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

[Captain3rdLine]

Deleted already? Must have been good.

Ah no it was just Amanda saying the earliest Luke could be done with Michigan is this weekend if they lose in quarter finals to Wisconsin. The latest would be April 6th or something around then.

Can someone confirm if that’s true? (Since she deleted it)

Edit:
Never mind she just tweeted that Michigan could lose this weekend and still move on.

 

[MasterofGrond]

Ah no it was just Amanda saying the earliest Luke could be done with Michigan is this weekend if they lose in quarter finals to Wisconsin. The latest would be April 6th or something around then.

Can someone confirm if that’s true? (Since she deleted it)

Unlikely, they'd have to miss the tournament which I doubt they do even if they lose this weekend in the big 10 tournament.

 

[NJDevs26]

It’s not true unless you only can make the postseason by winning a conference tournament which I doubt

 

[Captain3rdLine]

Unlikely, they'd have to miss the tournament which I doubt they do even if they lose this weekend in the big 10 tournament.

Ya she just added that. That’s why she deleted it.

 

[MasterofGrond]

It’s not true unless you only can make the postseason by winning a conference tournament which I doubt

conference champ is an auto selection, but there's 10 at large.

Michigan will go.

 

[StevenToddIves]

Man, I was just reading about the Flyers trade deadline. Yikes, I almost feel bad.

Worst GM in the league and worst coach in the league, $60 million of cap space tied up in the least talented line-up in the conference next year, and a bottom-10 prospect pool in the league with only one pick in the first two rounds next year.

Stay in college, Cutter Gauthier, stay in college.

 

[Ripshot 43]

The trade deadline is over? Really? So, what did Montreal wind up getting for Josh Anderson?

The ability to overvalue him immensely during the offseason!

 

[glenwo2]

Fitz with the full court press

@glenwo2 there you go, start your clock. Let's see how long it takes for Bratt and his agent to respond.

C'mon, Jesper....or rather...C'mon, Jesper's stupid agent!!!

Accept the damn contract!!

 

[glenwo2]

I do worry that Fitz's public posturing is only emboldening the agent even more to drag his feet, thinking that the pressure's REALLY on Fitz to make a deal, which it kinda is.

I'm hoping that Bratt is hearing about this and is now pestering his agent to get a deal done.

I'm sure if the Agent drags his feet for too long, Jesper will demand he accept the best deal (8 years hopefully) Fitz offered and not to mess around.

A least that's what I would do if I were Jesper.

Tbh, though, I would never be hands-off when it came to negotiations for a contract.

I would rather be there to MAKE SURE MY F---ING AGENT ISN'T TRYING TO BREAK THE BANK LIKE A GREEDY A--HOLE LOOKING FOR THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE COMMISSION (F**K YOU AND YOUR COMMISSION!) and ruin any chance of me staying a Devil.

 

[NHL Fanatik]

Felt it was better to make my final rebuttal here instead of in the trade thread, more relevant for team discussion.

As for Mikey being one-dimensional, hes having his best offensive season with two guys slumping this year. So far his P/60 is 236th, good enough to find him in the pool of '3rd line talent' if you count the top-288 for a season. ESP/60 hes much higher, ranking 158th. His current point pace of 31, if put into last years' end stats, would be good enough for 281st (again technically top-9 production if we are to be literal and consider 32 teams with a top-9)

Hes only 25 so it isn't unbelievable to think he can be a 25-30pt forward consistently going forward if we can upgrade his linemates over the next season or two.

He PK'd up to 2 minutes a game last season and is currently fifth on the team at 1:15 so if one of Bastian or Haula aren't kept, Id imagine his SHTOI would rise. Ive read he isn't good defensively and been told his stats arent good/are worse than Wood and Bastian.. but how reliable are advanced metrics for forwards' defense anyhow? Hes seriously worse defensively than Wood? I find that hard to believe lol.

Hes quick, gets a good amount of takeaways, uses his body some, and is money for a defensive draw being one of the better takers in the league. Add in around 25+ points a season when he plays enough and I dont see why that player isn't worth 2m to us in a league where it'd be 2.3% of the cap next season (1.5m cap bump).

