Shero time in the Devils organization.

[Guadana]

Some of the Devils fan are trying to drink a cup of tea and remember the good days, when Shero did drive this team. Others are crying and whining about years of rebuild.
Was Shero good gm? How many years we were in rebuild?


Or Shero did svck and make it hard? Let’s find out.
—————————-

When he did join the team he could start rebuild, but he didn’t.

We did have zero prospects. Lou leave us with nothing in the pipeline. What Shero did? He did trade for Palms. It’s a good trade, but you can’t name it rebuild. And what he did? Nothing. If you want to compete, you need to make your roster stronger. If you want to make rebuild, you need to make a sale.
Btw he drafted Zacha. He prefer center over defenseman, who develop longer. Remember that. We did have Severson, Larsson, Merrill and Gelinas after bad season. He did draft only Colin White in fourth round.

let’s call it a season of watching. 2015-16

Palms and Adam score 30 goals, Zajac did return to his normal form. Camma played well. And Schneider save the day. Team was bad defensively, but Schneider was a God. Smith Pelly was yound and trade did work. Gelinas was trade away.

And Shero did trade for Hall. Trade is excellent in any day of the universe. But it’s not rebuilding move. And he didn’t sell anything. What he did? Trade for Bennet only. Didn’t fix defense. If he would want to make rebuild, he should sell someone here, but he didn’t. He did want to compete.
And drafted McLeod over defensemen. When we have Adam with 30 goals and Zacha from year ago. Zajac is still working. He drafted two defensemen in 5th and in 7th rounds.



2016-17.
All money on Hall. And everybodies pick was past, team was svck, only Zajac and Schneider were great for their role. Palms play solidly. Defense was really bad.

Great moment for rebuild… but he lost a lot of value and sell something small for something small. And… trade 2nd and 4th for Mirco Muller. Player with questionable skating, questionable iq and questionable play under pressure. His questionable skating was very questionable at least.

And trade for Johansson. Second and third.
This is not rebuild. He invested in the team.

But everything how he did decide to fix defense is trading for Mueller. What he did thinks?
He drafted Boqvist over defensemen. I understand the concept, but he did drafted centers before. Zacha, McLeod and Hischier. Pick wasn’t that bad, there were not a lot of good defensemen.



And Hischier pick is result of luck on lottery and fail of his tactics. He put the money (assets) in the team. He didn’t try to make rebuild. It’s a fail result. Thanks God he did draft Nico over Nolan.
He drafted Walsh - small defenseman with questionable skating in the moment and very bad defensive game in the third round, he drafted other defensemen in 7th round.



2017-18.

Finally team make something great. I would say a couple of players. Kinkaid save the day, Hall was a king and Nico was great in his first season.

He FINALLY did trade for good defenseman. And we did make a play off with only one point in gap. That was a team of one line. After Nico, Palms and Hall next offensive player was Bratt with 35 points.
He did trade picks for Grabner.
Nowhere rebuild in this area.

And what he did decide to do.

Freaking nothing. Absolutely. Schneider was broken after using him over his strength. Defense was very questionable or close to be bad.
He could sell some players. He could sign some players. He did nothing.

And drafted Smith. Small defenseman with questionable skating in the moment and questionable defensive game. Remember something? Pick was good in the moment of vacuum, but we could see and understand more about vision of Shero. Next pick was using for defenseman Bednar in fourth round.

2018-19.

Hall was broken team did svck. Defense was bad. Shero did trade something small for something small, and return second picks with trading Boyle and Johansson. Not bad, but he lost value of picks. Blackwood was good but young, Schneider was bad. Kinkaid was traded.

Hughes wasn’t a result of rebuild. It’s was result of lottery luck and Shero fail. He did sell anything before the season, he lost the season. And thanks God we won lottery and Shero did draft Hughes over Kakko. Draft was finally good. He did take different defensemen. AFTER FOUR DRAFTS! He spent actives on defense.

He sign Butcher. Small defenseman with questionable skating in the moment and questionable defensive game. Remember something? Sign was good in the moment, but we can understand something about his vision.

Subban was traded. Subban! Offensive defenseman with average or below average defensive game. For seconds! Where did you saw rebuild.

He traded for Gusev - one way iq freak forward with horrible skating. And sign Simmonds. Player who lost his wheels.



19-20.

He believe in Hynes, Hynes did svck, defense did svck, Schneider sh1t the bad once again. He beliebe in young Blackwood, Blackwood wasn’t consistent. Yadayadayada.

Trading Hall to the Arizona. Arizona was a playoff team in the moment. And Hall should make them even better. It’s luck they lost their wheels because Kuemper injured and we were lucky to have Mercer on the boards. Fitz did awesome trade for Siegentaler after.



————

Overall. Shero did trust to his scouts and they did some very great picks with Bratt and Yegor. He did very good trades with Hall and Palms. He did make a couple of trades backs. Some were good, some were waste.



Thats all. Other than that was bad.

