Triumph

I thought Zajac was finished after last season but he has been excellent to begin this season. The team has really, really needed him too - hopefully they can cut back on his ice time when Nico returns. Best game of the season so far, there were definitely problems but they outplayed the Islanders, and what a great night for Wedgewood too, good for him.

I haven't posted here in a long time but something about tonight makes me want to. Maybe it's the return of Devils hockey. Brutal first period but they got it together in period 2 - they're going to give some teams trouble with all that speed. Sharangovich drawing 3 penalties, pretty great, him being drilled into the boards, not so great. Thought there were some nice moments for Kuokkanen and Boqvist. And obviously if Blackwood isn't as incredible as he was, we're talking about a lot of different stuff.

The Devils should get a goalie, but goalies like Lehner aren't going to want to go somewhere where they might be taken in expansion. That's why they won't get him.

Why would the Devils give Lehner term? They have Blackwood. And yes, they can only protect 1 goalie for expansion, so it would mean exposing Blackwood or Lehner.

I don't know why Lehner would come here. Blackwood is clearly establishing himself as the starter and Lehner has been starter quality the last 2 years. The Devils are going to struggle to find a competent backup this off-season - but they should still buy Cory out.

Studenic was also drafted in the 5th, and Rykov - the Devils have missed a lot of 5ths over the last few years with Lou, they traded them in 2010, 2013, 2015. I don't particularly like the Simmonds trade, but on the other hand, the Devils have some RWs that they should get some time for here. Joey Anderson has played very well since his recall, Merkley too.

Vatanen finishes up 1 point short of Tapio Levo, but that's good enough for 2nd all time among Finnish Devils. Who knows, his career's not over, either.

it was really just for you - can't expect everyone to understand a throwaway line from a 37 year old movie.

It's only a problem if one side doesn't want to listen at all. If that was Shero's prerogative, he wasn't going to last with this ownership group, as that's not how they see things.

This is the first game I've seen since the Christmas break - glad I wasn't a jinx. Solid game against a decent team. Devils played them even and got a bounce. Blackwood was great. I still don't like the R-R/L-L pairings. Let's see less of that in 2020, please. Glad the broadcast highlighted Gusev's insane fake mishandle of the puck on the PP - I was pretty sure live that that was deliberate and had to go back to check. Sure enough. A bit ballsy to do it while up 1 in the 3rd period. The Islanders seem to have a ton of plugs. I don't know how they have won so many games.

Before this game, I wanted the Devils to get 30 shots on goal if they were ahead most of the game and 35 if they were behind - they're playing the most porous defense in the league. They were ahead most of the game and got 44. Huge performance. One to build on, I hope - they're not going to score 7 goals in a game for the rest of the season, probably, but this at least shows that they can be good against bad teams, now the challenge is to be okay against good teams.

They didn't play all that great but they didn't play poorly, either. Huge blown coverage on the only goal they gave up. Anaheim was tired as they played last night. Devils are making teams make mistakes with their speed. That's good. Blackwood is making saves, that is also good, as he wasn't doing this early in the season. The ice at Prudential Center is just awful. That should be the biggest offseason investment if possible - some way to improve the ice. A speed team like this should not be playing on ice this bad.

I mean, you made a statement that was incorrect - most players dealt at the deadline are traded for picks, not prospects - and are now digging deeper by moving the goalposts. How in the world are there 'hundreds' of 2nd and 3rd round picks that are unsuccessful versus each one that is? That too is ridiculous, and you can just pick a year and find even in the most dismal seasons that there are at least 2 or 3 players from each of those round that make a fine NHL career. So yes, there are 8-10 unsuccessful picks for each successful one, but Simmonds was signed for zero risk this off-season.

The Devils will likely retain salary on Simmonds but 'a middle of the road guy for Binghamton' - I doubt very much that will be the return for him. 2nd or 3rd round pick depending on how the rest of his season goes.

EDIT - people already made the dumb point I did.

