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

[StevenToddIves]

What if you really like complaining tho?

I only complain if I go a week without you or @Guadana making fun of me. Makes me feel under appreciated.

 

[Darkauron]

Its that time of the year I see..

 

[Bleedred]

We used 7 goaltenders this season - None were remotely close to league average

4 last season - Comrie was a .909 in 1 game played - the rest were nowhere near league average...

4 goaltenders the season before that - Blackwood managed a .915 over 47 games - None of the other 3 were remotely close to league average...And with the .915 over 47 games we were the 6th worst team in the league.

We watched Wedgewood at .891 this season over 3 games and .900 over 16 games the season before - Only to leave here and post a .911 with Arizona over 26 games and a .913 with Dallas over 8 games. Why? Just variance? To small of a sample? I suspect Any of the goaltenders we used over the last 3 years would post better SV% on other teams not in the bottom 5 of the league.

I know you are unwilling to admit it, but those SV% numbers are not solely the result of the goaltender alone.

I knew you were gonna cite more garbage small sample size stuff with Wedgewood since he left here.

Wedgewood is an almost 30 year old goalie that just now had his first full season in the NHL.

And no shit, goalies like Daws, Gillies, Hammond, Schmid and Wedgewood don’t play well here. Big surprise AHL goalies play like bad goalies at the NHL level.

Wedgewood never played league average in the NHL until this year, outside of his 4 game hot streak here in 2016.

The others just aren’t NHL caliber. Hammond was NHL caliber for literally a little over a year like 6-7 years ago now? Not to mention that he’s not 34 and that’s over the hill for most players in the league, let alone a poor goaltender.

 

[Bleedred]

For what it’s worth, every goalie other than Bernier and Schmid that played here had a higher percentage of goals I counted stoppable this year than my stoppable goal Vezina winner Mikko Koskinen.

But nobody really qualifies because nobody even played 30 games. Just like the actual Vezina.

I counted at least 36% of the goals against Blackwood, Gillies, Hammond and Daws as stoppable this year. Some even around 39%.

Blackwood was like 34% or something until his absolutely DISGUSTING last game against Detroit where he allowed 4 goals and I nailed him for 3 of them.

None of these goalies even had a lower percentage of goals stoppable, like some guys around the league that had a low save percentage and didn’t allow a high percentage of goals I counted stoppable. Like Lankinen, Korpisalo (every year just about with him), John Gibson, Petersen from LA had one of the lowest percentages of goals I counted stoppable in the entire league lol, with a terrible save percentage to go along with it.

 

[MadDevil]

Jim, just when the goaltending argument has quieted down...

 

[Emperoreddy]

I have to believe some of you either totally purged the last 4 months of games from your minds or simply didn't watch them.

Soft is being kind. These bums were letting routine saves through them. Stuff a damn shooter tutor would stop.

I don't even like Ruff, but how can you possibly blame a goal on his system that is a soft undeflected muffin from beyond the blue line?

These bums could not even make easy saves

 

[Bleedred]

We really need a montage for all the terrible softies.

I still think Hammond against Buffalo is easily our worst. That was a top-5 softy of the year.

 

[Emperoreddy]

We really need a montage for all the terrible softies.

I still think Hammond against Buffalo is easily our worst. That was a top-5 softy of the year.

That goal was embarrassing.

 

[Bleedred]

I don’t know if there’s much evidence that Ruff’s teams aren’t goalie friendly. I’m not even gonna mention Hasek, but there’s a few goalies (and I know it was a long time ago) that had career years playing for Ruff. Martin Biron had some of his best seasons in Buffalo under Ruff. Ryan Miller did as well.

Niemi and Lehtonen are eyesores. Lehtonen played great the first year Ruff was in Dallas. Then he dropped off the next two

Both Lehtonen and Niemi marginally improved and I mean MARGINALLY after Ruff left Dallas (in Lehtonen’s case) and and Niemi left Dallas.