He didn’t try to rebuild. He did make enough of bad trades. He did lost value of picks. His success on the draft was result of his failure.
He always try to force rebuild, but he wasn’t active on the market.
He believe in Schneider and overused him, that did broke him, we still have him under the cap.
Fvck you, Hynes.
He have NO VISION. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. especially how to build defense. He didn’t understand how should it wirk, what kind of defensive player will bring you success and will help. Only one defensive move wit h Vatanen was good. He started to draft defenseman YEARS after he should to start draft defensemen and invest in.
He drafted Swiss goalies and questionable students goalies with meh stats. Now everybody in metro have good promising goalies in pipe line. We have only Daws from Fitz draft, who doesn’t look like future NHL starter for now.



Shero was bad general manager. He he never did trying to really rebuild the team. His “success” was result of luck and failure. When you try to name him as example of something good, you are wrong. Thanks for picking two good players out of four players. Not thanks for drafting McLeod and Zacha instead defensemen, who should take more time for develop. Not thanks to make our defensive situation even more bad, than what we have after Lou. Same with goalie situation.

No love for you, Shero. If we will be ever successful team, this is not because of you. Leave your life far away from the Devils organization.
———————-
Rebuild did start in 20-21 season. Fitz did trade for first round picks. Did Shero trade for first round picks? Five years and only one trade with Hall. There were no rebuild before Fitz did start his service as GM.

Click to read more...

 

[Guadana]

*Knock knock*
- Who’s there?
- It’s me, Shero, I bring the rebuild.

Opened the door and nothing there.

 

[hidek91]

Overall, I like your post, few things to add/explain here, partially playing the role of devils' (nomen omen) advocate:

1) Shero has made a lot of "win now" moves, however they weren't nearly as expensive as Lou's giving up #9 for Schneider or #11 in 2014 because he refused to give up #29 pick in 2012 after Kovalchuk saga.

2) One thing that I never thought about but realized after reading your post is that if we consider Lou trading for Schneider a mistake, we should apply the same standard to Shero for not trading him away in 2015 nor 2016, which would have put us in Matthews' sweepstakes (albeit, ironically, we won the Hischier lottery in 2017). That's an example of trying to rebuild and compete at the same time, which turned out to not be optimal,

3) I disagree with your criticism of picks based on needs. If you believe that McLeod is the best possible pick at #12, you pick McLeod. Also, even if we took need into account (which I believe we shouldn't), our center depth was abysmal at the moment Zacha and McLeod were picked.

4) Overall, I agree with the point of your post, which seems that he was trying to retool a bit when we should have went into full blown rebuild. Happy that we're doing this properly now. Funny thing is that when these moves were happening, they were met with excitement by the vast majority of our fanbase. This shows how delusional NHL fanbases are. We were awful and instead of going into a proper rebuild, people were praising Shero for trading away 2nd round picks like candies because "those picks won't make impact for another 2-3 years". Well, guess what? Those years have passed and while we could have more high quality prospects, we are now left with memories of Mueller, Johansson, Subban, Gusev etc.

5) To sum it up, Shero, while winning a lot of moves, value-wise, lacked a proper direction and wanted to win at many fronts (this is what I believe what got him fired given that our owners also our 76ers but we'll never know for sure). He was given almost an expansion level of the roster by previous GM, who somehow keeps getting jobs in NHL so blaming him for not being competitive in 2020-22 is ridiculous and let's not forget that by pure luck or not, he got us two thirds of a future top six with Hughes, Hischier, Bratt and Sharangovich picks. It's easy to downplay how the first two could have been messed up given how close the races with respectively Kakko and Patrick here. The final grade from me is the most boring one you can imagine, which is that he could have been better, could have been worse.

 

[NJDevs26]

Well I guess we're about to find out if having a Shero thread cuts down on the complaining about the past in the team thread (it might, but just move some of it to a new locale and I'm sure there'll still be posts there on that and other complaining anyway).

It is probably fair to look back on the Shero tenure by now in general, given we're 2.5 years out from it. I think the general conclusion in the op is a bit harsh but they probably weren't going to take the next step with him, especially given his coaching blind spot and need for no-name coaches that have no wattage or cache. Even in Pittsburgh he brought in Bylsma (who only had one forgettable stint in Buffalo after), though they had Crosby and company so it didn't matter as much there.

I do find it odd that the biggest criticism of Shero's tenure here besides the coaching is giving up second-round picks when the drafting as a whole really wasn't all that anyway - the three second-round picks we did make in the Shero tenure are Okhotyuk (not really any huge upside), Bastian (nice fourth-liner) and Boqvist (maybe kinda a borderline third-liner). NHL players sure in the case of the latter two, but not exactly irreplaceable guys. Other than Bratt and Shara - who granted are big others - and maybe Zetterlund and/or Daws in time, they really don't have a lot to show for their non-first round drafting to this point. Heck getting the two of them where we did is practically luck anyway. Especially when we drafted Akira Schmid five picks before Shara.

