What happened to Ryan Graves?

Sounds like his tenure in Pittsburgh.

Also Mike Sullivan's 'system' is where defensemen go to die. If he was in a better, more structured environment he might be *slightly* serviceable.
Aw man what happened to when they had a different budding Norris candidate every two years for you guys to hype up?

so weird how that didn't work out.
 
Good luck, I'm still waiting to find out what happened to Will Butcher
Yep exactly Graves was alright for the Devils in 22-23 but re-signing him to the contract that Pitts gave him would of been disastrous, even if he didn't play as bad as he is now. Severson heavily regressed after going to the Jackets. That would have been another disastrous contract for the Devils.


Same here! Looked like there was good potential after his rookie season, then he fell off the face of the earth in like 20 games.

I thought Graves was a decent enough 2nd pair guy for his two years with the Devils. Not that +/- is everything but he was a +34 in 2022-23.

As for Butcher, he got sheltered minutes in 2017-18. At even strength:

Vatanen (18:40)
Moore (17:49)
Greene (17:48)
Severson (17:09)
Mueller (14:31)
Lovejoy (13:33)
Butcher (13:22)

Meanwhile Butcher led the D with 2:39 of PP time per game. 23 of his 44 points came on the PP.

In 2018-19, they increased Butcher's usage and his defensive warts started to become more apparent. And then they'd acquire P.K. Subban at the 2019 Draft. Subban would take the PP1 spot for awhile but then lost it to Sami Vatanen.

So Butcher became a guy they didn't trust at even strength but was now wasn't even getting regular PP2 minutes. Not many of those guys stick around long term in the league. Unfortunately Ty Smith would end up being a better skating version of Butcher recently.
 
His offensive explosion last night led to a mention ina HockeyBuzz blog today:
“Ryan Graves earned his first point of the season on an assist in his 40th game played. He still trails Alex Nedeljkovic in both goals (1) and points (2). He has four years remaining on his contract with an AAV of 4.5M.”
 
His offensive explosion last night led to a mention ina HockeyBuzz blog today:
“Ryan Graves earned his first point of the season on an assist in his 40th game played. He still trails Alex Nedeljkovic in both goals (1) and points (2). He has four years remaining on his contract with an AAV of 4.5M.”
His assist has been renounced lol

 

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