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

[FooteBahl]

who the f*** is neal mchale?

Exactly! Don’t post this bs unless there’s a blue checkmark or has like 20k+ followers

Numbers are:

Year One: Two-way, $750,000 | $175,000
Year Two: One-way, $775,000

Good deal for us. Presumably Tyce will be in the AHL to start the season, but it's not inconceivable he out-competes Zetterlund for a spot.

In two years he’s still a RFA right?

 

[Stephen Gionta]

In two years he’s still a RFA right?

Yes

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

Yes

No he's a UFA in 2 years, he would've accrued 7 years of service in the league which is one of the prerequisites of a UFA. The other one is if you're 27.

 

[devilsfan35]

 

[NJ Devil]

Saving the best for last. Get it done, Fitz.

Miles Wood is also still in need of a contract

 

[Hockey Sports Fan]

Neal McHale is legit. I don't think he's gotten any scoops but he's not just some rando.

 

[Bleedred]

The Clarkson contract absolutely one of the funniest of all time.

Somewhere Patrik Elias is saying ''I never even get call from hall of fame''.

 

[njdevils1982]

Miss a good Clarkaround

oh behave!

 

[Devils731]

Exactly! Don’t post this bs unless there’s a blue checkmark or has like 20k+ followers


In two years he’s still a RFA right?

McHale has had Devils press credentials.

I haven’t seen him rumor monger so I assume he’s just reporting what he’s been able to find.

 

[Devs3cups]

No he's a UFA in 2 years, he would've accrued 7 years of service in the league which is one of the prerequisites of a UFA. The other one is if you're 27.

Capfriendly has him as an RFA with Arb rights in 2 years.

 

[MauDevils]

Numbers are:

Year One: Two-way, $750,000 | $175,000
Year Two: One-way, $775,000

Good deal for us. Presumably Tyce will be in the AHL to start the season, but it's not inconceivable he out-competes Zetterlund for a spot.

Pretty sure the negotiation was over his AHL salary. I assume $175k in the AHL has to be on the very high end?

 

[Bleedred]

Yeah more Clarkson talk, we can worry about Bratt after we find out what contract is signed.

I really miss that guy. He was one of my wife's favorite players and she found it hard to care about the Devils once Marty and Clarkson left. He was always so positive, a terrible hockey player, but he was the last "I'd bleed for this team" guy this team ever had. Maybe one of the last in the league?

I'm really glad he had a chance to go to his hometown team with some sort of hero's welcome, but it's a real shame how it all ended. If I saw him I'd want to give him a hug lol.

I don't think he was a terrible hockey player, but he was kind of like a ...Not a ham and egger, he wasn't THAT bad, but he was a bit of an interchangeable guy other than those last two years as a Devil, one of which was a 48 game season where he didn't even produce all that well in the last 25-30 games. Unless I'm mistaken, but I clearly remember saying late that year ''God help us if we sign Clarkson to that 4 year deal for $16 million that he's probably gonna get. I don't want him anywhere near here for that. He ain't worth that''.

Nope, he wasn't worth that. Apparently he was worth a whole lot more than that.

I do like him as a person. I remember he was reportedly very upset when he thought he was a part of the Kovalchuk trade.

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

Capfriendly has him as an RFA with Arb rights in 2 years.

Thought he was talking about Bratt since I was skimming through the thread and didn't even see the Tyce Thompson news yet, my apologies.

 

[Maine Fan]

What will Bratt get? The Devils offer $4.1 or what his agent wants $6.5M.

I think $5.5M

 

[Stephen Gionta]

No he's a UFA in 2 years, he would've accrued 7 years of service in the league which is one of the prerequisites of a UFA. The other one is if you're 27.

He is talking about Tyce Thompson pal

 

[Devs3cups]

Thought he was talking about Bratt since I was skimming through the thread and didn't even see the Tyce Thompson news yet, my apologies.

All good!

 

[My3Sons]

What will Bratt get? The Devils offer $4.1 or what his agent wants $6.5M.

I think $5.5M

If they don't speak before the hearing to hash out at least the one year deal they'd get in arbitration something is wrong with the lines of communication. NJ has to know that an arbitrator is likely to award well more than $4.1 mil.

 

[Killing Joke]

What will Bratt get? The Devils offer $4.1 or what his agent wants $6.5M.