Zacha wasn't a Shero pick though, he was just a passenger along for Conte's last ride. What was Shero gonna do, overrule the scouts that have been working on the draft board the whole year when he was a carpetbagger at that point in time? I think the other picks in that draft including Blackwood were probably more Shero just wanting types but still he's dealing with the Conte scouting, not the Castron scouting.

I think the general criticism of the Shero quasi-rebuild while retooling strategy is fair though I don't necessarily agree with it, since I'm not much for the extreme 'process' approach in a lottery system that most here favor. I just think the pro scouting failed too often to have any hope of pulling it off. For every Palmieri, there were too many Mirco Muellers and for every Pat Maroon (who was a pure rental) we had too many other vet acquisitions that didn't work out, including the summer of 2019 heist of Subban, Gusev and Simmonds.

 

[MartyOwns]

shero walked into the worst structured team in the league and tried to rebuild on the fly. in some cases he spun shit into gold, and he failed in other areas.

mods, can i make a thread about how shitty a state lou left the team in? based on the lack of consistency here i’ll assume not, although that context is critical for judging shero.

 

[Guadana]

Overall, I like your post, few things to add/explain here, partially playing the role of devils' (nomen omen) advocate:

1) Shero has made a lot of "win now" moves, however they weren't nearly as expensive as Lou's giving up #9 for Schneider or #11 in 2014 because he refused to give up #29 pick in 2012 after Kovalchuk saga.

2) One thing that I never thought about but realized after reading your post is that if we consider Lou trading for Schneider a mistake, we should apply the same standard to Shero for not trading him away in 2015 nor 2016, which would have put us in Matthews' sweepstakes (albeit, ironically, we won the Hischier lottery in 2017). That's an example of trying to rebuild and compete at the same time, which turned out to not be optimal,

3) I disagree with your criticism of picks based on needs. If you believe that McLeod is the best possible pick at #12, you pick McLeod. Also, even if we took need into account (which I believe we shouldn't), our center depth was abysmal at the moment Zacha and McLeod were picked.

4) Overall, I agree with the point of your post, which seems that he was trying to retool a bit when we should have went into full blown rebuild. Happy that we're doing this properly now. Funny thing is that when these moves were happening, they were met with excitement by the vast majority of our fanbase. This shows how delusional NHL fanbases are. We were awful and instead of going into a proper rebuild, people were praising Shero for trading away 2nd round picks like candies because "those picks won't make impact for another 2-3 years". Well, guess what? Those years have passed and while we could have more high quality prospects, we are now left with memories of Mueller, Johansson, Subban, Gusev etc.

5) To sum it up, Shero, while winning a lot of moves, value-wise, lacked a proper direction and wanted to win at many fronts (this is what I believe what got him fired given that our owners also our 76ers but we'll never know for sure). He was given almost an expansion level of the roster by previous GM, who somehow keeps getting jobs in NHL so blaming him for not being competitive in 2020-22 is ridiculous and let's not forget that by pure luck or not, he got us two thirds of a future top six with Hughes, Hischier, Bratt and Sharangovich picks. It's easy to downplay how the first two could have been messed up given how close the races with respectively Kakko and Patrick here. The final grade from me is the most boring one you can imagine, which is that he could have been better, could have been worse.

3) I think you didnt catch my idea. I don`t think Shero picked Mcleod because he was BPA on his thoughts. I don`t think Shero picked Mcleod because he thought he is what teams need.
I think he didn`t understand defensemen as class, he didn`t understand how to build defense, where defensemen should be drafted, what kind of structure of defense he should have, what kind of defensemen he wants etc.

May be he wanted to have only puck moving defensemen with bad skating. But if THAT was his vision, he was a blind man. And you know. He was.

5) Nico and Hughes are results of luck and Failure. Not of his vision and tactics. Truthfully it was against him. And yes, I`m not saying he was bad everywhere. He has good scouts and trust them. Anyway if we look at his drafting, even with Bratt and Yegor, it wasn`t excellent and not even close too(like many of us trying to praise him for).

The most bad thing on my taste, that he didn`t start rebuild and never was trying too. It`s just a lie that we have rebuild in Shero era. We have retooling. On the other hand - he did spend a lot of time without any activeness in summer. And his defensive work was tremendously terrible.

That was a bad managening. I still happy with Nico, Jack, Jesper and Yegor. I`m very big fan of 2019 draft. 2016 was pretty pretty good(outside of Mcleod). But It`s a scouting job outside of Mcleod. And I close my eyes on our weaker sides. I`m not the man who will say "Nico is a bad picked, Jack is disaster, Mukh was picked way before consensus - it`s bad, Nico was picked by consensus - it`s bad" etc. I understand circumstances. Lou was awful in his last years and his believe in Conte cost us ten years of unhappiness. But I cant say Shero was good. Because he was not. He spent five years for losing against his will and didn`t trade any player on the maximum of theirs value. May be Boyle and Stempniak. It was a couple of second rounds in five years.

