Guadana

Clarke is disappointment if anyone had some hopes. Not a driver, not a playmaker, not a forechecker. Nemec, Vilen and Misyul looked good. Misyul has issues with escaping and transition. Vilen and Nemec looks like nhlers/future nhlers. Forwards are really bad, top four forward prospects are playing in adult leagues, so it’s not like we have a shot against Sabres. Sabres did a great job with forward drafting.

Gritsyuk made 7 shots but didnt score today. Bardakov eated a lot of minutes in PK. Looked great there. The reason why im making the post is our prospect challange roster. Forwards roster. Now im talking about drafting. Read it again.- about drafting. not about roster of the regular team. I was very pro FItz man all the time, but finally I can make conclusion where he has a problem. Our forward drafting is weak in his tenure. Outside of the first round there were only Lenny and Zakhar as an impactful players for their role, who have all the tools to make it competently. Filmon has potential to be bottom line scorer\middle six scorer if everything will going really well. Squires has some potential, but he isnt really better than how players like Seney or Clarke played after draft. I should make a credit to Shero for his late rounds forward drafting. He was comicly bad with defensemen, but he made some desicions with drafting Bratt and Gritsyuk. Fitz didnt make any pick for drivers. May be Baumgartner, but he was very raw and positionally he was walking adventure. SHarangovich and Zetterlund is a high pick ceiling for guys like Filmon and Squires and both need to work a lot on their weaknesses. A lot. And there were a lot of players with NHL borderline potential with good tools for their roles - Anderson, Thompson, Maltsev, even Studenic. Boqvist didnt pan out but he still was a better pick than Stillman. Maltsev, Talvitie, Boqvist, Yegor were much better than Pytlick, Salminen and Schleine. Huge issue with drafting centers. Team dont have problems with filling the spots in the next two three or may be even four years. But in injury cases or in situations where the team cant make another step, we dont have more material to make the roster better. Lenny and\or Holtz and\or Gritsyuk should replace Palat and Toffoli. Hope they will handle it. But thats all we have for now. Im very thankfull that Fitz absolutely rebuild all the structure of defense, found good players and prospects. But he could be much better with forwards. If Devils want to make the contending winodw longer, they should work harder with forwards in the draft days. Players like Hauser, Brown, even Squires, freakin Stillman could be found on the market or from the NCAA free agents. Fitz should stop to waste picks for complimentary players and should start to find drivers and defensive two way forwards with good skating and speed. Its an issue he needs to fix in his long term strategy. Center depth is brutal in the organisation. Best forward prospects are Hameenaho, Holtz, Gritsyuk and Bardakov - they are good and they have real NHL potential, but he could do much better.

I think they will try to make the life for him more easy and give him Haula and Palat as partners, both can win puck battles and retrieve the puck and Holtz can sneaky find the open spot for shots. And their opponents will be easier, because the strongest opposition will be use against Nico and Jack lines. This is how I think they will do it. May be they will try to use Alexander on the wing with Nico and Jack, but we still don’t know, is he ready for that or not. Expectations are higher this season.

Holtz didn’t have enough value to be a key part in Meier trade, he had more value for Toffoli trade.

There are three players for bottom six winger job - Holtz, Foote and Noesek. We don’t know how McLeod situation will effect on the starting roster. It’s not like Foote has hardest path to make a roster. If Holtz isn’t ready, he is number one to make a roster. Clarke is a poor version of Holtz mostly.

https://vk.com/video-683353_456241535 Cam Squires(draft 2023) scores.

Sanderson deal is a new orienteer for Luke. If Mercer will hit 30+ g and 65+ points he will have a right to ask 8mil. Overall I'm waiting for 6.5-7 mil. Boldy is a good orienteer. Anyway if we will spend 14-16 mil for Luke and Dawson, Nemec will make a slide i think, we will need to sign him after 4 years from today. And Nico too. It could be 20+ mil. This is a situation where Fitz strategy to draft from mhl/khl is working for need and help to surround our core by NHL more ready and cheap players and sign them on a short cheap deals after elc. Vancouver gives 5.5 to Kuzmenko, and its not like every player will play on Kuzmenko level and its still very cheap. I believe Carolina is making something similar in a bigger scale. If Fitz will continue to draft better players with better tools/skills and ceiling in later rounds, it will help to surround our expensive core (and its not really expensive, thanks, Fotz) and will prolonging our window. I would trade half of our prospect pool and roster for Sanderson. Wanted him in the draft day so hard.

