Devils team discussion (news, notes and speculation) - 2023 offseason part II

[Guttersniped]

one of my last memories at the old arena was hearing Kleefence and "K-L-E-E KLEE KLEE KLEE" chants

 

[Bad Goalie]

Yes....

It was announced Fitzgerald signed late last week.
Yesterday they announced the 28-yr-old was "officially" signed to a 1-wy AHL contract. A positive is that with only 240 GP that apply to Vet status he is free. That means he is officially a Comet for 2023-24 and has no impact on the team's Veteran number. Here's hoping he can come in with a clean bill of health and work in this off season to bring his conditioning up to par. If he can bring his play up to the level he had with
Providence from 2017-2020. He was not re-signed by Boston/Providence.
He was given a 1-Yr AHL deal by the Lehigh Valley Phantoms for 2020-21. He had a good run in the few games before the plug got pulled due to COVID (21Pts./28GP).

The last 2 seasons (again with Lehigh Valley) he played 17 total games putting up 2 Pts. because of his injury. After basically missing 2 seasons he will have a hard road back. Let's hope he can do it. His .53 PPG AHL numbers would be even higher if you erase those last 17 games. He would be a welcome addition to n offensively starved team if he could claw his way back and record those numbers.

Yushiroh Hirano signed an AHL 2-way as did Eric Cooley.

Hirano is 27-yrs-old and this will be his 5th pro season in NA. His 1st seasons were with the ECHL Wheeling Nailers. He recorded 32G/60A/92Pts in 119 GP.
He split the last 2 seasons between ECHL Cincinnati and AHL Abbotsford.
Cincinnati - 20G/23A/43Pts 37GP. Even better than his 1st 2 seasons.
In the ECHL he is a .87 PPG player. That number is matched and surpassed by a whole slew of ECHL players who get calls to the AHL and produce very little.

What did he do in Abbotsford?
In 2 seasons he recorded 17Pts/49GP for a .35 PPG. That's not good, but not bad. 4th line #s. The Comets have guys who put up those kind of #s back on the roster. Luckily at 27 he hasn't pl;ayed enough games to be classified as a Veteran.

Cooley is 25 and beginning just his 2nd pro season after 4 seasons at NCAA Niagara and a 5th at NCAA Ohio State. He has played 7 AHL games with Chicago and had 1 assist. In 42 GP with the ECHL Norfolk Admirals.,he has 29 Pts. That is the kind of performance in the ECHL that gets a player a shot in The AHL.

Yushiroh and Eric are on 2-way AHL contracts. They have the kind of past records that usually sees them stashed in the AHL for future emergency call-ups. Yushi has abetter chance of impressing enough to stay with the club to begin with, but his days in town would be dependent upon his performance.

 

[JimEIV]

My last regular season game at the Meadowlands was Stevens jersey retirement..then I went to the first home playoff against the Flyers...last two games in the old barn.

 

[Peter Sidorkiewicz]

Kovy talk should be permitted on this board until his cap hit is off NJ's books.

 

[Beastdog75]

He also was coming off of a fairly decent season with Detroit.

Barch was a whatever Janssen like tough guy signing. I wasn't annoyed that much but Butler actively annoyed me. Lets also not forget Tom Kostopoulos with his single goal in 15 games.

And that Kostopoulos goal was on a penalty shot!

 

[Beastdog75]

Remember when Tyler Eckford was somehow a good D prospect?

And Brandon Burlon, with he and Jon Merrill being the beginnings of our "Michigan connection," but it's safe to say that connection has progressed mightily since then.

 

[Triumph]

Ah fond memories of the 2013-15 years. I remember being high on Loktionov. Turns out I was just high.

Will always go to bat for Loktionov, I don't know why he fell out of favor with the coaching staff in 2013-14 because he was getting good results and then he was just mysteriously scratched for a 7th D and then that was the beginning of the end. He was the guy who missed Kovalchuk most of all though, they were a good pairing at forward.

 

[TheUnseenHand]

And Brandon Burlon, with he and Jon Merrill being the beginnings of our "Michigan connection," but it's safe to say that connection has progressed mightily since then.

Merrill has managed to carve out a surprisingly decent career.

 

[MB3]

My last regular season game at the Meadowlands was Stevens jersey retirement..then I went to the first home playoff against the Flyers...last two games in the old barn.

Last two games in the old barn were games 2 and 5 against Ottawa in 2007. Devils should've won that series in 5 or 6 games, but Marty got thoroughly outplayed by Emery. Ugh.

The Devils faced the Flyers in Kovalchuk's deadline-acquisition year of 2010, losing in 5 games. I remember thinking that the Devils were clearly the better team in the first three games, but they got stomped on in games 4 and 5. Third year in a row they lost in the first round to open up the Prudential Center. Not fun times.