Anyway I`m living today. I like what Fitz doing with defense. I don`t like that he is`nt trading back in the draft days, but he is doing what Shero did - trust his scouts. May be he trust them even little more. And he should adress RD problem much more. And I`m happy we have two great centers, a couple of good wingers from Shero days.

 

[NJDevs26]

shero walked into the worst structured team in the league and tried to rebuild on the fly. in some cases he spun shit into gold, and he failed in other areas.

mods, can i make a thread about how shitty a state lou left the team in? based on the lack of consistency here i’ll assume not, although that context is critical for judging shero.

A) It's just gonna be the same crap there with Shero-Lou comparisons as there inevitably will be here, people are free to complain about how Shero supposedly had has hands tied because of Lou in a Shero thread anyway (as always there's some truth to that, but not quite as much as people want to make it out to be...Lou left basically zero cap issues and Shero never really took advantage of that at all, as we wasted millions of cap dollars year after year that could have been used for obtaining assets).

B) Making a thread on Lou's last ten years is pretty selective when there's a whole other generation of success involved. Shero never had twenty years of success, the five years was his whole tenure here.

C) We're still very much being affected by what happened in the Shero tenure and what didn't happen. Only people like you still use the Lou tenure as a crutch for what hasn't happened eight years later. Eventually the crutch has to go away and Shero/Fitz have to be accountable for their own tenures. Look at what Yzerman walked into in Detroit, and I'll bet money it won't take eight years and two lotto wins for him to get out of the basement for good.

 

[Guadana]

shero walked into the worst structured team in the league and tried to rebuild on the fly. in some cases he spun shit into gold, and he failed in other areas.

mods, can i make a thread about how shitty a state lou left the team in? based on the lack of consistency here i’ll assume not, although that context is critical for judging shero.

He was in bad position after lou, blah blah blah.

he was bad, didn`t have a vision and didnt try to make rebuild, didn`t try to really compete outside of 2019 preseason. Didn`t understand what he should do with defense. Everything is in the post, step after step.

5 years is a huge distance to understand what he did right and what he did not. No one asking to make contender right from the Lou freaking field of sh`tty nothing. But new GM should working with strategy, with right steps and intended logic. Shero didn`t. He was trying to do one thing, didn`t do it right, Devils didn`t win, we did have better position in the draft day. In day one, Not in the day two, because he lost the value of picks. Everything in the post. step after step.

He fails, we were lucky on lottery, scouts did draft better players. Thanks God.

Shero 's guilty.

 

[NJDevs26]

Not doing enough on defense is fair though it might be more he just didn't do enough right. He tried with Subban, that flopped. His Siegenthaler-type move with Mirco Mueller didn't exactly work as well for him as Siegs has for Fitz. Obviously he didn't use a lot of draft capital on the D either, unless you count what he traded for Subban and Mueller as part of it but when it comes to drafting in that case I agree with the Lou cynics - there really wasn't a lot prospect-wise to build on, maybe there should have been more of an effort to draft high-end D earlier on but they needed forwards, and a lot of them while we thought we had a better young D core than we did, so I can't really fault it THAT much.

Drafting for need more than value is a criticism I've seen here (re: McLeod over Chych), fact is we'll never truly know whether they drafted for 'need' or their value board was just screwed up to begin with, but that's why I always roll my eyes at the assumptions that we drafted for need when supposed need picks don't work out. As if teams all have the same draft boards as the fans and pundits anyway.

 

[RangerDoggo]

Shero did more harm than good for us because of a lack of overall team vision, a view of defense that was unrealistic in today’s NHL, and loyalty to one of the worst coaches in the league. The young foundation he left us was partially legitimately good late-round drafting (Bratt, Yegor, possibly Gritsyuk) and partially complete dumb luck falling into first overall. Given how he took McLeod solely based on positional need and Ty Smith instead of K’Andre Miller, I don’t doubt he would have screwed up the 2017 and 2019 picks if he wasn’t gifted 1st overall.

People can keep complaining about post-cap era Lou all they want, and he deserves the blame for getting us into the hole, but it’s not like Shero did much in his tenure to dig us out.

 

[Bcap88]

Not this rehash again

 

[AfroThunder396]

Shero's worst offenses are:

-Seriously underestimating how much work needed to be done (ie, thinking we were a Taylor Hall away)
-His attachment to Hynes
-Lack of team building

Overall he did an excellent job of cultivating value through draft and trade, and his UFA signings were largely effective (especially for their price). Replacing the Ruutus and Tootoos of the world with legitimate NHL players and prospects and actually giving us ammunition to use in deals to address need.

The defense neglect was due to (1) it's harder to find quality options on defense if you don't have assets to trade, so you have to take what you can get, and (2) 2016/2017 Schneider made the defense look better than it was, so it didn't seem like adding tons of assets were as necessary.