I think $5.5M

They probably want different term. Assuming the devils want like 5-6 while Bratt wants 2, bringing him to UFA

 

[Devs3cups]

If they don't speak before the hearing to hash out at least the one year deal they'd get in arbitration something is wrong with the lines of communication. NJ has to know that an arbitrator is likely to award well more than $4.1 mil.

Bratt’s agent… tick tock…

 

[NJDevs26]

They probably want different term. Assuming the devils want like 5-6 while Bratt wants 2, bringing him to UFA

That would be being a prick for the sake of being a prick. That’s telling Fitz trade me now.

 

[forceten]

We also have to sign Zetterlund, alongside Wood and Bratt.

 

[NJDevs26]

If they don't speak before the hearing to hash out at least the one year deal they'd get in arbitration something is wrong with the lines of communication. NJ has to know that an arbitrator is likely to award well more than $4.1 mil.

Or it could be Bratt knowing he’s gonna win the arb hearing regardless so why bother negotiating a one year deal?

 

[Guttersniped]

No I don't believe SV% is particularly telling even in medium sample sizes but it's the only thing you guys seem to believe in, and @Guttersniped whole 'well, if you take away the last drubbing Bernier's Sv% was .914' garbage was what got me on this road.

Until we get decent puck tracking stats it's going to be hard to truly gauge goalie performance.

All of the speculations about injuries to these guys is speculation. I can tell you that it sure looked like Bernier started really struggling midway thru that game and they should have yanked him.. If we had anyone else.

Speculation?

Blackwood was on the IR after his “setback” in preseason.

The on air crew started described how his foot would never get better all year, and it was about “pain management” from now on, by early or mid December.

After they shut Blackwood down, Ruff described how injured Blackwood was and said he wasn’t practicing due to the pain by the end. He praised and defended how he played despite the injuries he was struggling with.
I wasn’t speculating on anything. I still don’t even know what exactly was wrong with Blackwood. (Because they have never been clear on that and I gave up trying figure it out.)

I do know they told us generally all about how injured he was, at first when they were congratulating him for being a gamer and playing through it, then in a more defensive way after he was shut down. (They were defending him because he was getting booed.)

They clearly kept playing him in late December, despite his atrocious numbers and play, because he had an unlikely winning streak (he won those 4 games between 12/29-1/6) and we had no one else.

Daws was injured. Gillies got here, played one game on 12/19 and then got put on the COVID protocol. His next game was 1/13.

Blackwood only played one game after that before going on the IR, the infamous Arizona game on 1/19, where he gave up 4 goals on 17 shots.

Bernier was also scratched in pre-season games and then in games 3-5 in the regular season. Fitz/Ruff said he was having problems since preseason and it got worse, Ruff wasn’t optimistic about his long term prospects after they first shut him down. That’s how bad he got health wise.

FYI Hammond was coming off an ankle injury and didn’t get a AHL conditioning stint before we threw him out there on 4/2.

That’s what you would normally do for a goalie who hasn’t played for a month, was coming off an injury and only had been in 6 game, w/ 5 starts, in both the NHL & AHL since 12/31. But we needed his warm body in the NHL.

You want to judge the goalies differently, without taking injuries into account. Fine. But don’t claim I’m just eyeballing them and making a call here. We were told about them being hurt, the players talked about it, and these guys were on and off the IR or scratched due to injury.

I’m happy to not discuss the terrible goalie situation of last year anymore, but it was a nightmarish clusterf***. I stand by that description.

 

[jkrdevil]

If they don't speak before the hearing to hash out at least the one year deal they'd get in arbitration something is wrong with the lines of communication. NJ has to know that an arbitrator is likely to award well more than $4.1 mil.

The arbitrator almost always splits the difference between the two. We will get between $5.3 and $5.5. I would be very surprised if they don’t at least reach a “court steps” settlement given that everyone should know how the arbitrators typically arrive at their numbers.

 

[OlfactoryHughes]

As many times as it takes to understand that I'm right. And then we do this bullshit song and dance again next year. I don't want to deal with this again. Trade him for a player who's fine playing in a culture of failure, because Bratt isn't.

I don’t mind dealing with Bratt, in another contract year, putting up ppg with a reasonable cap hit, then going into next offseason, with him still under team control.

Devils are in the driver seat here, hopefully fitz is using enough tact, to not damage the relationship long term.