Finally Id like to provide a list of some contracts as they were on their championship-winning team, based on ATOI in the playoffs (taking the bottom-4 forwards in ATOI with the most GP, the fourth to allow margin for any ES discrepancies)

In descending order of ATOI, most to least (outliers marked with a *):

(2022) Colorado - Helm 3.85m, O'Connor 750k, Cogliano 1m, Aube-Kubel 1.075m

(2021) Tampa Bay - Stamkos 8.5m*, Colton 700k, Johnson 5m, Maroon 900k

(2020) Tampa Bay - Johnson 5m, Maroon 900k, Paquette 1.65m, Verhaeghe 700k

(2019) St Louis - Thomas 895k, Barbashev 742k, Maroon 1.75m , Blais 673k

(2018) Washington - Smith-Pelly 650k, Vrana 863k, Connolly 1.5m, Chiasson 660k

(2017) Pittsburgh - Sheary 665k, Rowney 613k, Hagelin 3.75m , Wilson 625k

Now I can understand some of these names werent meant to be played this way, whether injury or trade with retention and depth, etc etc...

My point is, simply put, McLeod at 2m being our higher or 2nd highest contract in the bottom of our ATOI, and in a higher cap league, isnt going to kill us. He serves a big role for this team and I dont feel as though he gets his proper credit. A 3-5 year deal at 2-2.2m would be fair for him and would set our 4C for the foreseeable future.

Edit: forgot cap %'s, oh well. Had fun writing this even if its not agreed with

 

[NjDevsRR]

 

[Guttersniped]

The other red flag to me is why are you telling the media? And Julie's comments? Is it some form of damage control?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't hear a lot of GMs talking about deals like this. These deals just get done and announced.

Don Sweeney had been talking about the Pasta deal for months and months before it was finally done.

Doomers on the Bruins boards would analyze his random comments about the deal.

They claimed earlier ones sounded more positive or they pointed out that he mentioned working on it a bunch of times, but it still wasn’t done. And all this was worrisome.

But that deal did eventually get done.

So I’m not going to try to use Fitz’s comments as tea leaves.

 

[Guttersniped]

Man, I was just reading about the Flyers trade deadline. Yikes, I almost feel bad.

Worst GM in the league and worst coach in the league, $60 million of cap space tied up in the least talented line-up in the conference next year, and a bottom-10 prospect pool in the league with only one pick in the first two rounds next year.

Stay in college, Cutter Gauthier, stay in college.

Fletcher is a hot mess but how on earth is Torts the worst coach?

 

[Guttersniped]

Felt it was better to make my final rebuttal here instead of in the trade thread, more relevant for team discussion.

As for Mikey being one-dimensional, hes having his best offensive season with two guys slumping this year. So far his P/60 is 236th, good enough to find him in the pool of '3rd line talent' if you count the top-288 for a season. ESP/60 hes much higher, ranking 158th. His current point pace of 31, if put into last years' end stats, would be good enough for 281st (again technically top-9 production if we are to be literal and consider 32 teams with a top-9)

Hes only 25 so it isn't unbelievable to think he can be a 25-30pt forward consistently going forward if we can upgrade his linemates over the next season or two.

He PK'd up to 2 minutes a game last season and is currently fifth on the team at 1:15 so if one of Bastian or Haula aren't kept, Id imagine his SHTOI would rise. Ive read he isn't good defensively and been told his stats arent good/are worse than Wood and Bastian.. but how reliable are advanced metrics for forwards' defense anyhow? Hes seriously worse defensively than Wood? I find that hard to believe lol.

Hes quick, gets a good amount of takeaways, uses his body some, and is money for a defensive draw being one of the better takers in the league. Add in around 25+ points a season when he plays enough and I dont see why that player isn't worth 2m to us in a league where it'd be 2.3% of the cap next season (1.5m cap bump).

Finally Id like to provide a list of some contracts as they were on their championship-winning team, based on ATOI in the playoffs (taking the bottom-4 forwards in ATOI with the most GP, the fourth to allow margin for any ES discrepancies)

In descending order of ATOI, most to least (outliers marked with a *):

(2022) Colorado - Helm 3.85m, O'Connor 750k, Cogliano 1m, Aube-Kubel 1.075m

(2021) Tampa Bay - Stamkos 8.5m*, Colton 700k, Johnson 5m, Maroon 900k

(2020) Tampa Bay - Johnson 5m, Maroon 900k, Paquette 1.65m, Verhaeghe 700k

(2019) St Louis - Thomas 895k, Barbashev 742k, Maroon 1.75m , Blais 673k

(2018) Washington - Smith-Pelly 650k, Vrana 863k, Connolly 1.5m, Chiasson 660k

(2017) Pittsburgh - Sheary 665k, Rowney 613k, Hagelin 3.75m , Wilson 625k

Now I can understand some of these names werent meant to be played this way, whether injury or trade with retention and depth, etc etc...

