Devils team discussion (news, notes and speculation) - offseason edition

[Stephen Gionta]

lol How the f*** can someones justification for giving up a 2OA pick and a PPG AHLer at 19/20 be “because we’re getting back a replacement level D making ~4 mil”. That is some mind numbingly bad logic



I don’t buy Zacha as a Ray pick either. That was still a Conte ran draft

If you think Connor Murphy is a replacement level D idk what to tell you.

 

[RangerDoggo]

Ryan apparently knows we've wanted a dedicated reporter for a while, and he's answering the call with gusto.

 

[Bleedred]

Matteau has 6G 5A in 92 games. His best run production wise is actually his 9 games in 2019-20 with Columbus, he scored 2G 1A then.

His second best is 2012-13, with 1G 2A in 17 games. He scored all three points in 2012-13 while playing with Kovy.

In 2012-13 the team started with Zajac & Elias at center, Kovy & Clarkson at RW, then had tryouts for the void at LW. That was Zubrus and ?

They tried Tedenby for 10 seconds (ok, maybe 2-3 games), then Matteau got a longer look, at least a half dozen games.

After Zubrus got hurt after 9 games and the lack of top six wingers was really noticeable. (And Zubrus was 34, I’m being nice by calling him a top 6 forward.)

Deboer’s solution ended up being moving Henrique to 2C and Elias to wing while shuffling around those losers. (Ryan Carter saw time in the top 6. And Ponikarovsky. Loktionov was a thing. A 38 year old Steve Sullivan. Matt D’Agastino for some reason. We weren’t proud.)

I meant Matteau's most points as a Devil came during that stint in 12-13. I thought he had 2 goals in that stint, but I guess it was just one? I remember he had one goal in late season call up in 14-15. He and Boucher had a goal in the same game I think? We wound up winning it in the shootout 3-2 and I think they had the two Devils goals in-game? Maybe I'm thinking of two different games around the same time though?

And then Matteau had the one goal (Which I think was his only point) in 15-16, which was a PATHETICALLY SOFT GOAL on Michael Neuvirth of the Flyers. I remember laughing about it ALL YEAR. It was probably one of the lousiest goals we scored all season. A very slow and soft wrister (I don't think it was a backhander?) from a bad angle through Neuvirth's pads. The DSP trade for Matteau was worth it just so we could forget that this pick was ever a thing and that it ever even happened. Even though DSP returned to being a pumpkin again the next season and we wound up buying out the second year of his deal.

I'm pretty sure we started out the 12-13 season with CBGB (who were a GREAT 4th line) as the 3rd line, which was really just dumb. I remember questioning whether Lou and Pete thought they were so good in the 2012 playoffs that maybe they're really 3rd line caliber players and not 4th line caliber players? I don't even remember if they ever did return to being the 4th line that season, but I know they did the next season. At least when Bernier wasn't getting stints with Elias in the top 6.

But I don't think they were ever the 3rd line again as a trio after that lockout shortened 12-13 season.

We were too busy needing to play GOON Krys Barch on the 4th line (who we signed to a 2 year deal right after buying out Eric Boulton's second year a week before that, on top of having to buy out Andrew Peters second year just a couple of years before that. Somehow Lou was able to get Dale Tallon to trade back for Barch in training camp of 2013, despite passing on re-signing Barch before we signed him. That was the team he last played for before we got him) and getting Tom Kostopolous on waivers I think? I was at the game where he scored a penalty shot goal in Tampa that year. Probably his only point as a Devil, but definitely his only goal as a Devil.

 

[Cheddabombs]

Ryan's done more in the past month than our old Athletic dedicated writer (Corey?) who left for San Jose.

I don't have an athletic subscription, but it feels like a lot of what gets done there is either big reporting pieces that take some time to do all the digging and writing, or deep dives on a team's analytics on certain segments.

