paywall. Garbage stuff.
Glad I read it outside of the paywall. Garbage stuff.
AfroThunder396
[citation needed]
Trading Bratt would be suicidal for the team. He is our only legitimate winger on this roster, at least until Palat comes back.
- Dec 20, 2018
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“If we can't sign Bratt by deadline, Id ship him out.”
“we need a true 2nd line center”
“Team has too many assets.“
We aren’t trading Bratt at the deadline, he isn’t a UFA and Fitz isn’t burning the team down at the TDL.
And we aren’t trading for Ryan f***ing O’Reilly… to be our face off guy for Jack? And a winner? For Bratt? For the assets we get for Bratt?
Guadana
Registered User
Boeser isn`t the case. Just forget it. He lost all of his wheels. His two way impact is close to nothing. Our centers are playing better with players who can skate. He will make our top-6 weaker than it is now. Just forget it.
Horvat will be signed by Vancouver. and he isn`t really better player than Bratt. This team is working with Bratt and winning with Bratt. With Horvat - we don`t know. And Horvat is older.
You are trying to play in EA management. Let`s trade for players with better ranks, win a season or two and forget it. Next game incoming. It is not the way how it`s working. And Fitz will not prefer to make this trade, only if Bratt will not want here to stay.
PP fixing by expirience.
BostonDevil
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- Jun 28, 2019
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There’s a lot of area between mortgaging the future and picking up a rental for a playoff run.
Play out the scenario where Kane forces his way to NJ if he truly wants to be here.
Everyone so scared of trading away anyone. We have 97,000 prospects that ideally will not crack this lineup. Is someone like Walsh worth holding on to when there are legitimately 4 defensemen ahead of him on the prospect list and 4 guys on the big club who aren’t going anywhere?
This team has plenty of depth guys. What they don’t have is a legit finisher.
All the Boqvists in the world can’t do what Kane does.
Some of the reason you build up prospects is to use them in deals.
Guadana
Registered User
it`s ok. Stevens is not good for hockey anymore. Let`s cancel him together.
As if this had never happened to anyone or anything before.
Holy crap - I just read it. A complete hatchet job on Stevens. All about his hits, concussions in the NHL and some allegations from 1990 against him. Total trash.
Capt Nico Poo
Holik to HHOF
This was exactly why I opposed signing him unless we got him at discount. You dont get better through FAs.
That said, Johnny is a great player and wouldve ofc been a great asset for us, say at 8-8.5m/y or so. But even his current "low hit" contract with the Jackets is too steep.
Guadana
Registered User
Semin, now that's a blast from the past. I remember some utterly deranged people (not on here) arguing that Semin was really good defensively because he was a puck possession and Corsi god. Never mind that he floated like driftwood and was clearly lost in his own zone.
The argument would have made more sense if they said he was a net positive for his team, but no, the narrative they went with was "good defensively". Totally bonkers.
I never said trade Bratt for O'Reilly. Yall are just not reading what I am actually saying here. I said the RENTAL pieces I want are those two.
Its not be a GM mode here either...its figuring out things dollar wise. If Jan hits and you cant get a deal done with Bratt.... its time to look at other options. This would be the third bad negotiation with him.
We can keep Bratt, but if hes commanding 9.5 or 10 mil.....Ya need to ship him out. Whether thats now, or in the offseason Hughes and Hischer are the center pieces. Again, I dont wanna be the Leafs.
With that, its a big issue that we need a third line center to be bumped up to the second line just to take faceoffs. Yeah, Hughes is acting as center but he still isnt contributing to one of the more important parts of being a center. That not nothing to think about peeps. Imagine if you had someone with Haula FO % and that actually finishes. Not hating on the guy, and I really like his play.