In 2016 we were 8th best in goals allowed and 8th best in shots against per game, in 2018 we were pretty middle of the pack in both, 17th in goals against and 16th in shots against. I totally get why the offense seemed like a bigger priority, given that guys like Stefan Noesen and Brian Gibbons were both top-10 on that team in points.

Once all of Lou's prized defensive prospects flamed out and Larsson was traded, things got really bad really quickly.

In the end he bet on the wrong horse far too many times and was way too stubborn. He earned the boot. But I don't buy for a second that any other GM in the same position could have turned this team into a contender in the same 5 years. It would have required flawless drafting in 2015, 2016, and 2017 and that's just not a reasonable expectation to have. Some other GMs may have done better, but most of them would have done worse.

 

[Goptor]

I actually liked what he did with the exception of coach choices. The same problem plagued him in Pittsburgh also.

I personally don't agree with going into every draft with 10+ picks. You run out of contract and roster space. You'll struggle to have success and develop players if your entire AHL roster is filled up with 1st and 2nd year pros. Shero brought in enough extra picks through shrewd draft day movement and selling off rentals that he had the luxury of bringing in projects. Some were bad (Mueller), some were neutral (Johansson), and some were good (Palmieri) but that is how those trade tend to go.

 

[Lou is God]

Shero's biggest neglect was the offseason after we made the playoffs, he did ZIP to improve the blueline that overperformed in 2017-18,, it was also his downfall IMO.

 

[Bleedred]

I've been over this 200 times, but since this is its own thread now, why not get into it again?

I thought Shero did a good job here. Do I think he should have gotten fired? I think he deserved it, but I'm pretty sure for reasons that are different then most other people have.

If he weren't fired on that random late Sunday afternoon just 1-2 hours before the start of a game in January of 2022, I think he absolutely would have just been fired this May. Unless he did something to put together a playoff team in 2021 and/or 2022. That would have been 6 playoff misses in 7 years, which even GM's of expansion teams haven't typically survived that.

One glaring and noticeable thing that may or may not been his fault, you could easily blame it on just how FUBAR'd the team and state of the organization were in at the time he took over, but one very noticeable and disheartening thing was that he acquired about 4 pretty good, young (all between ages 24 and 26) already established NHL players in Palmieri, Hall, Johansson and Vatanen, only for us to still be uncompetitive (outside of the 17-18 season) and still having bottom finishes by the time these players got old enough to be UFA's. So we got these guys, only one of them was traded for a pretty equal value player (Vatanen for Henrique) and one was traded for a good NHL defenseman, but the value and disaparity between the two players was incredibly lopsided for their respective positions.

So we're still floundering and finishing at the bottom by the time every one of these players is at or nearing 30 years old. Does that mean Shero wasn't doing a good job here or just that the state of the franchise was in such ruin when he took over? I think it's fair to say it was in such ruin, but also fair to criticize him just a little bit.

But here's where I think he earned his pink slip. He had a good 2019 offseason that was full of hype (obviously not good enough), loaded up on guys that could score, including PK Subban, who just didn't score anymore once he got here, despite a 40+ point season just the year before and almost a 60 point season the year before that.

By 2018-2019 it became very apparent that Cory Schneider was no longer salvageable. It was painfully obvious that Schneider was either going to be bought out before his contract ended or that he would go to LTIR before it was to end in 2022. Even Shero had some words of public criticism for Schneider himself around November of 2018. So he loads up on these upgrades in the summer of 2019. There was even this hype up season opening video they showed on opening night of 2019-2020 (I've never been able to find it on youtube) where it seemed obvious that the goal was playoffs or bust that year. He makes these upgrades and yet the goalie tandem going into that season is 33.5 year old and 3 years into decline Cory Schneider and a 22 year old Blackwood that played 23 games the year before/in the NHL at all.

This was a BAD move by Shero, it couldn't have just been only me that saw this being a problem, I know people in management had to have thought this was more than a potential disaster waiting to happen. Schneider either should have been bought out in the summer of 2019 and somebody else (Lehner was my guy at the time) is signed to be a tandem with Blackwood, or you bring back Schneider one last time but sign somebody else (Lehner still) or see about trading for somebody like Jack Campbell then and Blackwood starts the year in the minors. And when Schneider inevitably blows up (which he did, that's exactly what happened) then you waive him in November (which is exactly what happened once again) and you bring up Blackwood. And that's not what happened. What happened was Louis Domingue was brought up because Shero neglected the goalie position in the offseason of 2019. So either he was smoking the Cory dust as much as any fan was with the endless ''Cory is gonna bounce back! He was .920% for 20 games last year, including the world championships!'', or he just thought we were gonna be able to win most of our games by a score of 4-3 or 5-4. In the end, having to wait another year to buy out Cory is better for us NOW, as his dead buyout cap hit is only on the books until 2024 and not 2025 like it would have been if we had bought him out in the summer of 2019, but it was absolutely not better for us THEN.

