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

[JrFischer54]

Well if you would be so kind as to direct me to the actual post you created that provided that info, that would be great.

Some of us don't have the time to scroll back page after page looking for specific posts. Just give me the link to it (you know how to do that).

I mean it was literally in the post you replied to lol but don’t sweat it

 

[SJinNewJersey]

They didn't have watch the previous 5 years

I guess them not watching him explains why all of them have him in their top 30 centers in the league.

 

[glenwo2]

I mean it was literally in the post you replied to lol but don’t sweat it

JrFischer54 said:
time and time again teams are constantly getting out of bad contracts to teams willing to eat them for pennies. not to mention the salary cap even if a little every year is going up and up. so no i'm not worried about the cap


for the bold not really because you can always use that great prospect pool to acquire another version of a mercer. if there isn't a mercer waiting in the ahl.

i'm still waiting to hear a number like say he goes 20g-50p next year?

This is the one I responded with the question I asked.

Show me where you provided the answer.

"great prospect pool" is NOT an answer.

I'm asking for a specific player.


For god's sake, man....STOP BEING SO OBTUSE.

If you don't have an actual player in mind, then stop posting like you know what you're talking about.

 

[JimEIV]

I guess them not watching him explains why all of them have him in their top 30 centers in the league.

Maybe. Was he a top 30 center while Gusev was out producing him?

 

[Triumph]

He really never committed to any D or goaltending at all.

He never committed to any goaltending because Cory Schneider was signed for 7 years when he took over. What an inane comment. Goaltending was committed for him.

I mean Subban was the only attempt and it was a piss poor decision.

The Devils acquired these players who had more than one year of team control: John Moore, Ben Lovejoy, Mirco Mueller, Sami Vatanen, PK Subban. They also signed Will Butcher as a UFA. The Devils were also rich in young D when he took over, though Severson and Santini were the only guys left after 2017, and Santini turned out to be not an NHL player.

Most of these D moves did not work out, and some of them were quite bad on their face (Mueller). But it was going to be hard for a lot of them to work out, stapling them on to the rotten forward corps, and with how the young D did not live up to expectations.

And it's funny that we traded Smith, a bust pick for Marino. Because it further illustrates the ineptitude Shero displayed with the defense.

I would not characterize Smith as a bust pick just yet, and his selection was a no-brainer. He had a terrible season here last year and the Devils smartly sent him packing.

 

[JrFischer54]

JrFischer54 said:
time and time again teams are constantly getting out of bad contracts to teams willing to eat them for pennies. not to mention the salary cap even if a little every year is going up and up. so no i'm not worried about the cap


for the bold not really because you can always use that great prospect pool to acquire another version of a mercer. if there isn't a mercer waiting in the ahl.

i'm still waiting to hear a number like say he goes 20g-50p next year?

This is the one I responded with the question I asked.

Show me where you provided the answer.

"great prospect pool" is NOT an answer.

I'm asking for a specific player.

And I said if there isn’t one you trade from your prospect pool for one. So what else do you want me to say? Can you now tell me what you think mercer might get if he goes 20g-50p next year?

 

[Rybo]

I forget, did Shero bring in an analytics department or was that Fitzgerald? Or maybe ownership?

 

[KovalchukFistPump]

Maybe. Was he a top 30 center while Gusev was out producing him?

No, he wasn't. He was an RNH-style first overall disappointment until his game took off after being paired with Bratt last year.

He is a great player now and moving forward, which is really all that matters in a draft-heavy/salary cap environment where you should either suck a lot or be Cup competitive. Not to mention him being a little disappointing in his first few years allowed the Devils to sign him for cheaper.

If hockey had relegation then yeah I'd be pissed that he didn't contribute more offensively from 2019-2021. Or if the Devils were the Devils of 1993-2012 and were competing every year (and somehow lucked into a #1 pick), it would have been annoying to not have him reach his potential quicker. But the Devils of 2017-2022 had tons of holes that the past really just doesn't matter. Yeah it was frustrating to watch a team whose season was regularly over by Christmas, but that's over. Enjoy the team and the player he has become today.

 

[JimEIV]

I would not characterize Smith as a bust pick just yet, and his selection was a no-brainer. He had a terrible season here last year and the Devils smartly sent him packing.

You would not classify a 17 overall starting in the AHL D +5 a bust? You're an easy grader

I forget, did Shero bring in an analytics department or was that Fitzgerald? Or maybe ownership?

It was ownership and it happened while Lou was still here

 

[Rybo]

You would not classify a 17 overall starting in the AHL D +5 a bust? You're an easy grader


It was ownership and it happened while Lou was still here

Wow I was way off the mark - I see now they(ownership) did it with the 76ers as far back as 2012 from what I can see on Google!