But that season started out with Niemi being waived several times. He signed with Pittsburgh and only got to play 3 games there where he was a .797%! I don’t even know if we had a goalie that had a 3 game stretch of .797% this year? They waived him like 3 weeks into the season.

Then he made it to Florida on waivers and had 2 games of .872%. Only took 3 weeks there for Florida to then put him right back on waivers. Montreal picked him up. He had 19 games of .929% there! That was the year that Carey Price had his first really bad decline season too. Still between those other two stops he still finished with a .911% for the year. .912% was the league average that year. And that only lasted a year as he was back down to 17 games of .887% the next year and that would be his last in the NHL.

Lehtonen improved from .902% under Ruff to .912% under Hitchcock the next year. Did you catch that name? Hitchcock? The same head coach that Brian Elliott looked legit under, despite playing poorly everywhere else? Same with Turek, Cechmanek, Esche and a bunch of others? He was also the one who brought us Steve Mason’s rookie year which was the greatest goalie rookie year since Brodeur, which then fell apart for years until a change out of Columbus. Hitchcock was able to get a dead league average season out of 34 year old washed up Lehtonen that had already been bad for 3 years before that. He never played anywhere after that year as far as I know. Not even a measly year to cap off his career in Europe.

This would be like Blackwood going from his .892% this year to like a .900% after Ruff was gone and declaring “Hey! Blackwood is back!” Uhh, no he’s not because .900% is still shit.

 

[Bleedred]

Oh man, Anders Lindback is another goalie that played really badly under Ruff.

The 10 games he played there were so bad, what a stain it left on his amazing 120 other games in the NHL.

 

[My3Sons]

Are you gaslighting people into thinking anyone is actually saying that? Or are all they are doing is daring to say anything else might also be wrong with the team while forgetting to put the disclaimer "I know goalies are the biggest problem but."

Tell you what, anyone that thinks we don't/didn't have insanely bad goaltending this year please reply to this post so we can finally point you out. If no one does, can we finally drop this line of argument anytime anyone brings up anything else?

I don't think NJ had insanely bad goaltending. To me it was more like cosmically bad or maybe universally bad. Insanely bad implies with some therapy it might improve.

Edit: Lovecraftian bad. Yup, that's it.

 

[PKs Broken Stick]

I just want them to address goalie before other positions this offseason.

Yea, which is exactly what I said...lol. I literally said, "My priorities would be getting a goalie, then 1 #1 winger, then some veteran middle 6 players who know how to win"

 

[youryeah]

I don't think NJ had insanely bad goaltending. To me it was more like cosmically bad or maybe universally bad. Insanely bad implies with some therapy it might improve.

Edit: Lovecraftian bad. Yup, that's it.

pretty sure cthulhu was behind our goaltending issues last year. I think I saw an eldritch horror staring down jon gillies one game

 

[RangerDoggo]

I don't think NJ had insanely bad goaltending. To me it was more like cosmically bad or maybe universally bad. Insanely bad implies with some therapy it might improve.

Edit: Lovecraftian bad. Yup, that's it.

The seven-headed goalie is a kind of Eldritch abomination

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

Even if you want to believe the system sucks and every goalie would be worse here, how can you extrapolate that from this season where the Devils played gimps, bums and raw rookies? Or last year when Blackwood also missed a bunch of time, had breathing issues post-COVID and they played #3 and #4 goalies for 3/8 of the season because the backup spaced out in camp?

From Lindy's Buffalo and Dallas teams. Gun to my head and you tell me to pick which I think was worse it was the goalies by far, but can we not be naive and think Ruff's system isn't tough on goalies when you can look at every team he's coached besides the Ryan Miller + Dom Hasek Buffalo teams and see that the goalies have had issues because of how open of a system he uses to generate offense? I much rather us playing this way since it's where the league is going but holy hell man, no goalie is going to look good if you play with your head cut off looking to score every shift and forget defense. There has to be a middle ground between the two.