My point is, simply put, McLeod at 2m being our higher or 2nd highest contract in the bottom of our ATOI, and in a higher cap league, isnt going to kill us. He serves a big role for this team and I dont feel as though he gets his proper credit. A 3-5 year deal at 2-2.2m would be fair for him and would set our 4C for the foreseeable future.

Edit: forgot cap %'s, oh well. Had fun writing this even if its not agreed with

No one has ever, anywhere, at any point, said that Wood is better defensively than McLeod.
Wood is better offensively, because of his shot creation. Wood is volume shooter who gets you goals on your bottom six.

Bastian is better defensively than McLeod, both statistically and with the eye test.

Defense is judged better live because the camera really doesn’t capture everything an above average defender is doing in terms of attention to detail, positioning, manipulation of space. And Bastian is great defensive forward.

He’s a winger and McLeod’s a center though, and centers are more valuable. So I’m not particularly arguing for one over the other.

I think Bastian should be kept because I assume he will be very cheap, so he’s not a problem.

Wood vs McLeod isn’t thing either? It’s the general consensus that Wood is likely a goner, as much as the team loves him, because it’s hard to see where the money for him will come from.

I’m not particularly interested in figuring out McLeod’s contract right now but I don’t understand what comparing it to players on ELCs or minimum contracts does here. But the team will probably try to keep him?

 

[My3Sons]

If Bratt and Meier sign extensions before thr end of the season and NJ wins a single playoff round this season will have been a relative home run for the team that selected second in thr draft one season ago. If the team gets the extensions signed and loses a competent first round it will be a solid success. Just get the extensions done and get the playoff experiment and get ready to be competitive for years to come as Fitz has said.

 

[NHL Fanatik]

No one has ever, anywhere, at any point, said that Wood is better defensively than McLeod.
Wood is better offensively, because of his shot creation. Wood is volume shooter who gets you goals on your bottom six.

Bastian is better defensively than McLeod, both statistically and with the eye test.

Defense is judged better live because the camera really doesn’t capture everything an above average defender is doing in terms of attention to detail, positioning, manipulation of space. And Bastian is great defensive forward.

He’s a winger and McLeod’s a center though, and centers are more valuable. So I’m not particularly arguing for one over the other.

I think Bastian should be kept because I assume he will be very cheap, so he’s not a problem.

Wood vs McLeod isn’t thing either? It’s the general consensus that Wood is likely a goner, as much as the team loves him, because it’s hard to see where the money for him will come from.

I’m not particularly interested in figuring out McLeod’s contract right now but I don’t understand what comparing it to players on ELCs or minimum contracts does here. But the team will probably try to keep him?

When i was looking at some 'simple' advanced stats, if I understood them correctly, Wood had better numbers than McLeod. And my only point of mentioning Wood was that hes who's hes paired with and who I feel most Devils fans preferred, at least before this last half of the season

And I was actually going to spend the time to make up a list of all the contracts with similar ages and production, find out what the range is and has been and determine the cap % from that. Instead I went out lol so Ill take a look this weekend, didnt wanna do all that maneuvering of tabs on my phone. By listing those contracts I was merely trying to say we can afford McLeod at 2 even if hes our 3rd/4th lowest ATOI.

I wasnt trying to bring down any other Devil but instead trying to show what McLeod has had to work with (defensively with Wood and offensively with Bastian). And I understand most 4th lines are a hodge-podge of talent, but if were truly trying to build a contender here I think McLeod anchoring the center of that line for the foreseeable future is best.

If we keep Bastian as well were talking 3-3.5m total between the two. A third guy at either a minimum deal or up to 1m isnt a lot for a fourth line, especially considering we will be saving so much money on Luke Nemec Holtz or any other prospects/AHL guys. And thats without mentioning the cap eventually rising as it should (hopefully lol)

 

[Better Call Sal]

View attachment 662850

I love the way Boqvist is playing as of late.

 

[forceten]

I mean, we won 27 games last year. That's the entire season.

Now we've somehow -- despite probably the vast majority of us waiting for the floor to fall out only to realize we're on a foundation rather than a basement -- remained top 3 in the entire league through 75% of the season.

Anything is gravy here. But we should expect to at least win one playoff series which is going to be huge for this team in so many ways - individually for those who haven't experienced it and for the team to jell.

A question for smarter people (read: everyone, including baboons in the local zoo and probably some platypuses -- why isn't that platypi? -- ) when players are drafted as college players and play for an organization in deep trouble - Arizona, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. -- do their teammates ever "recruit" them to stay the 4 years and sign with their team? NHL teams can never talk to them, obviously, but Luke Hughes could talk to Portillo or whomever (as an example) ...

