AEWHistory

This is so passé dude. Obviously that -1 identifies as a -3. Keep up with the times!

Richard Pryor had a wonderful skit with the same sort of idea: who are you gonna believe baby? Me or your lying eyes?

Kid seems like he is ready to walk in Chico’s shoes. So let me be the first to welcome Ilya Sorokin to the Devils.... in about five years.

I think this is the key point in this debate. With this draft you can easily end up with the player who should have gone #1 even if you’re drafting at 5, 6, or maybe lower. There is just not enough info from 2020 to gauge the progress of these young players, so the draft is going to be a real crapshoot unless it is postponed to give teams a chance to scout player development in 21-22. However, in a normal year I would strongly agree with Sterio. I am a NY Jets fan (let’s just keep that between us, okay? It is embrassing to admit.) and the Jets lost picking number one this year because they had to go out and win a couple games that had zero value to the franchise. That first pick could have been traded back for more assets, or maybe they’d have simply picked Wilson with it, but whatever the result they would have had more options. As it is they lost out on the accepted number one QB because they won useless games. This is the point Sterio is making and it is a valuable one. It just so happens that this might not be the year it would matter as much.

well, they should’ve listened to their travel agent and gone somewhere with fewer sharks for summer vacation. I hear Colorado almost never has a shark attack....

Wow, didn’t see your post until after replying to Pumpkin. As with Pumpkin, if you ever need a friendly eye (or is it ear still, despite the messages being read? I have no clue clearly.) please feel free to PM. Words are always so weak when you are about to forever lose a long trusted and loved companion, but I am so sorry this is happening

I just wanted to say that I am sorry for your loss. A lot of people don’t view our pets as part of the family but my Basset Winston was like my first child. When I had to put him to sleep in October of 2014 I was a mess. He had been there for me during some truly awful periods in my life and I still miss him terribly. So I understand how you feel. If you ever want someone to talk to or a friendly ear (eye?) feel free to PM. It is a terrible injustice that these animals lives are so short and yet they burrow so deep into our hearts.

So you want me to coach the Devils is what you seem to be saying.....

I have felt that way for some time. But is that really so bad? After all, look at what all that patience led. The Devils of the ‘90s-00s were arguably the best team of their era (the only competitor is the Red Wings and a good case can be made for them). Anyway, look at the bright side.... we have managed to avoid the Alain Chevrier phase of this rebuild, right?

So can we sign Hall for like the day of the lottery and then release him after we get first pick? Then we can trade back a few slots, draft Clarke, and release Hall so he can go suck somewhere else.

Always sad to hear someone passing, even if I didn’t know them. Everyone is someone else’s child and usually a spouse, sibling, parent, friend, and more. My condolences to the Gendron family.

Damn, he isn’t even a first line weed dealer? That’s gotta be rough.

True, no argument here. We also need a defenseman who can help transition to offense and a defenseman who can.... we just need defensemen. I think I’d be happy if he could just choose the right guy to take and lay down in front of him at the right times. is that lowering the bar too much?

You make a good point. To back up your point I would add this: I was looking at a listing of average ages for teams last week and the Devils were the second youngest team in the NHL. Consider how little weight our vets are pulling and you get an idea of just how “young” this team really is. Consider how some of the best players of the past played at the ages our best young players are at: even HoF players rarely could make the sort of impact we would need right now to be successful, let alone carry a team! I dont know what the future holds, but it is much bright than it has been in a long time.

Could signing all these young players and possibly bringing Thompson up to the NHL be a signal that the Devils vets will be moved? We are coming up on the trading deadline, right?

Thanks for the update. I would hate to see this site go away! Is there a monthly option? Even if it is for something small, like $1-2 per month, if a lot of people all did this it would start to bring up the revenue stream some.

How about this take: Kyle Palmieri is almost single-handedly giving the Devils another lottery shot? With all the talent the Devils have been accumulating another #1 pick would really like be awesome and Palmieri is martyring himself for our beloved team! I think that is about as much spin as I could put on this, but I don’t really believe my own bullsh!t.... well, except for the part about another #1 being awesome. That much i would be thrilled to get at this point.

Good point. I certainly can’t argue that. Even at the end Lou’s teams had heart. What they lacked was talent. Now we have talent and more coming... but no heart. I guess we are off to see the wizard......

I should have explained myself, my bad. Yes, it is hard to imagine Lou being complacent; he always seemed so driven and committed. However, when the scouting department was failing him year after year for nearly a decade he did nothing. For me, that is complacency. He knew that he made the Devils and it was unthinkable for a very long time that we would go on without him. See what I mean? Maybe I am seeing things with a “glass half empty” view? I admit that my image of Lou is deeply colored by those last years.

A huge part of this team’s struggles are exactly because of Lou. I will always love what he did for this franchise, but his last years here were atrocious and left the Devils with the least young talent in the NHL and an empty farm system. I am happy that he seems to have had a rebirth in Toronto and New York, but what happened in NJ was necessary to stir him from complacency.

Seems like the Devils have a lot of solid ‘wood between the pipes. Whichever one they shove in there seems to satisfy the fans. 😉

Thanks Nessus. This is the sort of feedback I was looking for. He sounds like a legit prospect, though I’d prefer someone more “elite” if we end up drafting in the first couple slots. Then again, how many elite defensemen are there? I feel like the Stevens and Nieds of the NHL are rarer than ever (though it does tell you how lucky we were for all those years to have those guys). We need some big, tough players though and they don’t get much bigger than Power. Ya gotta love his name too! (Yea, that’s probably not the best draft criteria though, right?)

I didn’t really answer this part before, my bad. I completely agree. Use the cap money to accumulate some more guaranteed talent. That said, how many FAs would have fit that description? They have to be good, a FA of course, willing to come to NJ, and someone who will be around awhile, right? I feel like with those criteria we have whittled down the selection to damn near no one. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this criteria either, but I wonder if we are asking for something that just hasn’t been an option really?

I think the latter part of your post is what the real issue is. By the time Lou made the move for Lemieux the Devils had been slowly accumulating talent for years. They had a farm team stacked full of goalie prospects that could be moved for example. Consider that at roughly the same time the NHL was full of Devils goalies: Billington, Burke, Terreri, Dunham (later), and I am forgetting one or two I think. So as much as we all want the Devils to make a move—I’m dying to see a return to glory as well—the current state of the franchise doesn’t have nearly as many assets as the Devils of the early to mid 90s. I do believe they are trying to accumulate these assets. I think it is why they keep signing these “I hope it works out” players. It is a cheap way to accumulate talent or trade them and accumulate picks (and hopefully talent or just to use as bargaining chips). Right now, though, we don’t have enough players to even field a full NHL quality team at times, let alone trade away assets for better players. Lou had the luxury of having both a pretty good team AND good developing players. It provided so much more flexibility. That’s my $.02.

Not sure this is the thread for this, but here goes. I was reading on some of the 2021 prospects (though I know we might not draft these guys until 2022) and in the list I found Owen Power was first. He is a 6’6” defenseman! I started to wonder what people who follow prospects think of this kid. With the Devils season slowly drifting away it would be amazing to get a d-man nearly the size of Chara with a skill set of a high caliber. But I don’t really know much more about this kid or the competing draft prospects, so I figured I would ask here and get some feedback.