The Hynes thing - I don't think Hynes was getting fired after 2018-2019, no matter how much some of us wanted him to. We had just made the playoffs the year before, only in the third year into the rebuild, of which the first year still featured quite a few Lou carryovers. So Hynes got a pass for that. He stuck with Hynes for TOO LONG, yes, but only about 7 weeks too long. The circus act of sending his assistant general manager down to the bench about 3 weeks into the season was really a desperation move where he was screaming that he was gonna do anything he could to get out of firing Hynes at that moment and buy as much time as he could.

 

[Triumph]

A) It's just gonna be the same crap there with Shero-Lou comparisons as there inevitably will be here, people are free to complain about how Shero supposedly had has hands tied because of Lou in a Shero thread anyway (as always there's some truth to that, but not quite as much as people want to make it out to be...Lou left basically zero cap issues and Shero never really took advantage of that at all, as we wasted millions of cap dollars year after year that could have been used for obtaining assets).

B) Making a thread on Lou's last ten years is pretty selective when there's a whole other generation of success involved. Shero never had twenty years of success, the five years was his whole tenure here.

C) We're still very much being affected by what happened in the Shero tenure and what didn't happen. Only people like you still use the Lou tenure as a crutch for what hasn't happened eight years later. Eventually the crutch has to go away and Shero/Fitz have to be accountable for their own tenures. Look at what Yzerman walked into in Detroit, and I'll bet money it won't take eight years and two lotto wins for him to get out of the basement for good.

You're completely missing the point here, Yzerman walked into a way better situation in Detroit, it isn't even close. Yes, he had worse long-term deals on the books whereas Lou's team had burned itself out and was free to spend, but the lesson you should take away from Shero's tenure here is that cap space is barely an asset to a team in the toilet. Teams don't want to give away picks to trade contracts, that is a last resort move for them. Dead contracts are now traded to rich teams just as often as poor teams - Weber went to Vegas, Little went to Arizona. Yzerman has also done almost nothing with his cap space - he acquired Marc Staal and a 2nd for nothing. Hooray. He also acted as a go-between with the David Savard contract, a thing that just wasn't necessary in the old days, and got a 4th round pick for that.

Where Yzerman's situation is way better is that Detroit did not have a great goalie signed to a super long-term deal. That just confounds everything. The hope was in 2015 that the Devils could rebuild around Schneider but then Schneider fell apart, and it was going to be a massive challenge to rebuild around Schneider anyway. Yzerman didn't have to do anything at all for the Wings to finish last in 2020, Shero never got the Devils there, in part because he wasn't trying, but he would've had to deal Schneider to do it.

Here's the leading scorers on the 2019-20 Red Wings' ages: 23, 24, 25, 24, 22, 25, 35. Here's the leading scorers on the 2015-16 Devils: 24, 25, 30, 32, 33, 21, 22.

Here's the Red Wings' draft positions in the 1st round for the previous 5 years: 13, 19, 20, 9, 6

Here's the Devils' draft positions: X, 4, 29, X, 30

So yeah, Yzerman is in way better shape, even though most of those 1sts had already busted by the time he got there.

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

I've repeated myself a million times on this but Shero's failings were:

Shero's worst offenses are:

-Seriously underestimating how much work needed to be done (ie, thinking we were a Taylor Hall away)
-His attachment to Hynes
-Lack of team building

Agree with this

Overall he did an excellent job of cultivating value through draft and trade, and his UFA signings were largely effective (especially for their price). Replacing the Ruutus and Tootoos of the world with legitimate NHL players and prospects and actually giving us ammunition to use in deals to address need.

Don't agree so much on this, hate hate HATED trading all the 2nds and 3rd for roster players instead of signing FAs for NHL talent. Basically every year we had a ton of cap space, that was a missed opportunity to use THAT to acquire NHL talent, which could then be flipped for picks possibly if the team was far away (which it was). Seemed like we spent years salivating for that cap space to be weaponized and then summer of shero happened and we realized the team was years away and we used that cap space on a misfit team. Fitz seems to agree with this strategy of using picks to acquire NHL talent and Graves looks like a miss (or at least too much paid up front for him), Siegenthaler looks like a hit. I find it's actually a very expensive way to build a team, and you ONLY are able to acquire cast offs (guys who are only available because of cap issues or an expansion draft).

Everyone sees the UFA contract AAV and thinks "what a bad contract" ignoring that the acquisition cost in many ways goes into that AAV. When you pay draft picks to acquire a player, that's the acquisition cost and it's paid up front and forgotten about pretty much instantly. Well we are suffering now that we don't have as strong of a pipeline of young talent maturing today as we missed multiple 2nd/3rd rounders over a few years. Maybe it's worth it now that we have the cap space to do...we shall see. I think a lot of this is we ALL underestimated how LTIR would be used to avoid cap issues, Shero included, so we all overestimated how important it was to avoid "bad" contracts.

But the overestimating how close the team was in retrospect is the real problem, and I also think he overestimated how he could outfox the entire league with his savvy trades/cap management. Ultimately the Larsson for Hall deal was his undoing as it created unrealistic expectations too quickly.