I know this was asked before Hynes was fired, but you have to go through the league and see where players come from to realize just how little the Devils are going to end up having from the final 4 drafts that Conte was presiding over, and these are drafts where I mostly think he did okay - part of it was that he was working without picks almost every year. I did this breakdown on HF a month ago so I still have everything handy, here's the list of players/assets the Devils have as a result of drafting and trades from the various draft years: 2002: Greene* 2004: Zajac 2008: Vatanen (via Henrique+3rd+UFA) 2009: Zetterlund (via Eric Gelinas) 2010: Schmid (via Scott Wedgewood) 2011: Hall (via Larsson), Coleman 2012: Severson 2013: Wood, Schneider 2014: Hayden 2015: Zacha, Blackwood, Palmieri (via 2nd+3rd round pick), Seney 2016: [Beau Bennett] * - would've been draft-eligible that year [] - player was acquired with draft pick acquired by previous regime, is no longer with organization In a year the Devils missed the playoffs (2013), they have a 3rd/4th line forward and awful goalie to show for it now. What do you think good teams now have from the 2013 draft - a draft, which by the way, was not all that special - but has still produced several solid NHLers? 2014 was also not special, but it was also a year the Devils missed the playoffs - they've got John Hayden to show for it 5 years later. Knowing what we know now, a GM would have to have stolen a good goalie or signed one UFA to make this into a good team, and that's with the excellent trades for Hall and Palmieri. Not counting Ty Smith as a blue-chip prospect is just changing the definitions of words. Name 5 D currently playing outside the NHL who are property of an NHL team who you'd rather have. You might be able to do this - naming 10 is likely not possible. He is a blue-chip prospect. He would be the best D prospect in the system of more than half the teams around the league. That doesn't mean he's going to be an NHL star or NHL regular - plenty of blue-chip prospects have failed to become NHLers. 'Waiting to see more' just means waiting until he isn't a prospect anymore. This team should be better than it is. The coaching staff has failed to get the best out of anyone in the early stages of this season. There's been some trades that haven't worked out - Bennett, Mueller, probably Gusev, possibly Subban, and Johansson was largely a wash. McLeod probably won't play in the NHL much or well. Still, there is a lot of hope for the future, and while the NHL standings don't reflect it enough, there's been some massive upgrades.

I'm absolutely not saying that. Where the fvck would you think that I am saying that? What in the world would make you think that that post was saying 'The Devils should've tried to out tank the Leafs?' How can you possibly interpret my post to say that? And then you strawman into trying to talk about tanking again - all right, I'm done. Not responding to anything you say here or on HFboards.

I hate responding in this thread, but 2015 is the big goof-up. 2016, McLeod, yeah, he's not going to be an average NHLer, or anything close probably - does anything from that draft picked after him really move the needle? I like Chycrun and McAvoy, neither are stars, and nothing else from that 1st round is really exploding yet. The real problem is 2016 was them picking 11th with the team they had.

I don't think the Devils are a very bad team right now - I think they've gotten very poor results and have very bad goaltending, and if they don't improve, they will continue to be bad. I think the offense should be better than it has been, that's the major place the team must improve. I certainly don't think every personnel move that Shero makes from now until the end of the season will result in the Devils being a worse team this season. They might pick up someone on waivers who can help augment their depth. They might call up someone from Binghamton who ends up outplaying a regular. These are moves that Shero has made in past seasons when the Devils have been bad and he will make them again, if the opportunity presents itself.

I'm the one moving the goalposts? Tanking has a very obvious definition. It is deliberately making the team worse in order to lose games. That's not why the Devils will be trading away their UFAs. They will be trading them in order to recoup value so as to not lose them for nothing. You know, like just about every team who is clearly out of the playoffs does, every year. Tank moves are deliberately holding players out of the lineup who might help it, trading a good goalie for a worse one, and so on. They are comparatively rare in hockey, but they have happened.

It's tanking when you just make up definitions of words to suit your argument and then get mad at everyone for not just accepting your new definition. Teams out of the playoffs trade players to teams in the playoffs every year. Hell, Ottawa didn't have a first round pick of their own last season so they had huge incentive at least from a PR standpoint to finish out of the cellar and yet they didn't manage to.

You cannot help yourself from projecting what you believe on to literally everybody else. The Devils are not tanking. They didn't call up Schneider and demote Blackwood. They haven't traded all of those guys away yet - they probably will, but it wouldn't shock me if they made offers to Simmonds and Vatanen to stay, depending on how the rest of the season goes. They didn't hire Nasreddine in order to tank - they could've just kept Hynes for that, if they wanted to. Nasreddine's mandate will not be to deliberately lose games - they could've just hired Horacek or Noel if they wanted to do that, two guys who won't be head coaches again and probably don't want to be. Instructing the coach to lose -that is tanking. You tank when your team is DELIBERATELY TRYING TO LOSE GAMES. THAT IS THE DEFINITION. You don't just get to change the definitions of things because you don't like how things are going. When the Devils call up Schneider and he's posting an .870 in Binghamton, I'll agree, that's what they're doing. Until then, they're going to try to win. They've been a bad team for the first 25 games. If they get some goaltending and the offense can pick up, they may be an okay team for the next 25.

The Devils aren't tanking the rest of the season. Jesus christ. Anyway, some metrics have Subban as atrocious and some have him as just fine. I don't particularly care for points as a measure of anything - Subban's been unlucky by points, that much should be obvious. He's also been unlucky by goals - the Devils are shooting 5.36% with him on the ice, 9.5% with him off the ice. This has a little to do with him but not very much. Subban's managed to keep R-R pairings afloat territorially, that's usually a pretty good sign. I don't know why they're insisting on going R-R with Subban - he's not an offensive dynamo anymore. If anything, his strength is now defense - they should be putting a lefty with him. He's made some positioning mistakes, as have all the D. I don't think he's washed up by any means, but he's obviously not the great defenseman he once was.

I think he's saying that Matt realized he screwed up when he mentioned that, and therefore he's the idiot in the story, not the child.