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

[Hisch13r]

My 3C target for next year is RFA Ross Colton

He's definitely a winger. He's played very minimal center. Also hasn't been that good. Would rather just re-sign Haula

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

You had Haula/3C as alternative to Tatar so I figured you were saying either or. I’m not sure they go Tatar over D but they really should. Tatar’s an elite two way play driver who is literally leading the league in GF% this year.

I’m not sure how much Holl would cost tbh. Maybe like 2 mil. The thing with Graves to me is I’m not sure he’d sign a deal I’d really want to. I think he could get more on the open market. If he wants to stay for like 4 mil over 3 years or something I guess that works

I’m fully ready to move on from Yegor.

Quickly throwing this together you could have both Meier and Bratt at 9, and Tatar and Graves at 4 and still make it work

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Don't think Sharangovich is here next year either, not sure if anyone caught Friedman today but he said he was pretty surprised seeing and heard from someone that Sharangovich wasn't in the return because of him having RFA status + impending Meier/Bratt extensions might price him out of NJ anyway. There's also Fitz saying that he wants to get more physical while shedding more cap, no one makes sense more than Sharangovich for that but not sure how you do that right now. Swear to god if he trades for like Max Domi with Yegor lol

 

[Hisch13r]

Don't think Sharangovich is here next year either, not sure if anyone caught Friedman today but he said he was pretty surprised seeing and heard from someone that Sharangovich wasn't in the return because of him having RFA status + impending Meier/Bratt extensions might price him out of NJ anyway. There's also Fitz saying that he wants to get more physical while shedding more cap, no one makes sense more than Sharangovich for that but not sure how you do that right now. Swear to god if he trades for like Max Domi with Yegor lol

Yegor definitely seems like an offseason move. I also don't see anyway Domi's even on our radar. Fitz has proven to not be an idiot

 

[Tundra]

There's nothing ridiculous about it. Shero was an average GM who accomplished exactly what you'd expect any other average GM to accomplish. Of course we got some good prospects and players from Shero's picks...we were literally a cellar team picking high in the draft for multiple years. Were you expecting something less than what he delivered?? What he got out of those picks is only a major accomplishment if you insist on living in an alternate universe where ownership was seriously considering keeping Lou around forever. Otherwise it's basically par for the course for any team that sucks and picks high multiple years running.

Everything else outside the draft was blah. His trademark move - acquiring Hall - bought the team a playoff spot but it didn't bring them any closer to long-term success. It simply delayed the inevitable.

There is literally nothing remarkable about what Ray did. The fact that his predecessor was horrid is irrelevant. You're clearly grading on a massive curve.

EDIT: And I'd also like to add that I don't believe for one second Ray would have remade this team the way that Fitz has. Ray wouldn't know a quality defender if it bit him in the ass.

Look at our core players. Many were drafted or attributed to picks acquired by Shero. Nico, Bratt, Mercer, You could also go one step further and admit that that his assets (Zetterlund,Okhotyuk) helped us acquire Meier.
Shero completely turned the organization around. He inherited a wasteland of veteran contracts, mostly over age 30.

 

[Nemec]

Look at our core players. Many were drafted or attributed to picks acquired by Shero. Nico, Bratt, Mercer, You could also go one step further and admit that that his assets (Zetterlund) helped us acquire Meier.
He completely turned the organization around. He inherited a wasteland of veteran contracts, mostly over age 30.

Shero was great but Fitz even greater. Not sure why others split hairs.

 

[Tundra]

Shero was great but Fitz even greater. Not sure why others split hairs.

Shero did a good job. Maybe his only blemishes was the Subban/Vatanen trades. Then there were some misses in the draft. McLeod and Speers most notably. The Zacha selection was a no brainer at the time, in relation to the scouting consensus.

 

[Captain3rdLine]

Shero did a good job. Maybe his only blemishes was the Subban/Vatanen trades. Then there were some misses in the draft. McLeod and Speers most notably.

Huh I wouldn’t call any third round pick a notable miss let alone one who played NHL games even if it was few. Especially when he also drafted Zacha

 

[Tundra]

Huh I wouldn’t call any third round pick a notable miss let alone one who played NHL games even if it was few. Especially when he also drafted Zacha

There was so much hype about Speers. I think he played 3 games for us.

 

[Mgd31]

Blake Speers a notable miss? I just spit out my drink

 

[Tundra]

Blake Speers a notable miss? I just spit out my drink

The organization really made him out to be the a diamond in the rough. He played well for Canada in the WJC.

 

[JimEIV]

Shero did a good job. Maybe his only blemishes was the Subban/Vatanen trades. Then there were some misses in the draft. McLeod and Speers most notably. The Zacha selection was a no brainer, in relation to the scouting consensus.

Subban and Herique weren't the only bad trades...

Mueller trade was very bad.
Gusev trade was very bad
Grabner trade was very bad
Johansson trade was bad
Bennett trade was very bad

Of these players only Johansson is still in the NHL.

Zacha was Conte
Ty Smith wasn't a good selection either

 

[NJDevils17]

I honestly don’t care about Shero anymore. I’m not a huge fan of his tenure. Felt it lacked vision trying to expedite teams that weren’t ready giving valuable picks in the process while holding onto Hynes for too long.

Either way, happy with Fitz and where we’re at right now and not wanting to rehash parts of the Shero tenure.

 

[NJDevs26]

If he were to actually get a Bratt deal done before Meier I think he's either paying a ton and/or Bratt's just f***ing pumped about adding Meier and wants to lock in now.

That plus I think Fitz doesn't want to have the bad optics of taking care of Meier before Bratt...now that he's all in, he's gonna throw around dollar bills like the Joker in the original Batman movie.