 

[Triumph]

As for Shero's tenure, he said at the outset that he could throw everything away and be shitty for 5 years but he didn't want to do that. I don't think he was hired to do that, either - I don't think the financial incentives are there for the Devils to really tank. But it ended up happening anyway because of how little was here and Shero couldn't replicate the smart signings in Year 1 - the league wised up a bit. I'm of the firm belief that the Mirco Mueller deal was in part because the Devils were selecting Nico Hischier and they wanted another Swiss player around. The Gusev trade was always going to be a big gamble.

I like Shero's trading mentality. I liked that he traded down at the draft several times, and wish Fitzgerald had that sort of creativity with picks. He was deservedly fired because 2019 f***ed up so bad and you don't want a GM to change course mid-stream twice, they're typically not very good at that.

 

[NJDevs26]

You're completely missing the point here, Yzerman walked into a way better situation in Detroit, it isn't even close. Yes, he had worse long-term deals on the books whereas Lou's team had burned itself out and was free to spend, but the lesson you should take away from Shero's tenure here is that cap space is barely an asset to a team in the toilet. Teams don't want to give away picks to trade contracts, that is a last resort move for them. Dead contracts are now traded to rich teams just as often as poor teams - Weber went to Vegas, Little went to Arizona. Yzerman has also done almost nothing with his cap space - he acquired Marc Staal and a 2nd for nothing. Hooray. He also acted as a go-between with the David Savard contract, a thing that just wasn't necessary in the old days, and got a 4th round pick for that.

Where Yzerman's situation is way better is that Detroit did not have a great goalie signed to a super long-term deal. That just confounds everything. The hope was in 2015 that the Devils could rebuild around Schneider but then Schneider fell apart, and it was going to be a massive challenge to rebuild around Schneider anyway. Yzerman didn't have to do anything at all for the Wings to finish last in 2020, Shero never got the Devils there, in part because he wasn't trying, but he would've had to deal Schneider to do it.

Here's the leading scorers on the 2019-20 Red Wings' ages: 23, 24, 25, 24, 22, 25, 35. Here's the leading scorers on the 2015-16 Devils: 24, 25, 30, 32, 33, 21, 22.

Here's the Red Wings' draft positions in the 1st round for the previous 5 years: 13, 19, 20, 9, 6

Here's the Devils' draft positions: X, 4, 29, X, 30

So yeah, Yzerman is in way better shape, even though most of those 1sts had already busted by the time he got there.

But again you guys are attaching everything to forwards just like Shero did...without cap space you don't even have the ability to get players. It's not just a matter of taking back dead contracts in cap deals, although it's telling the only one of those deals we did was for like a $500,000 salary on Savard's contract. You can pay guys on short-term contracts, or take them back in trades. Yes I know we did the latter a few times but I don't even consider Hall a cap move as much as it was an Edmonton being stupid move. MarJo, Gusev...those were the only types of deals you could classify as taking advantage of cap space but there were too few of them and far fewer still that worked.

And what does Detroit having a few younger players matter when they have a years-long rebuild? Those players gonna be older when you get good unless you flip them for future assets anyway. So from that standpoint, sure they're in a better position to accumulate assets long-term but it still backs up the process as you're riding out bad contracts and cleaning out the chaff.

 

[Triumph]

But again you guys are attaching everything to forwards just like Shero did...

I'm not doing that. I listed the leading scorers, some of them are defensemen. But it is a forward-driven league.

without cap space you don't even have the ability to get players.

Who cares when you're tanking.

It's not just a matter of taking back dead contracts in cap deals, although it's telling the only one of those deals we did was for like a $500,000 salary on Savard's contract. You can pay guys on short-term contracts, or take them back in trades.

Short-term contracts are not easy to sign and the Devils got value for most of the UFAs they signed in this way (Fiddler, Boyle, Lovejoy). A player who signs a short-term contract is usually not worth very much. And yes, you can take them back in trades, but the Devils didn't really have anyone to trade for them - their 3 biggest contracts were way too big for anyone to trade for, they bought out Cammalleri, and that was basically it. It was a different cap environment and people should realize that.

And what does Detroit having a few younger players matter when they have a years-long rebuild? Those players gonna be older when you get good unless you flip them for future assets anyway. So from that standpoint, sure they're in a better position to accumulate assets long-term but it still backs up the process as you're riding out bad contracts and cleaning out the chaff.

They can be flipped, yes, or they can be retained. That just puts a team in a way better position to have young-ish talent. Dylan Larkin is way better than anybody the Devils had.