Listen yall are getting bent out of shape LOL..In my original post, I said I will be happy if we did nothing too and how I enjoy this team. I was just throwing ideas because I still see gaps that can be filled and we have tons of options. Maybe we can agree on this......get rid of Sevo LOL
Zajacs Bowl Cut
Lets Go Baby
but what does this even mean? 3 years? 5 years? If we lock up Bratt and get someone like Meier (again just using him as an example), we have the core of our team locked up for the next 3-5 years minimum. Plus, it looks like the cap is going to be going up a few million year at least for the next few years.
I am not going to be worrying about paying guys who havent even played 1 NHL minute yet in Luke Hughes in 4 years or Simon Nemec in 4 years potentially. Having too many good players has never been a problem for any team in NHL history. If we have a shot to acquire 1 more legit young-ish winger, even if we have to pay them ~$8 million, I am all in on that.
f*** The Athletic and their paywall - this is complete garbage anyway, but if anyone wants to read the hit job on Stevens here you go (I'm still fuming after reading this):
Trash "Journalist" said:NHL99: Scott Stevens’ legacy gets grainier as game evolves past highlight-reel hits
Sean Fitz-Gerald
Dec 9, 2022
Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.
In the grainy, now-34-year-old video that people will sometimes send, Bob Bassen is a much younger man, still working as a lunchpail forward with the New York Islanders. He still struggles to define his relationship with what the video shows, even after all this time: “I don’t cringe when I watch it.”
He paused a beat, then chuckled: “Maybe I should.”
During a game on March 18, 1988, Bassen was engaged in a battle for the puck with a member of the Washington Capitals over a patch of open ice. As the puck skittered beyond the reach of both players, another figure closed in with his left arm down and his shoulder fixed into place like a battering ram.
“You can quote me. I don’t remember anything from the hit,” Bassen said. “Because I got knocked out, right? I mean, totally knocked out.
“You don’t remember much when you get hit that hard.”
Scott Stevens was only 23, but he was already deep into his sixth season as an NHL defenseman when he locked Bassen into his radar that night. Bassen was battling the other Capitals player and never saw Stevens coming, which meant Stevens could drive every available ounce of mass into Bassen’s skull.
And without hesitation, that is exactly what he did. Bassen fell to the ice, ending up on his side, curling into a fetal position.
“Do I want to watch it every day? No,” Bassen said. “Do I want to even watch it? Probably no. But I don’t know. I just watch it and go, ‘Man, that’s part of the game back then.’”
Stevens was good at so many parts of the game, but it is that physical part for which he is broadly best remembered. The LinkedIn page of his career is filled with massive, highlight-reel hits that sometimes only need a single surname to trigger immediate visual recall: Kariya. Lindros.
He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2007 and a decade later, the NHL listed him among its top 100 players of all time. Stevens is No. 49 on The Athletic’s list of the 100 greatest NHL players of the modern era, though the more modern the era, the grainier his legacy becomes.
The NHL has been dragged, ever so slowly, into a state of increased awareness about the long-term risk of repeated head trauma. Rules have changed, as have the teaching points in youth hockey, which have both helped the game evolve to a point where head-first contact is scolded more than celebrated.
“He was a fantastic athlete, no question,” said Dr. Charles Tator, a prominent Canadian neurosurgeon based in Toronto. “But he caused brain damage, in my view. And that’s not something to be proud of.”
During the 2000-01 season, Tampa Bay Lightning forward Brad Richards scored 21 goals and collected 41 assists to lead all NHL rookies in scoring.
Shane Willis was second. He had more points (44) than future NHL mainstays such as Marian Gaborik, Justin Williams and both Daniel and Henrik Sedin. Willis played for the Carolina Hurricanes, and at the end of that first regular season, he got to play in his first NHL playoff series.
It was against the New Jersey Devils.
The Devils were less than 20 seconds away from winning Game 2 when Willis broke up the ice. New Jersey was leading 2-0 in the game, and in less time than it would take to undo a skate lace, they would be up 2-0 in the series.