 

[NJDevs26]

Shero did a good job. Maybe his only blemishes was the Subban/Vatanen trades. Then there were some misses in the draft. McLeod and Speers most notably. The Zacha selection was a no brainer at the time, in relation to the scouting consensus.

Their pro scouting was horrible, or their player development was. Fitz does the same type of value-hunting trades Shero did only they actually work (i.e. Siegenthaler instead of Mueller, Vanecek instead of Gusev, Marino instead of Subban). The only trades Shero made that objectively worked out were both Hall deals - though the second one worked out as much because of what Fitz did with the assets as anything else - and the Palmieri one, which if you want to give Shero a pass on the Zacha draft then you can't really give him credit for that trade since he'd just gotten there.

The best thing Shero did in five years was bringing in FITZ. The second best thing was bringing in lotto luck. Well you can probably inverse the order if you want but same point.

 

[Ripshot 43]

Fitz on NHL network just said he's speaking to Bratt's agent "as we speak".

Oh Look a PK Subban trade scrolling at the bottom

 

[Triumph]

Their pro scouting was horrible. Fitz does the same type of value-hunting trades Shero did only they actually work (i.e. Siegenthaler instead of Mueller, Vanecek instead of Gusev, Marino instead of Subban). The only trades Shero made that objectively worked out were both Hall deals and the Palmieri one, which if you want to give Shero a pass on the Zacha draft then you can't give him credit for that trade since he'd just gotten there.

This logic doesn't make any sense. The reason to give him a pass on the draft is because he took over in April and the draft is something that the organization has been working on for several months leading up to that; most of that process is finished by the time he got there. Trades are much different, rarely are they something worked on for months - the Devils identified a player they liked and went out and got him.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Subban and Herique weren't the only bad trades...

Wait.

Your whole schtick during these last 5 years is doing whatever possible to make the playoffs every season which is why you pumped up the 2013-2015 teams.

Vatanen literally was the third most important reason why we made the playoffs that season while Henrique absolutely DOGGED it in Oct and Nov.

But as always, if it was Lou you wouldn’t have said a word.

 

[NJDevs26]

This logic doesn't make any sense. The reason to give him a pass on the draft is because he took over in April and the draft is something that the organization has been working on for several months leading up to that; most of that process is finished by the time he got there. Trades are much different, rarely are they something worked on for months - the Devils identified a player they liked and went out and got him.

And you think Shero was scouting Palmieri in the five weeks or so after he took over? It certainly wasn't his scouts that gave him whatever reports they had on him, it was the guys the Devils had in place just like with the draft evaluations.

 

[MartyOwns]

Miraculous?!

None of this happened until Shero got here because we had a stubborn past-his-prime GM at the helm. What other GM do you think ownership would have hired that would have kept doing what Lou was doing?! Everyone from the execs in highest suite to the lady serving pretzels on the concourse knew that the new regime would be "building through the draft". Come on now. This is just ridiculous tire pumping for really basic rebuilding steps. There were no miracles. He did the minimum everyone and their mother expected. Please stop trying to make it seem like Ray saved us from a Lou 2.0 as if that alternative was ever a realistic possibility.

Any GM who insists on hanging on to John f***ing Hynes and that mediocre staff surrounding him is not a GM anyone should be giving high praise to.

the bare minimum? how does one even do the bare minimum on literally one of the worst structured organizations in the entire league, if not the worst. i like how you think any old GM off the street could’ve stepped in and replicated that. again, he was not perfect, but i truly don’t think anyone was ever going to be perfect in those circumstances. just crazy that you fail to acknowledge that, which is a very basic and obvious point.

and just so you know, the ridiculous tire pumping you’re referring to was expressing gratitude that shero had the intelligence to make a decent 3rd round selection which in turn helped land us the biggest deadline fish. instead of employing a bumbling cherry faced drunk to stumble up there and select some asshole that never amounted to anything.

 

[Mgd31]

Not that it matters but wasn't Johnsson Fitz's guy?

 

[Triumph]

And you think Shero was scouting Palmieri in the five weeks or so after he took over? It certainly wasn't his scouts that gave him whatever reports they had on him, it was the guys the Devils had in place just like with the draft evaluations.

Scouts don't come up with trade terms. GMs rarely scout players, that's why they have scouts.

 

[NJDevs26]

Fitz has been speaking to Bratt's agent for years & nothing is getting done. Until I see the headline Bratt has resigned idc if there's talks or not.

While I agree on the one hand...Fitz sounded more definitive on signing him the last two days than he ever has. I think on a certain level now that he's all-in on the team (and Bratt's pretty much proven he's not a total one year wonder), he's probably willing to give out a contract he wasn't a few months ago.

 

[Bleedred]

Not that it matters but wasn't Johnsson Fitz's guy?

Yeah

We got him during the first Fitz offseason

I still support that trade. Joey Anderson wasn't all that good and the chances of him ever being a full time NHLer at this point are very slim. And I think they were slim then.

Looks like him and Seney are back in the same organization again.

Joey Anderson is turning 25 in a few months and has played 72 NHL games and 52 of them were with us. He's played 20 games in the league since that trade. Over 3 seasons.

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

This fanbase is psychotic, the day after we get Timo we're lamenting over Blake Speers?

Yeah

We got him during the first Fitz offseason

I still support that trade. Joey Anderson wasn't all that good and the chances of him ever being a full time NHLer at this point are very slim. And I think they were slim then.

Looks like him and Seney are back in the same organization again.

I loved that trade and would still do it. Johnsson was fine as a stop gap and didn't cost anything. Reminds me a ton of how Pat Maroon's career went from shotgunning superstars to a bottom 6 role. Obviously Maroon's done far better by sticking with cup winners.

 

[NjDevsRR]