But things like what Ryan's doing, just to little nitty gritty reporting on a day-to-day fell to the wayside. Really excited to have him around

 

[Guadana]

Castron did a better job in non first round picks than Conte in his last 15 years. How we can even compare them. One literally destroyed our franchise, another one build it again. Even with high picks(every team makes mistakes, even mister Yzerman) we wouldnt have enough material, but he drafted Sharangovich, Bratt, Maltsev bring us second pair level defenseman, and there are a lot of good to even great material like Gritsyuk and Okhotyuk as best examples, Boqvist at least is looking better than most first rounders from previous years, even fourth liner Bastian too, and Zetterlund, Moynihan, Thompson, Daws, etc as good examples. Even if non of them will never play 100 NHL games, Castron made obvious better job in shorter time period.

I even could not blame Lou for picks, I blame him for trusting for Conte after so many years of svcking on the drafts. Years after years.

 

[Devs3cups]

Great season for our captain, who's only still 23.

 

[Setec Astronomy]

Without knowing any details as to how they are organized now, it does make you wonder if during the years prior to Haris/Blitzer buying the team they really cut corners in the scouting department due to all the rumor of money issues Vanderbeek was having.

For a guy that came across as detesting mediocrity, Lou certainly put up with from Conte an co. for a long, long time.

What I've heard, you can take it with a grain of salt, is that there was a specific person in the scouting staff that left at some point during the Conte decline, who was supposedly the brains behind the whole thing.

Whatever the case, I doubt it had anything to do with any type of budget cuts. Arguably, investing a lot of money in the scouting staff can help you find diamonds in the rough. And believe it or not, the Devils did manage to draft a few of them during that time in Miles Wood, Kerfoot, Henrique, and Blake Coleman. And you do hear rumors anyway that they were hoping Vasilevsky would have been available in 2012 when they kept the pick and that they were hoping for Aho in the second round. But overall, they didn't really make any picks that were outside of the consensus post-lock out. Drafting is more luck than people want to admit.

 

[OmNomNom]

Those that think he will be poached are being a bit too paranoid, imo.

TG lasted 14 years before the "poaching" happened.

I doubt the NHL is beating down Ryan's door.

He's going to be around for awhile and I couldn't be happier.

the issue is idk if NJ.com is gonna pay him well enough, if someone else comes calling

the effort is clearly visible, and i'm sure he'll be more noticed once the regular season goes down. hell, he might get scoops for us during the offseason to get noticed

 

[NJDevs26]

This guy's an overachiever.

LOL has any GM ever confirmed their pick more than a week before draft day?

 

[Hisch13r]

What I've heard, you can take it with a grain of salt, is that there was a specific person in the scouting staff that left at some point during the Conte decline, who was supposedly the brains behind the whole thing.

Whatever the case, I doubt it had anything to do with any type of budget cuts. Arguably, investing a lot of money in the scouting staff can help you find diamonds in the rough. And believe it or not, the Devils did manage to draft a few of them during that time in Miles Wood, Kerfoot, Henrique, and Blake Coleman. And you do hear rumors anyway that they were hoping Vasilevsky would have been available in 2012 when they kept the pick and that they were hoping for Aho in the second round. But overall, they didn't really make any picks that were outside of the consensus post-lock out. Drafting is more luck than people want to admit.

Wow they got a few good pieces over a decade. The luck factor is nowhere near enough for them to have been as dog shit as they were. I imagine we could've just picked the highest PPG CHLer like that Canucks Army blog where they compared the Canucks drafting vs just taking the highest PPG CHLer and the Canucks actual picks came out looking worse

 

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

every team lands "diamonds in the rough", especially over a 9 or 10 year span.

The problem is when the "diamonds in the rough" are your BEST draft picks, that's the main reason we've been shit for years.

 

[OmNomNom]

LOL has any GM ever confirmed their pick more than a week before draft day?

lol idk why he even asked, he knows there wouldn't be an answer lol

 

[Guttersniped]

I don't have an athletic subscription, but it feels like a lot of what gets done there is either big reporting pieces that take some time to do all the digging and writing, or deep dives on a team's analytics on certain segments.

But things like what Ryan's doing, just to little nitty gritty reporting on a day-to-day fell to the wayside. Really excited to have him around

No, teams with beat reporters get daily or almost daily articles in the Athletic. Not every team has a beat reporter, it’s not just us.

We never had a beat reporter, Corey Masisek must have had editing duties or something, because he only wrote occasional pieces.