Stevens, as he had with Bassen a decade earlier, stalked his opponent. Unlike that earlier hit, Willis had enough time to catch a glimpse of Stevens on approach. It was still too late, and Willis crashed down to the ice as a pool of blood formed around his head.
Gary Roberts, a rugged forward with the Maple Leafs that spring, would later raise his concern around the hit with Toronto Star columnist Mary Ormsby, saying, “Stevens came a long way (across the ice) to hit him with 10 seconds left in the game, in my opinion.”
Willis never appeared in another NHL playoff game. That concussion was followed by more concussions, and he was out of the league within four years.
Stevens, who had driven Eric Lindros from the Eastern Conference finals a year earlier, would go on to alter the trajectory of Paul Kariya’s career with a similarly devastating hit in Game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Final against Anaheim. (Kariya offered a clear-eyed assessment in a later interview with Sportsnet: “I don’t remember anything live,” he told the network. “But when I saw the hit, it was a really late hit — it was a dirty hit, in my opinion.”)
As the pattern emerged, Stevens remained unrepentant. He would say that he hoped they got up, but he never apologized for putting them down in the first place. (In Washington, teammates nicknamed him “Bam-Bam.”)
“Hitting is part of the game,” he said after delivering his knockout blow on Lindros. “That’s the bottom line. I get hit and I’m going to give a hit. This is an important time. I have been playing physical the whole playoffs and I think everyone knows I’m not going to change.”
Scott Stevens never knocked Dave Poulin out of a game, but it was not for a lack of trying. There was a game one night in the old Patrick Division, and Poulin, then captain of the Flyers, said he scored two or three goals against the Capitals.
Before he made it to the final buzzer, Poulin was racing up the boards into the offensive zone when he saw Stevens approaching. He just slipped past the defenseman, describing how he felt the wind hit him as Stevens whistled past: “All I could think about was, ‘I would have been a part of the side boards had that connected.’”
Poulin did not blame Stevens for the attempt. None of the contemporaries contacted for this story hold any ill will toward the defenseman for the way he played — nor for the damage he inflicted — because they say it was just the reality of the sport in their era.
More than that, they say, the open-ice hitting was more difficult than it looked.
“You have to have footwork,” Poulin said. “You have to have timing. You have to be aware of where people are on the ice. All these different factors come into making a hit like this.”
Stevens shifted into an everyday NHL role out of junior hockey. The Capitals picked him fifth, in 1982, and he played 77 regular season games as a teenage rookie. He was physical and – as part of an array of skills that would eventually be overshadowed – he could also generate offense.
He scored 21 goals in his third season, and he finished his career with 908 points, which still stands as 12th-most in NHL history among defensemen. (Stevens appeared in 1,635 regular season games by the time he retired, which was a record among defensemen.)
It was in New Jersey where he became a figure of almost mythic proportions, serving as a backbone for three successful Stanley Cup runs. He is still viewed as perhaps the best defenseman to have never won a Norris Trophy. He was a runner-up twice, losing out to Ray Bourque in 1988 and 1994, and was a finalist in 2001 at 36 years old.
Among the nine voters who built the NHL99 list for The Athletic, Stevens was ranked as high as No. 32.
“Everybody knows when he’s on the ice,” Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur told reporters the day his long-time teammate retired, in 2005. “It makes it a lot tougher on an opponent to come in and just make plays when they have to notice where Scott Stevens is at all times.”
Bernie Nicholls spent parts of two seasons with Stevens in New Jersey toward the end of his career. He laughed when asked how some of those hits would be received today: “You’d get suspended for life.”
“Scotty practiced like he played the game,” Nicholls said. “Obviously, he wouldn’t hit us. He’d be physical in the corners, being strong. But he’s not going to lay people out like he would in a game.
“A couple times, guys would come across and Scotty would stand up there. He’d just move out of the way, and the guy would go, ‘Oh s—, this would have been trouble.’”
In retirement, Nicholls became one of the marquee names in a class-action lawsuit against the NHL for what players alleged was a failure to warn and protect them from concussions. (The case was settled for about $19 million in 2018, but the NHL did not acknowledge liability.)