 

[Andre Palot]

Merrill has managed to carve out a surprisingly decent career.

I liked Merrill and his game. He's not in the same category as the Tyler Eckfords and Matt Correntes of the world. (Or Reese Scarlett or Brandon Burlon or or or)

 

[Andre Palot]

The Urbom Squad was fun for a while.

I vividly remember the fans on here and NJdevs jumping for joy when we got him back from Washington.

 

[Billdo]

Remember when Tyler Eckford was somehow a good D prospect?

Him and Olivier Magnan who actually played 18 games for us before having a decently long career in Austria.

 

[Billdo]

I liked Merrill and his game. He's not in the same category as the Tyler Eckfords and Matt Correntes of the world. (Or Reese Scarlett or Brandon Burlon or or or)

I'm genuinely surprised Scarlett never got a shot to at least have a cup of coffee in the NHL. His best year in the AHL we played guys like Mozick, Gragnani, Helgeson, and Warsofsky and our own grown guy couldn't get a call up? He had good numbers throughout his time with the organization. Burlon too to a lesser extent.

 

[Whaddagoal]

I don't think Clowe was a bad signing, though the argument was that we shouldn't have been signing Clowe and should have been blowing it up when Kovalchuk left and not signing guys like Clowe for 5 or 6 years, not trading a first for Cory, which after the fact, it seemed to be known that Lou knew Kovalchuk was already gone by the day of the Cory day at that draft, even though we didn't find out/it wasn't announced for another 3 weeks.

But I thought Clowe was an upgrade to Clarkson. We pretty much knew Clowe was gonna be an eventual LTIR throwaway the day that contract was signed, after already having multiple concussions before that. It was just a matter of when. I thought he played well for us when he actually did play.

Ryder was only a 2 year deal, so it was whatever, but he completely fell off in the second half of the 13-14 season (his first season here) and never recovered. He very quietly left the league/pro hockey without a whimper after the 14-15 season, with no retirement announcement and no rumors of any teams having any interest whatsoever lol.

For all the things you could criticize Lou for at the end, one thing he took unnecessary heat for was not getting anything back for Ryder and Havlat at the 2015 deadline lol. He didn't get anything back for them at the 2015 deadline because nobody wanted those two trash heap piles lol. Two 35-ish year old has-been's, one that was an overly-chronic injury case and the other was a sniper/goal scorer that stopped being able to snipe/score goals probably over a year before that. There was no demand for these guys. There may have been even less demand for them at the 2015 deadline than frickin Steve Bernier or Jordin Tootoo lol.

Gomez probably had value at that deadline, but I'm 100% positive that Lou had planned to re-sign Gomez to play here again the next year. Lou was publicly removed from power about 3 weeks after our season ended, and almost definitely removed privately/behind the scenes even earlier than that. Though not before he could re-sign Jordin Tootoo, which was announced maybe the day Shero took over, but later revealed to be a Lou signing.

And speaking of last minute Lou signings, Sergey Kalinin was one of his final finds, but that was apparently a Shero signing, but Shero credited Lou for this Trash---I mean treasure of a find.

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The beard gave him a menacing look lol

Ok.. first it was Brunner, then it was Clowe, now it is my man Kovy...

What year is it!!!

Missing that workhorse freak of nature...

 

[Andre Palot]

I'm genuinely surprised Scarlett never got a shot to at least have a cup of coffee in the NHL. His best year in the AHL we played guys like Mozick, Gragnani, Helgeson, and Warsofsky and our own grown guy couldn't get a call up? He had good numbers throughout his time with the organization. Burlon too to a lesser extent.

I knew I forgot names in the heaping trash pile.

 

[Homedresser]

I don't think Clowe was a bad signing, though the argument was that we shouldn't have been signing Clowe and should have been blowing it up when Kovalchuk left and not signing guys like Clowe for 5 or 6 years, not trading a first for Cory, which after the fact, it seemed to be known that Lou knew Kovalchuk was already gone by the day of the Cory day at that draft, even though we didn't find out/it wasn't announced for another 3 weeks.

But I thought Clowe was an upgrade to Clarkson. We pretty much knew Clowe was gonna be an eventual LTIR throwaway the day that contract was signed, after already having multiple concussions before that. It was just a matter of when. I thought he played well for us when he actually did play.

Ryder was only a 2 year deal, so it was whatever, but he completely fell off in the second half of the 13-14 season (his first season here) and never recovered. He very quietly left the league/pro hockey without a whimper after the 14-15 season, with no retirement announcement and no rumors of any teams having any interest whatsoever lol.