 

[My3Sons]

The seven-headed goalie is a kind of Eldritch abomination

If you look to closely at the NJ goaltending situation you see a multi-dimensional shambling horror that cannot be described and leaves the observer broken and hopelessly beyond mental and emotional repair gibbering in a non-Euclidian corner.

 

[Captain3rdLine]

Sorry but the word "interim" doesn't mean jack-shiznit here.

He was the Head Coach of the Devils, whether he "Filled in" or "filled out".

It doesn't matter because his title was Head Coach Of The Devils after Hyney-head left.

And then he was moved (basically) to Assistant Coach instead of being Jettisoned into the sun like he should've been.

That happened so your initial argument does not hold water. Sorry, bud.

Huh? Interim absolutely means something. It means he’s a fill in and hasn’t actually secured the job.

He may only be available one year early if he intends to test UFA

It’s irrelevant now but as everyone said 100 times in that case we wouldn’t trade for him.
Don’t care anymore. I want Slafkovsky!

 

[youryeah]

I would like to thank Tank Commanders Gillies and Hammond for their services in these trying times. We are appreciative for all they have done for the cause and wish them well in their future endeavors.

-tom fitzgerald probably

 

[McDuffz88]

I could taste the salt from the main boards through the screen lol reading the posts are hilarious

 

[ChicksDigTheTrap]

Huh? Interim absolutely means something. It means he’s a fill in and hasn’t actually secured the job.


It’s irrelevant now but as everyone said 100 times in that case we wouldn’t trade for him.
Don’t care anymore. I want Slafkovsky!

It does not matter now but that was not my point. It is not uncommon for players in the 26 year old age range to be available at a UFA cap hit which is what Fiala would have got if the Devils had negotiated a contract with him. What is not common is a player with a value contract (example a long term deal signed off his ELC ) to become available 26 or younger. Buchnevich got traded for a bag of pucks last year because of the Rangers cap situation.

 

[SKNJD9]

Flash poll: Race tightening for No. 1 in NHL Draft - TSN.ca

While Shane Wright got nine of 10 No. 1 votes in our mid-season rankings in January, he got six of nine votes to remain atop the Draft Lottery Day quickie poll by Bob McKenzie and appears to be staring down two legitimate threats for No. 1 overall.

www.tsn.ca

The race for No. 1 in the 2022 NHL Entry Draft has tightened up considerably.

In honour of today’s NHL Draft Lottery, we conducted a flash poll of eight NHL team head scouts to get a TSN Top 5 Ranking, Draft Lottery Edition.

And where Kingston Frontenac centre Shane Wright got nine of 10 No. 1 votes from the scouts in our mid-season rankings in January, he got six of nine votes to remain atop the quickie poll.

Wright would appear to be staring down two legitimate threats for first overall.

Big Slovak winger Juraj Slafkovsky received two No. 1 votes today and USA Hockey National Team Development Program Under-18 team centre Logan Cooley got one.

Slafkovsky was No. 5 at mid-season but vaulted up to No. 2 on this lottery day ranking. Cooley, who was No. 2 at mid-season, is No. 3 today, but very little separates the American and Slovak forwards.

 

[Captain3rdLine]

It does not matter now but that was not my point. It is not uncommon for players in the 26 year old age range to be available at a UFA cap hit which is what Fiala would have got if the Devils had negotiated a contract with him. What is not common is a player with a value contract (example a long term deal signed off his ELC ) to become available 26 or younger. Buchnevich got traded for a bag of pucks last year because of the Rangers cap situation.

It doesn’t happen that often and Fiala is better than Buchneivich.

 

[ChicksDigTheTrap]

It doesn’t happen that often and Fiala is better than Buchneivich.

Pretty comparable players

 

[Captain3rdLine]

Pretty comparable players
View attachment 544203

Look at their numbers before being traded. Not their entire career numbers. Not sure you needed me to tell you that.

 

[SKNJD9]

Fitzy not speaking tonight after all ?