 

[Guadana]

And I really like how every defendor of Shero trying to name Lou and his capital.
Its not about starting position. Its about the way of managing, calculating, tactics and decision making. What he did decide to do, what he actually do and what kind of results it did bring. I would be okey with no playoff game in five years, if Shero spend every asset he did have with better mindset. This team have what they have because of Castron and failure of Shero, and luck in the draft days. Not because Shero was smart and did right things step by step. He wanted to do absolutely different things, and sometimes he did absolutely nothing in any way. And his defensive work is horrible. We could blame Lou, but he did even better job in his last five years with defense, than Shero did in his five years. And I don't wanna say nothing good about Lou in his last years.
Because gm should clearly see what is going on with his team and what he should do to bring success. Now or in the future. Shero didn't. He was trying to gamble with picks for players. Again and again. GM mean general manager. Not a gambling machine.

 

[JimEIV]

Lou Lamoriello Devil's GM 1987-2015

GM 1996:World Cup Gold medal winning team upsetting a stacked Team Canada with Gretzky and Lemieux.

GM for the 1998 Nagano Olympics

Inducted into Hockey Hall of Fame 2009
Inducted into the US Hockey Hall of Fame 2012

With NJ:

Games: 2,140
Wins: 1,093
Loss: 759
Ties: 179
OT 109
Points: 2,474
Point% .578

Playoff Appearances: 21
Division championships: 9
Conference championships: 5
Finals Appearances: 5
Stanley Cups 3.


That's what Lou left us with.

 

[MachoDiablo]

I've made this comparison before, but I always kind of saw Shero's tenure a bit like how the Mets seemed to operate once the Wilpons got outed as being damaged by the Bernie Madoff scandal: they were too scared to say "rebuild", since they wanted to sell tickets and thought nobody would come to watch a team starting from scratch, but they didn't want to commit to building a winner by spending a lot, either, so they tried to retool, instead, or somewhat "rebuild on the fly".

The good thing is that during that time Shero never really bogged the team down in onerous contracts, and a lot of the guys he brought in eventually got dealt for the futures that have helped to stock up the pipeline much better today. He often traded well, his drafts were pretty good with a few real gems in there (Bratt being the obvious one), there's a lot of good to be said about how he handled day to day business.

But yeah, given where the organization was at the time, the attempt to win while also trying to keep financial commitments down and thus trading away a bunch of 2nd/3rd rounders wasn't the way to go; this club needed all the futures it could get. No, not all those picks would've panned out, but there's likely a bunch of blue liners that could've been brought in earlier than the ones we eventually got, or at the very least the state of the organization's prospect pipeline could've looked stronger to outsiders and become more attractive for trades, who knows.

He definitely came into a bad situation, he had some good ideas and well executed deals, but benefit of hindsight shows it would've been better to bite the bullet and take the pain of a true rebuild earlier.

 

[Camille the Eel]

Another marker of success here - and I don’t know the answer - is how Shero found and left the organization as a whole, scouting, facilities, fan base in Newark and the region, public relations as well as profit and loss on the balance sheet and also gain in value of the franchise. Negotiation and structuring of the kids contracts even if we did luck into 2 important # 1s.

He was certainly transitional and oversaw or even precipitated the franchise moving on from Lou. Even Fitz is a Shero acquisition in a sense. If we are in a better place now, and likely poised to become one of the better clubs, then Shero surely deserves some, even much of the credit.

 

[Oneiro]

For both Shero and Fitz, the M.O. has been not to saddle the team with any 4-5+ year long contracts for veterans with questionable value. Until Hamilton, obviously. This is the lens I look through re: every single move for a veteran.

Boyle, Lovejoy, Palmieri, Subban, Gusev, Murray, Johansson, Johnsson, Tatar, etc. Small bets, mostly weak results. Very little lasting damage, though. NHL bodies while the cupboard got replenished. The latter two - Johnsson and Tatar - are still moves I'd make on principle given the same context of a low scoring, inexperienced team. Joey Anderson was a player I liked but still hasn't cracked the NHL full-time.

Had we not done the Palmieri trade, I guess we could've had Greenway, Dunn, Lauzon, Kylington, Siegenthaler, Hintz, Rasmus Andersson, etc. No world beaters and none of them better than prime Palmieri (yet).

Mueller was dumb. As noted before, no NHL mainstay was picked between the 2nd we gave up for Mueller and Zetterlund, our next pick, though I think it's fair to criticize the move on principle. I liked Merrill too.

I also question the idea that Subban was the kind of player you bring in to stabilize the defense. He played his best hockey next to a stable partner in Markov and Ekholm. But again, in terms of assets: I don't think a Brink or Hoglander is changing the fate of this club and Santini/Davies were nothing at the NHL level. So the deal again had minimal impact. But I think it's fair to hold it against Shero.

Too early to judge 2020 and 2021 drafts so can't say much about the Gusev picks.

Ultimately, you're still sitting here with a lot of potential players to sift through, despite giving away those 2nd and 3rds. If you think Coleman and Kerfoot, guys who played their first full NHL seasons at 26 and 23, are points in Lou's favor - which you should - then I'd wait a minute on Boqvist, Zetterlund, Thompson, Okhotiuk, etc. before saying we've pissed away the last eight years.