For all the things you could criticize Lou for at the end, one thing he took unnecessary heat for was not getting anything back for Ryder and Havlat at the 2015 deadline lol. He didn't get anything back for them at the 2015 deadline because nobody wanted those two trash heap piles lol. Two 35-ish year old has-been's, one that was an overly-chronic injury case and the other was a sniper/goal scorer that stopped being able to snipe/score goals probably over a year before that. There was no demand for these guys. There may have been even less demand for them at the 2015 deadline than frickin Steve Bernier or Jordin Tootoo lol.

Gomez probably had value at that deadline, but I'm 100% positive that Lou had planned to re-sign Gomez to play here again the next year. Lou was publicly removed from power about 3 weeks after our season ended, and almost definitely removed privately/behind the scenes even earlier than that. Though not before he could re-sign Jordin Tootoo, which was announced maybe the day Shero took over, but later revealed to be a Lou signing.

And speaking of last minute Lou signings, Sergey Kalinin was one of his final finds, but that was apparently a Shero signing, but Shero credited Lou for this Trash---I mean treasure of a find.

don't kid yourself. It was a brutal signing that reeked of desperation and a washed up GM. Clowe barely played the previous two seasons and had 3 goals over those seasons.

 

[Brodeur]

For all the things you could criticize Lou for at the end, one thing he took unnecessary heat for was not getting anything back for Ryder and Havlat at the 2015 deadline lol. He didn't get anything back for them at the 2015 deadline because nobody wanted those two trash heap piles lol. Two 35-ish year old has-been's, one that was an overly-chronic injury case and the other was a sniper/goal scorer that stopped being able to snipe/score goals probably over a year before that. There was no demand for these guys. There may have been even less demand for them at the 2015 deadline than frickin Steve Bernier or Jordin Tootoo lol.

I probably enjoyed Havlat's short time with the team if only because I imagined him and Elias being all sorts of weird.

 

[MadDevil]

I liked Merrill and his game. He's not in the same category as the Tyler Eckfords and Matt Correntes of the world. (Or Reese Scarlett or Brandon Burlon or or or)

Plus, just look at this glorious Joe Dirt look. Who else can pull this off?

 

[Bleedred]

don't kid yourself. It was a brutal signing that reeked of desperation and a washed up GM. Clowe barely played the previous two seasons and had 3 goals over those seasons.

It was 3 goals in 40 games played the year before. Not 3 goals in 2 seasons.

These are more than slight exaggerations.

Clowe played 40 games the season before in what was only a 48 game season shortened by the 2012 lockout.

Clowe played 76 games the season before that and scored 17 goals that season.

 

[Hockey Sports Fan]

it’s funny to go back and watch that one Urbom goal because it looks so plain relative to the skill we see from average defensemen these days.

But at the time, this had me convinced Urbom was gonna be a fixture for a long long time on the Devils blue line. And it’s interesting because his career numbers across all the leagues he played in made it clear there was very little offense to his game. But when you watch him in this clip, and the 4-5 times i saw him in the AHL, you can see he wanted the puck in his stick and was always looking to make plays.

 

[Bleedred]

it’s funny to go back and watch that one Urbom goal because it looks so plain relative to the skill we see from average defensemen these days.

But at the time, this had me convinced Urbom was gonna be a fixture for a long long time on the Devils blue line. And it’s interesting because his career numbers across all the leagues he played in made it clear there was very little offense to his game. But when you watch him in this clip, and the 4-5 times i saw him in the AHL, you can see he wanted the puck in his stick and was always looking to make plays.

I was at this game, as I visited Jersey for Christmas, which was only a few months after I moved here. I came up a few times that next season (and in the first round of the playoffs) when I still had some money leftover that I had stashed away for my house/move.

We blew a 3 goal lead (just like we did at a few games I was at that year, like the first regular season game against the Panthers, as well as the first home playoff game against them) that game, but salvaged it with a shootout win.

Chico's call on that goal is great. I haven't watched it just now, but I'm pretty sure he goes into it like he's thinking it's Urbom's first goal, before very quickly recovering and realizing it was his second NHL goal.

I wonder if that goal caused the Capitals to claim him on waivers two years later? In reality it was probably because Adam Oates was now the head coach for the Capitals and had him with the Devils.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Kovys neck beard was its own entity

 

[njdevils1982]

My last regular season game at the Meadowlands was Stevens jersey retirement..then I went to the first home playoff against the Flyers...last two games in the old barn.

do you mean your last games?

 

[MadDevil]

I still think Zidlicky's handlebar mustache he wore for like one or two games was the best playoff beard that year. I thought I had a pic of it saved somewhere but it must have been on my old dead laptop.

 

[Emperoreddy]

This is a strange place during an offseason when we don't suck