 

[JimEIV]

Wow I was way off the mark - I see now they(ownership) did it with the 76ers as far back as 2012 from what I can see on Google!

I don't remember what year it was but I do remember reporters asking Lou if he had a problem with it... Lou's response was people forget I was a math teacher. Lol

 

[Bleedred]

Have we checked up on San Jose to Newark flights recently

This reminds me of a story on here going back 9 or 10 years. Could have even been 2012.

I don’t remember if the poster who said this admitted if they were just joking or not, but I remember somebody saying Eklund posted that we were talking to someone about trading for some player, can’t remember who it was. But the poster said Eklund posted it after a random flight from whatever city they played in to Teterboro was coming in lol.

Good ole’ Dwayne Klessel.

 

[MartyOwns]

i wrote a whole response to jim about shero, but then i chose to just delete it. do i get some sort of prize for that?

 

[Bleedred]

Nico wasn’t even bad his first few years in the league. He just didn’t produce like a superstar.

His detractors said it was all Hall in his rookie year, but he produced at around the same exact clip the next season, where Hall didn’t even play a game after Christmas.

 

[Guttersniped]

Your asset tree was always nonsense.

Now with the benefits of hindsight we can see how nonsensical it truly was.

Fitzgerald rebuilt the defense and addressed goaltending overnight with no special assets at all. Shero had his thumb up his ass for 5 years

Wait is someone defending Shero? f*** Shero.

Devils 2nd Rd picks from 2015 to 2022 (that’s 8 years): 5 picks and only two of them were ours.

2015 NJD #36 pick trade
2015 OTT #42 (Blackwood) see above
2015 FLA #51 Palms Trade
2016 NJD #41 (Bastian)
2017 NJD #36 (Boqvist)
2017 BOS #49 Mueller Trade
2018 FLA #46 Mojo Trade
2018 NJD #48 Grabner Trade
2019 NJD #34 Subban Trade
2019 NSH #55 pick trade
2019 BOS #61 (Okhotiuk) Mojo trade II
2020 NJD #37 Subban trade
2021 NJD #36 Gusev trade
2021 NYI #61 Graves trade [Fitz]
2022 NJD #37 Vanecek trade/ pick swap [Fitz]
2022 WPG #46 (Casey) see above

That’s ridiculous. People defended this crap because we had 3 extra 1sts (way way way late in “holy shit we’re bad” process).

To recap: Devils
2015-2022 (8 drafts) = (11) 1sts & (5) 2nds

Same draft 8 drafts
Detroit = (10) 1sts & (14) 2nds
Buffalo = (12) 1sts & (9) 2nds
Anaheim = (11) 1sts & (9) 2nds
Ottawa = (11) 1sts & (13) 2nds
Montreal = (9) 1sts & (12) 2nds

I’m not arguing that these teams were incredibly well run over those 8 years. Four teams got new GMs at some point in those 8 years too, and the one that didn’t should have.

None of those GMs traded three of their own 2nds when they were the 3rd seed in NHL draft lottery though.

In trades for two players who were 2-3 years from UFA and who ended up having negligible value at the TDL.

And yes, I can judge these trade in hindsight *judging intensifies*

Because I still don’t understand what we would have done if this dumb shit actually made us good in 2019-20. I have zero idea how we would have improved the team. Like, for instance, what would have been the future of our defense exactly?

We aren’t trading the players we traded, right? And Shero already traded two 2nds and one 3rd away.

So we trade our 1sts? Shero was alway wary of bad UFA contracts.

Still a mystery to me what the plan was after the “Summer of Shero”.

Shero made a great trade with Palms. Pretty sure Hall kind of fell in his lap but he delivered the killing blow by keeping it “one for one”.

He made some good hires, he seemed like a very able NHL executive. Probably would make a great NHL Team President.

If he didn’t win two lotteries, and have scouts do some excellent work with the dodgy stack of late picks he gave them, people would dislike him a whole lot more. He didn’t have to actually have to do anything to win the lotteries.

 

[Bleedred]

Does it really matter who the captain is? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you wanna give it to some bum or anything, but who else could we have realistically given it to when Nico got it? Zajac, who was on his way out the door 40 games into the season at the deadline? And then get to do it all over again in the summer of 2021?

Who else was gonna get it? Subban? Connor Carrick? lol.

Mind you, there’s also no rule that anyone needs to be named captain anyway. I think Nico missed the first however many games of that season and then they named him captain when he was healthy, after Greene vacated almost an entire before that when he was traded at the deadline.

 

[Bleedred]

I don’t think Shero did a bad job here, honestly. But his trades for defensemen didn’t work out like his protégé’s have.

