Ok, I'm going to do my best here because it was a big night for me and the Red Wings draft party I attended wound up at a multitude of bars.
Here's the sentence you all need to read: Simon Nemec is an outstanding RD prospect, but his selection at #2 overall was not ideal and the result of poor asset management for two years of Fitzgerald's GM tenure.
This is sort of a "good news and bad news" post. No Devils fans should be jumping off bridges, but no Devils fans should be jumping over the moon, either. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Because it's this simple: if the Devils took RD Scott Morrow over Chase Stillman last year, this pick is probably not made. If the Devils traded down in 2020 from #20 to take Brock Faber or traded up to #19 to take Braeden Schneider, this pick is probably not made. Heck, if the Devils took Ryan Ufko or Luca Munzenberger instead of Samu Salminen in the 3rd round last year, this pick might be different.
The Devils are bereft at RD. All the system contains is a 3rd pairing stay-at-home guy in Case McCarthy and a likely career AHLer in Reilly Walsh. And for two years, they avoided drafting at the position due to a lack of foresight and strategy. They entered the 2022 draft with a desperate need to fill the position.
Had Montreal drafted Shane Wright at #1, I have no doubt the Devils would have taken Slafkovsky -- another player-type they desperately needed (highly-skilled interior winger to play with Hughes or Hischier). But the Habs went with Slafkovsky, and the Devils did not have a solid contingency plan in place.
The best available player was, without any doubt in my mind, Shane Wright. But Wright is a center and the Devils have a ridiculously outstanding top two at C for the foreseeable future in Hughes and Hischier. Personally, I feel the best strategy would have been to either draft the clear best prospect in Wright or to trade down for RD need with Jiricek/Nemec or interior F need with Gauthier.
GM Tom Fitzgerald has not shown this propensity. In 2020, he made a good pick at #20 with Mukhamadullin, but he surely could have traded down (Washington was trying to trade up for Lapierre) and still had his man. He did not. In 2021, Fitz took Stillman at #29, when he likely could have traded down into the mid-2nd round and still gotten him. Now, he took a player at #2 he could have had at #4 or maybe even #5 or #6.
What was the point of winning the lottery then? In the end, it meant nothing. Fitzgerald is certainly not a bad GM, but I feel he is like the GM equivalent of a good 3rd-line forward -- he's great north/south, but offers little in the way of creativity. There should have been multiple contingency plans in place if Slafkovsky went #1. Wright, or a trade down, or a three-way trade, or whatever. But instead, Fitzgerald just took the player they liked the most at the position they needed the most, regardless of the context. He doesn't trade down, and he clearly doesn't like to think at the fly -- rather he just conflates "making a decision" without considering alternatives which can improve his situation as "conviction". It's not conviction, in fact it's a bit of a white flag.
This is three years in a row that Fitzgerald did not maximize the value of a first-round pick. Mukhamadullin might have been the best available "big defenseman" in 2020 and Stillman might have been the best available "power forward" in 2021 and Nemec might have been the best available "right defenseman" in 2022 -- but none of the three were really in the conversation as the best available player, and that's a problem.
I get that Fitz might not have wanted to trade down with a division rival like Philly or Columbus to gift them a potential franchise C in Wright, but again, to me that's just an admission that the Devils brass was aware how great Wright can truly become. It's a white flag. Could the Devils have gotten #6 and #12 for #2 and the rights to Shane Wright plus a prospect like Bahl or Salminen? I guess we'll never truly know.
That being said -- like with Mukhamadullin -- the pick is not a *failure*, and we need to temper our discontent. Because we also need to keep in mind that Simon Nemec is an absolutely outstanding prospect at a very difficult to fill position of RD. He's elite in transition, he's an elite playmaker, he's a great skater and he's very solid defensively. Simon Nemec is a high-floor two-way RD who I'd be shocked if he did not wind up at least a very good second pairing player. He'll be an NHL all-situations minute-muncher, and his upside is a 50+ point, two-way first pairing stud. Simon Nemec is, quite simply, a terrific prospect.
Ultimately, Simon Nemec is a great prospect, but his pick represented poor asset management. Because, quite frankly, if the Devils take Scott Morrow at #29 last year, I think most in the know would agree the pick at #2 this year would have been Shane Wright. And if the Devils had the foresight to work a contingency plan for Slafkovsky at #1, they would have at the very least had a trade-down in place in case Slaf went #1. But I think the final reaction was "oh f**k, Montreal took Slafkovsky" and then we just filled a need.
Again, the converse argument is that the Devils actually did fill a tremendous need. Nemec is an outstanding RD prospect, and likely enters the Devils prospect pool as the #2 prospect behind only Luke Hughes. It's not a *bad* pick. But I think we'll be wondering for a long time if it were the *right* pick, and on that basis we also have to wonder what might have been if the past three drafts were strategized at a higher level.