And despite that, Nicholls does not find fault in how Stevens hit his opponents on the open ice.
“I’m still for hitting,” Nicholls said. “Our sport’s physical. It’s violent. Keep your head up. Scotty wasn’t dirty when he hit. You got your head down, you’d get hit.”
Bassen is a father of four and president of the Dallas Stars Alumni Association. He said he never considered Stevens to be a “dirty player.”
“You knew if you put yourself in a vulnerable position, there’s a chance that he’s coming with a clean hit — but a hard hit — to get you,” Bassen said. “I was always told by my dad to skate with the puck and have your head up. I made a mistake and it cost me.”
Willis, 45, settled in Raleigh, N.C., when his playing career ended. He has spent the last decade as the youth and amateur hockey coordinator for the Hurricanes, and is also part of the broadcast crew for coverage of the team’s games on Bally Sports South.
He scored 20 goals during his rookie season with Carolina. After Stevens sent him sprawling in the last, meaningless moments of a playoff game, Willis scored only another 11 goals in his NHL career.
The hit not only changed the trajectory of his career, but also his life.
And he does not blame Stevens.
“Was it high? No, because I saw him at the last second and was able to brace,” Willis said. “It was basically like running into a redwood tree at full speed.”
He never heard from Stevens after the game, but acknowledged that, 20 years ago, texting was still not part of the vocabulary. He said he does not have any long-term symptoms that he can trace back to any of the concussions he suffered as a player, including the one that actually makes him angry.
In a game that might not even have been on television, Willis said the late Bryan Marchment drove his elbow into the side of his head. “When I look at both of those, I have zero qualms about the hit Scott Stevens threw,” Willis said.
“I still think he is in the upper echelon of some of the best defensemen who ever played the game,” Willis said. “Even though he was throwing these big hits and guys are getting injured, I think you have to look at his career as a whole.”
Amid the parade of recognition for what Stevens accomplished on the ice, one chapter of his career was widely overlooked. That part of his story unfolded in an era before social media, when Stevens was still a 26-year-old with the Capitals.
In May 1990, police in Washington were called to investigate allegations by a 17-year-old girl of sexual assault involving four members of the Capitals. The incident allegedly unfolded in a limousine parked outside a local bar in Washington, where players had gathered for a postseason party.
Forwards Dino Ciccarelli and Geoff Courtnall were named in the investigation, along with defensemen Neil Sheehy and Stevens. D.C. police Lt. Reginald L. Smith told The Washington Post the investigators had “sufficient grounds to believe that a criminal offense did occur.”
At the end of June that year, a grand jury voted not to indict any of the players. (A spokesperson from the U.S. Attorney’s office told The Associated Press Stevens had been cleared, and did not face charges in front of the grand jury. In a statement provided through his attorney, Stevens told the Post “during the investigation the government told me that I was merely a witness, as were others.”)
“We deeply regret this situation,” the Capitals said in a release, “and we do not condone or excuse the conduct of the players involved and their failure to appreciate the responsibility they have to shoulder as role models for young people.”
“Even if the players are legally innocent, what they did was morally wrong,” sports columnist Tony Kornheiser wrote in The Post. “Wrong if they participated. Wrong if they watched and didn’t try to stop it. Wrong if they stood lookout and allowed it to happen. It was more than bad judgment.”
Stevens never played another game with the Capitals. He signed as a free agent with the St. Louis Blues that summer. Multiple attempts to reach Stevens to comment for this story were unsuccessful.
Dr. Charles Tator grew up playing hockey. He can still name the custodian at his elementary school who would flood the outdoor rink in midtown Toronto so students could play before the first bell. He has three children, and two of them played hockey.
At 86, he has also spent a lifetime studying the ravages of the game as it evolved. In the early 1980s, his practice worked with the parents of children who endured catastrophic spinal injuries in sports, including hockey. It took time, but hitting from behind was eventually rooted out as a cause by the medical community, and action was taken.
