Confirmed with Link: Schmid and Holtz traded to VGK for Paul Cotter and 2025 3rd rounder

[Jason MacIsaac]

Victor Olofsson will beat out Holtz for a roster spot, called it here first.

 

[Guadana]

Man, I REALLY, REALLY wanted Quinn.

You're disturbing my old wounds.

 

[Triumph]

I get what you meant, I was just trying to make my own point. How nobody ever cares what late round draft picks do in the first few years, but are furiously demanding to get rid of first round picks if they aren't working out in the first two years.

I really do not think there was a groundswell for trading Holtz here until the Meier deal went down, then obviously as last season played out and Holtz's ice time was cut again, that's when it started again. I also don't think people want to trade players selected early in general - obviously there is less patience with first round picks because they should be closest to making the league, but there are also plenty of people who think players who were selected in the first round are always salvagable.

There's a limit to how much a team and a player are willing to work together to fix their problems with one another.

 

[dgibb10]

Cotter needs to be a great 4th liner for this to not be dumb. If he continues to be anything like he’s shown so far then he’s just some run of the mill guy and you could’ve signed some random guy for scraps

Depends on what you think Cotter is?

My other targets for that sort of role were Yakov Trenin (3.5 mill a year), and Beck Malenstyn (early 2nd+I expect 2.5 mill or so).

If you think cotter is that, 775k for 2 years+RFA control is worth a 1st.

If you think he's a hathaway or duhaime, then it's obviously less. But still about 3-4 mill of surplus value there

It’s less his hockey IQ and more his style of play, so I do consider it a drafting mistake.

And also bad luck, since no one ahead of us screwed up. It’s not hard to see why they passed over Rossi, so it was Holtz/Quinn/Perfetti.

From the 2020 Black Book:
View attachment 891655
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View attachment 891656

You have to ask how a player is going to score in the NHL. There’s a lot of limitations to his game just in this section.

He couldn’t score with speed, was a perimeter player and his shot creation was iffy.

You have to be a very exceptional scoring winger to get away with slowing down play and trying to find soft ice. And I mean ridiculously exceptional and he’s not that.

Here’s more, the player he is now is all there, it wasn’t a secret. (Lack of agility, good playmaking, etc)
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Zetterlund doesn’t have better Hockey IQ, and he has worse on-ice vision, he just plays a meat and potatoes, north/south game that translates much better to the NHL.

Zetterlund’s development obviously went really well, like a dream really, but his play style didn’t fundamentally change much either.

Tbf if you gave alex Holtz 19 minutes a night and 4 minutes a night of PP time I think he would certainly top 24 goals and 44 points

 

[devilsfan950003]

Yeah and he's been WAY worse this year, 7 goals in 70 something games. He's also been a 0.5ppg player in ahl his whole career while Holtz was ppg in his first full year. Holtz has gotten better each year, this guy is already declining. You are delusional if you think he's better. Holtz will score more next year than this guy in his whole (short) stint in the Devils.

You may want to rethink this...

 

[Bleedred]

My goodness.

When I saw this was bumped I actually thought it was gonna be because Schmid had a shutout or something lol. Or that Holtz had a hat trick.

Schmid was up and dressed for a bit, and he stopped all 12 in relief the one game he got into. But it appears Samsonov is back and he’s listed as the backup tonight.

And Holtz doesn’t have a point tonight.

 

[Oneiro]

Beautiful piece of pro scouting. And they must have missed some of the speed of '23 and brought it back in.

Our guys know what they're doing sometimes.

 

[devilsfan950003]

My goodness.

When I saw this was bumped I actually thought it was gonna be because Schmid had a shutout or something lol. Or that Holtz had a hat trick.

Schmid was up and dressed for a bit, and he stopped all 12 in relief the one game he got into. But it appears Samsonov is back and he’s listed as the backup tonight.

And Holtz doesn’t have a point tonight.

Fitz took a risk with the trade. For now, he won. Let's revisit at the end of the season.

 

[MartyOwns]

finally, a thread where we can talk about paul cotter

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

Beautiful piece of pro scouting. And they must have missed some of the speed of '23 and brought it back in.

Our guys know what they're doing sometimes.

After the Vegas Golden Knights kicked ass their first year totally unexpectedly with castoffs from other teams I thought that's where the hidden edge is for front offices, using pro scouting + analytics to find guys cast in the wrong role or good complimentary pieces for the core guys you have, signed for cheap, or who can be acquired for cheap. I don't think there's many edges to be found in drafting anymore, for comparison.

