The Devils have a harder time signing lottery pick goalies right now just because of what’s in their minor league system. Would you want this guy to take starts from Daws or Schmid? I think the Devils need someone who can definitely play at the NHL level. Unless you’re ready to terminate this guys contract if he doesn’t make the team, why sign him. And if you’re willing to do that, why would he sign here?
Yes? These type of guys get contracts get terminated all the time. He signed in Detroit, that’s a winning club? How many healthy goalies do we have again. Brodeur said they would shop for European FA goalies.
We need goalie depth desperately, Daws was injuried for over a month in December, we had lost Wedge on waivers, then Bernier was gone for the season, and Schmid couldn’t hack it the NHL. We didn’t have anyone else who was signed to play goal in the NHL. We traded for Gillies and he immediately ended up on the COVID protocol list after 1 game.
That’s what led to Blackwood playing injured (with “pain management” and no off day practices), which led to tanking his numbers and also presumably souring the relationship between him and the team.
You don’t have bare boned AHL squads with just your top prospects you want to play, you’re playing with fire and it’s a great way to potentially f*** over both your NHL and AHL team next season. (We played our ECHL over and over in the AHL, with the minor league equivalent of EBUGs backing him up, in December while Daws was out and Schmid was in NJ.)
The UFA goalie market is so putrid that Wedge has the 7th - 9th highest cap hit predicted by Evolving Hockey, grabbing a solid experienced pro European goalie for your 3rd goalie is a good move.
Wedge benefits from only being 29 in a market where almost everyone is either very old, has even less NHL experience or had even worse numbers than him (often way worse). Or some terrifying combination of those elements. Teams will be fighting over scraps.
I was hoping for at least one clever Euro signing Brodeur alluded to in an interview a while back to show up. This team’s inability to make good European FA signings doesn’t deserve excuses, it’s another thing we need to get good at if we want to join the big boys.