A couple of baffling moves his last couple years here, like not trying to somewhat build off the Hall MVP year with adding someone useful, but that wasn’t the biggest deal. It also got us Hughes.

He really struck out in 2019 though. The goalie tandem was had wasn’t nearly good enough to compete that year and keeping Hynes alive via machines for as long as he did was a big mistake.

In the end, I’m not even sure if he was actually fired because ownership thought we should be winning more/rebuild was taking too long, but potentially philosophical differences. That’s what Friedman speculated ae a possibility on his first podcast right after he was fired.

Waiting too long to fire Hynes might have pissed them off too, but who knows?

 

[Better Call Sal]

I shouldn’t be surprised when I see this type of discussion after a long day where I’ve been preoccupied by work, and yet I always am.

 

[devilsblood]

I know it likely comes to an end this year but we still have a lou guy on D, but zero Shero’s.

I think he did well in acquiring picks and put together a good scout team which helped us stack fwd talent.

But his NJ legacy in terms of dmen is atrocious. Completely undermined anything else he did.

 

[Guttersniped]

He signed the top UFA on the market, traded a former first round pick, and traded three picks besides. He has gotten extremely lucky that Siegenthaler turned into what he has - he showed signs of being a reliable guy in limited minutes, but the idea that he would be on the top pairing of a playoff Devils team would've been dismissed by everyone two years ago - and he also got lucky that nobody besides the Devils were all that interested in Hamilton.

And he signed the big UFA D at the right time - Shero never committed to a big UFA D because right now we'd be staring at his awful contract on CapFriendly waiting for it to end.

Do you think the Marino trade just arrived in the mail or something? It’s a great trade. (Just like Siegenthaler.)

Severson was our 1D and Hamilton in no way replaces him. Fitz said he spent 5 months working on that trade. That’s shows a lot foresight in sensing the need to move on from Severson and Marino was the perfect target.

Not every GM is willing to sell that early on prospects either, Fitz is very good there too. He’s pumped and dumped a bunch guys now.

All of Fitz’s trades for defenseman are significantly better than every trade for defense that Shero made. (Maybe Ryan Murray wasn’t that exciting but what do you want for 5th.)

Is that dumb luck?

The best guy Shero traded for was damaged goods due to injuries (Vats) as was the most expensive one (you know who).

Is that just bad luck?

I get that there were rumors that the Subban trade was “forced” on him but maybe if he had a better plan for the defense Shero could have avoided it.

Fitz isn’t perfect but I don’t know why he wouldn’t deserve some credit here.

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

The team is too good for this silly shit. Anyway,

 

[Nubmer6]

The team is too good for this silly shit. Anyway,

Is that Lyle Odelein and friends?

 

[Bleedred]

I know it likely comes to an end this year but we still have a lou guy on D, but zero Shero’s.

I think he did well in acquiring picks and put together a good scout team which helped us stack fwd talent.

But his NJ legacy in terms of dmen is atrocious. Completely undermined anything else he did.

One big criticism he got in Pittsburgh was he didn’t care about defensemen or that he didn’t acquire good defensemen.

I’m not sure if that’s true or not, it probably is, but I’d have to go back and see if he even acquired anybody good on D there. I don’t remember too many of their D, outside of homegrown guys like Letang and Orpik. Didn’t he turn Goligoski into Niskanen? And I think James Neal came back in that too.

The other big criticism was that he didn’t fire Dan Bylsma and it came down to him being fired even before Bylsma was.

We saw with Hynes here, who he did fire in the end, but probably 6 weeks too late. It should have happened when the stupid Fitz to the bench stuff started. I mean what the f*** was that? What even was that shit?

Subban was a good trade, but just didn’t work out. Subban was not nearly as good as you would have expected him to be at 30 years old. And he only even played 3 more years in the league at the time we traded for him.

Mueller was JAG. Just had no upside like Siegenthaler has shown. Mueller probably could have played bottom pairing minutes in the NHL, but that was all. Just no upside and there was no untapped potential there that I think Shero was hoping for.

 

[JimEIV]

Fitz isn’t perfect but I don’t know why he wouldn’t deserve some credit here.

Not trying to start a debate but what didn't you like that Fitzgerald did?

He's been pretty close to perfect to me?

The worst thing in his tenure I think some might say drafting Stillman? But I even supported that because it seemed like a clear shift in focus in team building.

 

[Guttersniped]

Not trying to start a debate but what didn't you like that Fitzgerald did?

He's been pretty close to perfect to me?

The worst thing in his tenure I think some might say drafting Stillman? But I even supported that because it seemed like a clear shift in focus in team building.

I have some issues with his first two drafts but those were his first two as a GM and they were both under weird COVID-circumstances. He does have to grow into the job.


He’s not a great dresser.
It had to be said. Sorry not sorry.