I think Carolina definitely has an edge there, with how they look even better after an offseason considered a step backwards, and it's possible NJ maybe has an edge there.

 

[ninetyeight]

I mean on a trade like this (with three young players) it's definitely too early to say anything final, but so far it seems like an absolute slam donk by Fitz. Not only did Cotter not have the regular stats, but nothing in his advanced stats hinted he could be this good this quick. Holtz will probably find his game eventually and Cotter probably won't score 35+ goals, but right now to me this looks like one the most surprising trade outcomes in (at least Devils) history.

 

[Triumph]

It wouldn't surprise me if Cotter wanted a change of scenery, he hadn't played in a playoff game in Vegas despite playing 131 games the previous two seasons. That's where the LTIR shenanigans might cost you a bit.

 

[AfroThunder396]

Paul Cotter

 

[DerekDevils30]

Really fun to read through this thread. This move combined with the Kovacevic trade and the Noesen, Dillon, Pesce signings have completely transformed this team. Some folks were out on Fitz after the Cotter trade but he’s pulled them back in.

 

[Forge]

Fitz took a risk with the trade. For now, he won. Let's revisit at the end of the season.

The thing about Holtz is that it looks like he's basically getting the same treatment he got in New Jersey. VGK is a tough team to crack, but he's basically just taken over Cotter's spot on Wild Bill's line. He's getting a couple more minutes per game, but he's not a primary PP player for them, and I doubt they are trusting him in tough minutes all that much. The offensive game is still there, obviously, but I feel like we are almost at, "he is what he is territory" and he's going to be an offensively gifted player who's all around game keeps him from getting the minutes necessary for that offensive game to reap significant rewards.

Maybe there is a point in time where he gets more PP time and the offensive production has a little more of an uptick but I'm just not sure there is ever going to be an offensive explosion. You still have to earn that PP time and you still have to work hard on the PP.

 

[Guttersniped]

The thing about Holtz is that it looks like he's basically getting the same treatment he got in New Jersey. VGK is a tough team to crack, but he's basically just taken over Cotter's spot on Wild Bill's line. He's getting a couple more minutes per game, but he's not a primary PP player for them, and I doubt they are trusting him in tough minutes all that much. The offensive game is still there, obviously, but I feel like we are almost at, "he is what he is territory" and he's going to be an offensively gifted player who's all around game keeps him from getting the minutes necessary for that offensive game to reap significant rewards.

Maybe there is a point in time where he gets more PP time and the offensive production has a little more of an uptick but I'm just not sure there is ever going to be an offensive explosion. You still have to earn that PP time and you still have to work hard on the PP.

Holtz is shooting 3.4% right now, he’ll score more eventually but I don’t care.

Even with more goals he’ll still be the same player. He’s a guy that has to slow down play and find the soft ice to make plays.

That’s a tough style to really succeed with in the NHL unless you’re extraordinarily talented because all you’re bringing is offense. Unless you have the puck or produce a ton it’s called “floating”.

He also might be shooting so poorly because he’s attempting to play with speed, he doesn’t score that way.

We certainly don’t need Holtz on our PP considering Timo got knocked off the PP1.

Cotter will cool down but we needed his speed and physicality.

 

[Bleedred]

I never had a strong opinion on this trade in the beginning.

I fully expected Schmid to back to whoever we got a goalie from, and I was pretty shocked when he survive the Markstrom trade.

I had Holtz's bags packed to San Jose for TImo back in 2023, but they wanted Zetterlund instead. And that's proving to be the better move by Grier.

I was a little worried Cotter might be a billionaire's John Hayden, but he's been more like the Miles Wood replacement on a hundredaire's budget.

 

[TheBeerNerd]

Boy howdy did I hate this trade when it went down. Schmid was whatever because he was no longer needed. Might have been better to stick with him than Daws. But Holtz... I was convinced he was gonna hit 40 goals on a Vegas team stacked down the middle. They also have precedent for completely shaking down teams to make extremely stupid deals that seem like they wouldn't be made with the rest of the league. Combine that with Cotter's bad counting stats and it ruined my day.

Clearly not the case, if anything it's turning out far better for us. Holtz has only one goal, a far cry when he was trying to get to 20 last season out of sheer force of will.