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The 2014 NJ Devils Offseason Thread


Derlique

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I think it'd be a good idea to have one thread devoted to the offseason and day to day happenings/thoughts to reduce clutter. We have threads devoted to the draft, prospects, A-Devils and playoffs. This is the place to discuss possible UFAs, our RFAs, personnel, coaching etc.

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Normally I would make a thread of my own for whatever I would like to see the Devils do, but this off-season is going to be too strange, I believe. I think there's going to be a rather significant trade this summer with the wealth of defensive prospects we have.

I've been scrolling through teams on Capgeek looking at who might be in cap trouble. With Chicago up against the wall, I could see Lou going very hard after Sharp. Hossa looks enticing, but that recapture is going to be a bitch.

Same with the Canucks. They look like they'll be up against the cap, and I wouldn't be shocked to see one of Kesler, Burrows, Booth, or Higgins be moved but I'm not sure I want a piece of those guys.

The Caps look to be right up against the cap and perhaps they want to shake things up. It helps that they need some D. Brouwer and Laich are guys I would inquire about in addition to Backstrom and Johansson - but I doubt they'll be moving either of them.

Stastny and Moulson would be nice gets through UFA. Even if the Avs lose Stastny, they'll still be up against the cap the enxt few years. As discussed in another thread, perhaps O'Reily becomes available or they could deal Parenteau.

Whatever happens, I'm excited to see how thing turn out.

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Normally I would make a thread of my own for whatever I would like to see the Devils do, but this off-season is going to be too strange, I believe. I think there's going to be a rather significant trade this summer with the wealth of defensive prospects we have.

I've been scrolling through teams on Capgeek looking at who might be in cap trouble. With Chicago up against the wall, I could see Lou going very hard after Sharp. Hossa looks enticing, but that recapture is going to be a bitch.

Same with the Canucks. They look like they'll be up against the cap, and I wouldn't be shocked to see one of Kesler, Burrows, Booth, or Higgins be moved but I'm not sure I want a piece of those guys.

The Caps look to be right up against the cap and perhaps they want to shake things up. It helps that they need some D. Brouwer and Laich are guys I would inquire about in addition to Backstrom and Johansson - but I doubt they'll be moving either of them.

Stastny and Moulson would be nice gets through UFA. Even if the Avs lose Stastny, they'll still be up against the cap the enxt few years. As discussed in another thread, perhaps O'Reily becomes available or they could deal Parenteau.

Whatever happens, I'm excited to see how thing turn out.

Sharp would be a fantastic get, but I highly doubt Chicago would move him, cap issues or not. They'll move someone else so they can keep him.
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Looks to me like Chicago will be fine next year, and they can always dump off Kris Versteeg on someone else if they need to (and indeed I imagine they will, because Jeremy Morin is tearing up the AHL).

 

It's a big off-season because the Devils can jump right into the possible contenders in a somewhat weak East with a great off-season or they could pilot themselves right to another finish like this year's with a poor one.  Hard decisions have to be made on some players.

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Looks to me like Chicago will be fine next year, and they can always dump off Kris Versteeg on someone else if they need to (and indeed I imagine they will, because Jeremy Morin is tearing up the AHL).

 

It's a big off-season because the Devils can jump right into the possible contenders in a somewhat weak East with a great off-season or they could pilot themselves right to another finish like this year's with a poor one.  Hard decisions have to be made on some players.

 

I really don't trust Lou to do anything magical...or do the right things that need to be done for that matter. I don't envy any GM to fix the Devils offensive problems right now. Even if Jagr comes back, I can't expect him or Elias to have better seasons than this one.

 

The best option for me is making a trade for a few impact players. Which defenseman goes....that's a good Q. Kind of wish Kelowna would go further, so Severson could be showcased a little more.

Edited by devilsrule33
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I really don't trust Lou to do anything magical...or do the right things that need to be done for that matter. I don't envy any GM to fix the Devils offensive problems right now. Even if Jagr comes back, I can't expect him or Elias to have better seasons than this one.

 

The best option for me is making a trade for a few impact players. Which defenseman goes....that's a good Q. Kind of wish Kelowna would go further, so Severson could be showcased a little more.

 

I don't really think showcasing in the Memorial Cup is really going to change anyone's mind about a player.  Severson's not going to blow anyone away, he's clearly a nice prospect and very likely a future NHLer, but not the centerpiece for a top player.

 

There's no magic here, but the Devils can vault themselves to around 20th in offense while still remaining the best defensive team in the league.  A disastrous offseason could have them again being a bottom 5 offense with a worse defense than this year as well.

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To be perfectly honest, if the Devils go into next season with the same roster as this year, I truly think they'll be in the playoffs.  They had too much bad luck this year.

 

That being said, there are some good players in this year's UFA market I'd love for the Devils to get.

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To be perfectly honest, if the Devils go into next season with the same roster as this year, I truly think they'll be in the playoffs.  They had too much bad luck this year.

 

That being said, there are some good players in this year's UFA market I'd love for the Devils to get.

 

Are you saying it is totally doable then with the same lineup?

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To be perfectly honest, if the Devils go into next season with the same roster as this year, I truly think they'll be in the playoffs.  They had too much bad luck this year.

 

That being said, there are some good players in this year's UFA market I'd love for the Devils to get.

oh here we go again.. now we didnt make the playoffs this year because we just had "bad luck" nothing to do with a lack of talent everyone we played just happened to be luckier than we were.
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oh here we go again.. now we didnt make the playoffs this year because we just had "bad luck" nothing to do with a lack of talent everyone we played just happened to be luckier than we were.