He was the just a Devils reporter though and was an excellent journalist/writer coming from newspapers. He pieces were good and thorough.

Shayna Goldman is more bloggy and she’s a currently listed as a Rangers/Devils/Analytics reporter. She can do journalism just fine but we only got Corey style reporting, with interviews and whatnot, really with her article about the Devils Analytic department. (It kind of shocked me when it happened lol, I hope for more.)

I really liked Corey, I just wanted more articles from him. In an ideal world, that would have happened with Shayna augmenting those with her work. More popular teams get that sort of thing. (Alas, it’s not a ideal world.)

 

[JimEIV]

Sure, when you make up your own categories and put in arbitrary endpoints, anything can be anything, I agree.

What do mean arbitrary endpoints? Goals is a made up category? A season is an arbitrary endpoint? He was top 90 in the league in goals 4 out 6 seasons he played here what is arbitrary about that?

 

[ChicksDigTheTrap]

Follow up tweet:

What was the "reported" Habs trade for #2?

 

[Forge]

What was the "reported" Habs trade for #2?

 

[Setec Astronomy]

every team lands "diamonds in the rough", especially over a 9 or 10 year span.

The problem is when the "diamonds in the rough" are your BEST draft picks, that's the main reason we've been shit for years.

They were shit over that stretch of time because they were really good for a period almost 20 years. Had they drafted Brayden Point in 2014 and say Timo Meier in 2015, they’re probably still not a playoff team, and in that netherworld place where they’re always picking between between 9 and 15.

By contrast, Boston probably had a worse combination of drafting and bonehead trades even taking into account Pastrnak and McAvoy, when you consider they gave away Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton and managed to draft a Pavel Zacha clone and two Hugh Jessimans in 2015 instead of Barzal, Chabot and Kyle Connor.

Just to be clear, I’m barely defending Conte and kind of doubt that he had as much to do with their successful draft picks as people may have thought. It’s just that nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain.

 

[ChicksDigTheTrap]

WOW! Maxim Lapierre is on par with some HFB posters with respect to how to value assets. Surprised he did not say NJ would be enticed by Price given our struggles in the net.

 

[Forge]

WOW! Maxim Lapierre is on par with some HFB posters with respect to how to value assets. Surprised he did not say NJ would be enticed by Price given our struggles in the net.

I posted it in the #2 pick thread first...got a real good laugh out of it

 

[Guttersniped]

Going over our draft history.

It's amazing how relatively young some of our long-forgotten whiffs are. Guys like Corrente, Hoeffel, Josefson could still be on the team contributing. Even Jason Ryznar is still young enough to be an Islander.

Kirill Tulupov played a single game for ECHL Rapid City in 2016. Imagine going to a random hockey game in South Dakota a few years ago and scratching your head where you'd heard that name before.

As someone else mentioned (and I’ve mentioned before) 2014 draft isn’t good at all but we drafted only North Americans:
Quenneville (#30) 42 NHL/190 AHL
Jacobs (#41) 3 NHL/298 AHL/ 1 ECHL
Chatham (#71) 150 ECHL
Rehill (#131) 1 AHL
Dudek (#152) 5 AHL/ 70 ECHL
Baddock (#161) 1 NHL/ 256 AHL/ 21 ECHL

The draft gets rough there, we didn’t even manage to draft anyone good at hockey after the #41 pick and at least get a useful player for our system.

We did sign Baddock in 2016 and he has managed to carve out a nice little AHL career by fighting. He even got a NHL game with the Habs last Dec when half their line-up was out, so congrats to him, lol.

 

[Brodeur]

LOL has any GM ever confirmed their pick more than a week before draft day?

Tampa did run that "Seen Stamkos" campaign for weeks ahead of the 2008 Draft. Pretty sure Ottawa said they were taking Alexandre Daigle in 1993 ahead of time. Their owner got fined after he got liquored up and told some reporters (he thought off the record) about how he talked to a couple players about losing the last few games on purpose to ensure the #1 pick.

For PR reasons, I remember Colorado informed Seth Jones ahead of time that they wouldn't be taking him in 2013 with the inference being that they were taking Nathan MacKinnon. They didn't want Jones to have his hopes up about going to (one of) his hometown teams.