Today, the work is being done in bodychecking.
In 2009, the late defenseman Reggie Fleming became the first NHL player diagnosed to have been living with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a chronic brain-wasting disease linked with repeated head trauma. Many more diagnoses have followed, though the NHL has refused to concede any direct link with playing the game.
The NHL adjusted its rules around contact with the head in 2011, though commissioner Gary Bettman has spoken out against the idea of banning head contact entirely from the game.
In September, the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences published a study led by Tator, where the findings suggest bodychecking should be removed from minor hockey until players reach the age of 18.
“It’s still causing too many concussions,” said Tator. “Just like hitting from behind, where people weren’t really aware of the dire consequences, they really weren’t tuned into the consequences of bodychecking.”
Mike Duco is a minor hockey and skills development coach who has also worked as a referee in the AHL. He appeared in 18 regular-season NHL games as a rugged player, where he drew 65 penalty minutes, and he said the game is already evolving at the grassroots level.
“The open-ice hits, you’re not seeing too many of them anymore,” he said. “I think it’s more so because people are able to kind of maneuver through those areas a little bit better than they were in the past. But I also don’t know if people are necessarily looking for that anymore.”
There is still plenty of contact, he said, especially on the forecheck, but players are being taught how to make faster decisions at younger ages. There is not as much time and open space in the modern game, he said, and he constantly teaches his players to check their shoulders, keep their heads up, and make a play quickly.
“The onus isn’t just on the player to have his head up,” he said. “If there’s a player in a prone position, where it could be a dangerous play, the person who is going to be making that hit has to make a split-second decision: ‘Is this safe, or not?’”
Duco, who coaches teenagers, was asked how they might react to a Scott Stevens highlight reel.
“I think when the kids watch it, they don’t understand how it was allowed,” he said. “It definitely is far removed from the age group that I’m coaching.”
In 2017, Tator was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada. He remains in practice, and he is still an advocate for making the game safer. The idea of celebrating highlight-reel hits like the ones Stevens was known to deliver, he said, is “ridiculous, in my view.”
“I think he was doing what he was, let’s say, hired to do,” Tator said. “I think he was carrying out the wishes of those who were in charge of the game. And I think the people were misguided because I think they didn’t have a clear picture of the consequences.”
The picture is clearer today.
“Yes, he’s a great athlete,” Tator said. “Not too many people could knock somebody out with their shoulder. But it can’t be allowed. The brain is too important an organ.”
The thing that I don't get is that to me, those hits never defined his legacy, at least not as a Devil. Yes, he made them, a lot of them aren't legal today, but he was apart from those, an incredible defenseman, and those hits were comparatively rare. He wasn't making them in the regular season. My memory is of him catching Lindros, Adams, Domi, maybe Kaberle, Willis, Francis, Kariya from 97 on, that's got to be 100 games, it's just not something he managed to do a lot, nor was he trying every time like e.g. Vishnevski.
So yes, you can't talk about Scott Stevens without talking about the big hits, and you can't talk about the big hits without noting that they are thankfully gone from the game. But you can talk about so much more.
Zajacs Bowl Cut
Lets Go Baby
Let me be clear- I would not take Patrick Kane for free.
I don't understand why some people keep saying this regarding the Devils.
First off, all our top players make a few million less than all their top players, on average. Secondly, our guys are also a few years younger than all the Leafs top guys, at minimum. Lastly, the Leafs have failed because of terrible goaltending and a lack of depth in the playoffs. We don't have either of those things so far this year. The teams are not similar whatsoever in how they are constructed, IMO.
New Jersey Devils' Play-By-Play Man Enjoys His Rookie Ride
After calling 32 different sports since 2016, Bill Spaulding found his place with the New Jersey Devils. And he couldn't have arrived at a better time.
thehockeynews.com
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