Well, if you believe the shootout has a lot of luck, which I do, that became a major factor in the Devils missing the playoffs.

Also the goaltending should be better next year.

So everything else being equal and those 2 things changing would likely have put the Devils into the playoffs this year with this roster.

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Even if you want to attribute missing the playoffs to 'bad luck' this team wasn't good enough to do anything in the postseason regardless.  They need major changes up front considering we have better defense/goaltending than most of the playoff teams seem to have.  It's telling that we're not there.

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Even if you want to attribute missing the playoffs to 'bad luck' this team wasn't good enough to do anything in the postseason regardless.  They need major changes up front considering we have better defense/goaltending than most of the playoff teams seem to have.  It's telling that we're not there.

thank you.. it would be nice if we had atleast one person put up 30 goals... we lacked scoring this season.. anxious to see what happens during the offseason i really hope we pick up an exciting player, although im not going to get my hopes too high but we need some excitement back around here
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Normally I would make a thread of my own for whatever I would like to see the Devils do, but this off-season is going to be too strange, I believe. I think there's going to be a rather significant trade this summer with the wealth of defensive prospects we have.

I've been scrolling through teams on Capgeek looking at who might be in cap trouble. With Chicago up against the wall, I could see Lou going very hard after Sharp. Hossa looks enticing, but that recapture is going to be a bitch.

Same with the Canucks. They look like they'll be up against the cap, and I wouldn't be shocked to see one of Kesler, Burrows, Booth, or Higgins be moved but I'm not sure I want a piece of those guys.

The Caps look to be right up against the cap and perhaps they want to shake things up. It helps that they need some D. Brouwer and Laich are guys I would inquire about in addition to Backstrom and Johansson - but I doubt they'll be moving either of them.

Stastny and Moulson would be nice gets through UFA. Even if the Avs lose Stastny, they'll still be up against the cap the enxt few years. As discussed in another thread, perhaps O'Reily becomes available or they could deal Parenteau.

Whatever happens, I'm excited to see how thing turn out.

I think Duchene will be due his first big contact in a couple years. CO has to keep that in mind
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I think Duchene will be due his first big contact in a couple years. CO has to keep that in mind

Duchene already got an extension for five years at $6 million per. It kicks in next year.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Edited by Daniel
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Even if you want to attribute missing the playoffs to 'bad luck' this team wasn't good enough to do anything in the postseason regardless.  They need major changes up front considering we have better defense/goaltending than most of the playoff teams seem to have.  It's telling that we're not there.

 

That's clearly not true, and I don't know how many upsets it's going to take for people to realize this isn't true.  It's not likely that the Devils could've won two rounds, but they certainly could have.

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That's clearly not true, and I don't know how many upsets it's going to take for people to realize this isn't true.  It's not likely that the Devils could've won two rounds, but they certainly could have.

 

What do other upsets have to do with how our team was constructed?  The lowest scoring team in the East playoffs had 215 goals (Montreal).  We scored 197.  It makes me mad that all these other playoff teams are getting crappy goaltending and defense while we're sitting at home largely because of that hideous offense.  Could we have lucked out with a MAF implosion against Pittsburgh?  Maybe, and maybe our offense was too putrid to take advantage of it.  Even if we had we probably weren't beating the Rangers in the second round.  The Rangers have been an upper-echelon team since New Year's.

And if we HAD gotten stuck in the other bracket playing Boston and Montreal, well forget that :lol:

Edited by NJDevs4978
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What do other upsets have to do with how our team was constructed?  The lowest scoring team in the East playoffs had 215 goals (Montreal).  We scored 197.  It makes me mad that all these other playoff teams are getting crappy goaltending and defense while we're sitting at home largely because of that offense.  Could we have lucked out with a MAF implosion against Pittsburgh?  Maybe, and maybe our offense was too putrid to take advantage of it.  Even if we had we probably weren't beating the Rangers in the second round.  The Rangers have been an upper-echelon team since New Year's.

 

Did you adjust for shootouts?  No, of course not.  And again, anything can happen in one series.  If NJ shot 12% for 6 games, which is not hard to do by chance, they would probably win a series.

 

Let's also not forget that the Devils' D is better than what it was because presumably they would be playing a good goalie for all the games and not a terrible one.

Edited by Triumph
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Did you adjust for shootouts?  No, of course not.  And again, anything can happen in one series.  If NJ shot 12% for 6 games, which is not hard to do by chance, they would probably win a series.

 

Let's also not forget that the Devils' D is better than what it was because presumably they would be playing a good goalie for all the games and not a terrible one.

 

http://www.nhl.com/ice/standings.htm

 

I went by the NHL standings.  Even if you take away shootout goals, big deal.  It's not like they were adding any to our total or put the other teams ahead of us offensively lol.  Montreal would have had 209 if the shootout goals counted toward their total, the Rangers 214, and those were the closest ones to our total.  The others were even farther ahead.

 

If we had even close to a league-average offense we could have been the 2nd best team in the East easy...we probably wouldn't have finished that high in the standings obviously but still.  We were 27th in goalscoring, with or without shootout goals. 

Edited by NJDevs4978
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I know the Devils offense was terrible.  The thing about offense is that it's largely random in short bursts.  Would the Devils have been a favorite in the 1st round?  No, of course not.  But they could have competed, and if they had gotten some breaks, they could've won a round, and had they gotten lots of breaks they could have won several rounds.

Edited by Triumph
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