Just to be clear, I’m barely defending Conte and kind of doubt that he had as much to do with their successful draft picks as people may have thought. It’s just that nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain.

I think twice this weekend I heard a radio edited version of November Rain that took out Slash's solos. Part of my soul died each time.

 

[Guttersniped]

I meant Matteau's most points as a Devil came during that stint in 12-13. I thought he had 2 goals in that stint, but I guess it was just one? I remember he had one goal in late season call up in 14-15. He and Boucher had a goal in the same game I think? We wound up winning it in the shootout 3-2 and I think they had the two Devils goals in-game? Maybe I'm thinking of two different games around the same time though?

And then Matteau had the one goal (Which I think was his only point) in 15-16, which was a PATHETICALLY SOFT GOAL on Michael Neuvirth of the Flyers. I remember laughing about it ALL YEAR. It was probably one of the lousiest goals we scored all season. A very slow and soft wrister (I don't think it was a backhander?) from a bad angle through Neuvirth's pads. The DSP trade for Matteau was worth it just so we could forget that this pick was ever a thing and that it ever even happened. Even though DSP returned to being a pumpkin again the next season and we wound up buying out the second year of his deal.

I'm pretty sure we started out the 12-13 season with CBGB (who were a GREAT 4th line) as the 3rd line, which was really just dumb. I remember questioning whether Lou and Pete thought they were so good in the 2012 playoffs that maybe they're really 3rd line caliber players and not 4th line caliber players? I don't even remember if they ever did return to being the 4th line that season, but I know they did the next season. At least when Bernier wasn't getting stints with Elias in the top 6.

But I don't think they were ever the 3rd line again as a trio after that lockout shortened 12-13 season.

We were too busy needing to play GOON Krys Barch on the 4th line (who we signed to a 2 year deal right after buying out Eric Boulton's second year a week before that, on top of having to buy out Andrew Peters second year just a couple of years before that. Somehow Lou was able to get Dale Tallon to trade back for Barch in training camp of 2013, despite passing on re-signing Barch before we signed him. That was the team he last played for before we got him) and getting Tom Kostopolous on waivers I think? I was at the game where he scored a penalty shot goal in Tampa that year. Probably his only point as a Devil, but definitely his only goal as a Devil.

Stephen Gionta and Josefson duked it out for the title of 3C in 2012-13. Once Elias moved to wing and Zubrus got hurt, there wasn’t much else at center beyond Zajac & Rico. Loktionov?

The beauty vs Neuvirth is the first one in these highlights:



You’re such a iron-hearted Scrooge, look how happy the kid is after this (weak) wrister goes in.

 

[nugg]

Castron did a better job in non first round picks than Conte in his last 15 years. How we can even compare them. One literally destroyed our franchise, another one build it again. Even with high picks(every team makes mistakes, even mister Yzerman) we wouldnt have enough material, but he drafted Sharangovich, Bratt, Maltsev bring us second pair level defenseman, and there are a lot of good to even great material like Gritsyuk and Okhotyuk as best examples, Boqvist at least is looking better than most first rounders from previous years, even fourth liner Bastian too, and Zetterlund, Moynihan, Thompson, Daws, etc as good examples. Even if non of them will never play 100 NHL games, Castron made obvious better job in shorter time period.

I even could not blame Lou for picks, I blame him for trusting for Conte after so many years of svcking on the drafts. Years after years.

I'm just hoping that Tom will give more power to Castron in making the picks. His two drafts have been more like latter-day Lou/Conte drafts than Ray's.

 

[Guttersniped]

WOW! Maxim Lapierre is on par with some HFB posters with respect to how to value assets. Surprised he did not say NJ would be enticed by Price given our struggles in the net.

The article basically says the trade isn’t doable after quoting Lapierre.

He mentions their late 1st & 2nd, then the writer points out that the most appealing piece, Josh Anderson, isn’t likely enough to get it done and Caufield & Suzuki aren’t being traded, so there isn’t a workable package.

 

[MartyOwns]

everyone’s so in love with the new beat reporter, even though he hasn’t written anything about stefan matteau yet.