I get that people are disappointed and don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, but this is silly enough for a major lurker like me to feel the need to respond. I only created an account for the ability to ignore trolls and the extreme doom-n-gloom posters. It was that or stop visiting this site, which I did for a while. You get to be right when we lose and pleasantly surprised when we win, but the rest of us just get to deal with all the negative energy.
In my opinion, really only two of those players on that list were major losses that seriously and immediately affected the cup contention of NJ. Both of these players were major cogs in our cup winning defenses. Niedermayer was in his prime, but when he left to play with his brother(and closer to BC), he was offered the league max. Not much more than that could be done at the time(although, I think he could have been treated better as a young player). Lou did drop the ball with Rafalski. However, look at what he had to compete with when you consider Raf's contract and his opportunity to play with a powerhouse+hometown team.
Many of those other players were spare parts on the Devils and really were spare parts on their respective cup winning teams. Several of them bounced around on other teams and had really only a tenuous history with the Devils. Should we be crying that Asham, Gomez, Gionta(maybe), Morrison, Rupp, Sullivan, and Arnott were all on playoff teams and should have been on ours? Also, for Guerin and Sykora, we got Arnott and Friesen who each scored major goals and were major players in Devil cup runs.
P.S. I really wanted Lou to re-sign Madden for sentimental reasons, but can you imagine if he put up the same season stats with us without the cup at the end? There would be comparisons to Pando's contract and even more vitriol towards Lou for being trapped in the past. All that said. I'm happy for Madden. I can't wait for all the thin-skinned offense taken when Madden inevitably says all the sad but true things regarding celebrating a cup win in Chicago as opposed to New Jersey.