And speaking of Michigan, do I read it right that TJ Hughes is not drafted? He's done well there... could be a good signing?

 

[MasterofGrond]

Fringe guys often like to play for bad organizations. Makes it more likely they make the show, and sooner.

 

[Triumph]

A question for smarter people (read: everyone, including baboons in the local zoo and probably some platypuses -- why isn't that platypi? -- ) when players are drafted as college players and play for an organization in deep trouble - Arizona, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. -- do their teammates ever "recruit" them to stay the 4 years and sign with their team? NHL teams can never talk to them, obviously, but Luke Hughes could talk to Portillo or whomever (as an example) ...

I doubt it, because aside from a guy like Adam Fox who can be pretty secure he's going to start in the NHL, choosing an organization is an idiosyncratic thing. What are that player's priorities? Andy Greene said he signed here because of the success Rafalski had, but he was stuck in the minors for a year because of the Devils' salary cap issues. Remember Jack McBain? Of course not - anyway he was a four-year collegian who forced a trade out of Minnesota and signed in Arizona and he's played 72 games in the NHL.

Remember also that you are talking about a lot of money - a player who stays in the minors, even with a top signing bonus and maximum two-way salary might only make $160,000 whereas McBain made $925,000 (less escrow).

 

[McDuffz88]

Everyone here thinks Fitz talking about Bratt is positive but I'm going to be more on the side that it might be negative. The fact that an offer has been put on the table & he has yet to hear back from the Bratt camp proves to me the agent is pulling all the same shenanigans from previous years. I think Fitz telling the media about it is him doing a chess move by forcing the pressure to get to Bratt. It's also a form of damage control if things go bad because it's like look I gave Bratt an offer, he wouldn't take it so we just gave the bag to Timo who was willing to accept. I could be wrong but I just have a gut feeling this media is just a desperate attempt to squeeze Bratt to sign.

 

[TrufleShufle]

Everyone here thinks Fitz talking about Bratt is positive but I'm going to be more on the side that it might be negative. The fact that an offer has been put on the table & he has yet to hear back from the Bratt camp proves to me the agent is pulling all the same shenanigans from previous years. I think Fitz telling the media about it is him doing a chess move by forcing the pressure to get to Bratt. It's also a form of damage control if things go bad because it's like look I gave Bratt an offer, he wouldn't take it so we just gave the bag to Timo who was willing to accept. I could be wrong but I just have a gut feeling this media is just a desperate attempt to squeeze Bratt to sign.

Yea Batt's camp knows what they want, if Fitz sent over an offer, and it's not a quick, "yup," or "add a little more here," it points to it not being very close. That's my feeling.

But I also know it's very possible they could have hit the AAV right on the head and now its a matter of structure and clauses, we can hope.

Not worried, but not as excited as I was when he originally talked about getting to work on it.

 

[Patrik26]

Everyone here thinks Fitz talking about Bratt is positive but I'm going to be more on the side that it might be negative. The fact that an offer has been put on the table & he has yet to hear back from the Bratt camp proves to me the agent is pulling all the same shenanigans from previous years. I think Fitz telling the media about it is him doing a chess move by forcing the pressure to get to Bratt. It's also a form of damage control if things go bad because it's like look I gave Bratt an offer, he wouldn't take it so we just gave the bag to Timo who was willing to accept. I could be wrong but I just have a gut feeling this media is just a desperate attempt to squeeze Bratt to sign.

Pastrnak signing for 11.25 AAV made Bratt's agents sack even bigger IMO. I'm in no way implying Persson is looking at 11.25 but 9 or just north of 9 isn't a stretch either (again IMO). As has been brought up before, Fitz has his work cut out for him with this and Meier, not to mention having to juggle who he keeps and who he let's go after this season.

 

[Zajacs Bowl Cut]

I don't think Pasta's contract has any bearing on Bratt/Meier since hes a truly elite star forward whereas the other 2 guys are not on that level

 

[forceten]

I doubt it, because aside from a guy like Adam Fox who can be pretty secure he's going to start in the NHL, choosing an organization is an idiosyncratic thing. What are that player's priorities? Andy Greene said he signed here because of the success Rafalski had, but he was stuck in the minors for a year because of the Devils' salary cap issues. Remember Jack McBain? Of course not - anyway he was a four-year collegian who forced a trade out of Minnesota and signed in Arizona and he's played 72 games in the NHL.

Remember also that you are talking about a lot of money - a player who stays in the minors, even with a top signing bonus and maximum two-way salary might only make $160,000 whereas McBain made $925,000 (less escrow).

Thank you so much. Makes sense.