All points in Liiga from Lenny Hameenaho in previous season. Saw his one preseason game and highlights from others. He is looking like some kind of young version of Palat. Too bad I have opportunity to watch games live only, I would be happy to make records. Very intriguing and smart prospect. ______ Full game of Cole Brown. Brown is #92. https://m.youtube.com/live/XRpVZNmC964?feature=shared

Im starting new year of videos with action moments with the first game of the season of Daniil Orlov #62. 19 yo Devils top-10 prospect\top-5 defensive prospect, devils fans are not familiar with. Playing for Spartak(KHL), played his D+1 in MHL\VHL(AHL analog in Russia)\KHL, was injured big part of the previous season. https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/665898/daniil-orlov -statisticks Defenseman Daniil Orlov is #62, red jersey. Spartak vs Kunlun. 2 sept 2023. Orlov made five shots on goal, recorded an assist, and spent 12 minutes and 23 seconds on the ice. He did not play for the special teams. In general, a pretty good game, except for the moment with the fourth goal - Spartak plays deep in the opponent's zone, the Kunlun players taked away the puck and Orlov didn`t work well on backcheck. Otherwise, he closed the gaps well, blocked driving on the net, joined the cycle deep into the offensive zone several times, making his way to the net sneaky. Excellent skating, physics is there, helps in transition, good puck control, faster and mobile on the start.

Couple of preseason games of Lenny Haminaaho #29. Goals and assists here. Guy is awesome. I had only one issue with him and it was his skating. But his compete level and iQ are great and it looks like he is developing his game. There is a player with top-6 potential. Will see. https://vk.com/video-683353_456241529 Holtz is working on skating with the puck https://vk.com/video-683353_456241527 Karpovich score goal in preseason game. Malek played strong game in Champions league.

Smith is okay pick and Gusev addition is okay in vaccuum. When your team is build on what Devils had in the moment, gm should try to find something different. When When this happens all the time with every solution, this is already a problem. With regards to Smith specifically, I'm never in a hurry to write anyone out of the potential, but as soon as he started playing in the NHL, everything became clear to me personally. I think Fitz understood this very well, too, and it was not for nothing that he first drafted Hughes, Mukhamadullin and Edwards in the first year immediately after Smith's "successful first season". In general, I personally think that even if someone did not think so (whether it was a fan, or a draft nerd, or an employee of the NHL team office), then he should conclude that it is probably not worth taking not the most reliable, medium-sized defenders with poor skating, even if they can give out great passes. Overall I can name Shero strategy as cheating. He tried to make something faster than it should. And any Eastern sage would condemn it. You didn't figure it out yourself and didn't read anything from the above. Please take your time.

I`m more than OK. I`m working on the project I really like. And it is the result of my long methodical hard work of changing specialization. I made a test task and it took a significant part of my time. Ok, let`s start to think about it. We lost Tatar, Sharangovich, Boqvist, Severson, Graves, Wood, Zetterlund - 77 goals We added Toffoli, Noesek, Miller, Luke Hughes, Holtz\Foote, Meier 34+6+?+?+40 = 80 goals But! First of all we don`t know will Meier be able to repeat. And Toffoli too, especially him. People shold slow down expectations and wair something like 20\25g+20\25a. Because he will play more limited role more likely. Nico will play more defensive role, because Tatar played a lot of interior game. He was a big part of Nico success this year. Mercer can make step forward in his game but 27 goals could not be repeated. And it works for full team. Only Palat was injured previous season(his game could give some more goals if he will stay healthy), but all of our leaders were healthy most of the year. It was a luck of previous season, Devils achived new record in wins and points. It`s okay to make step back, especially with weaker defense this season(good defense impacted great offense) devils will face more defensive minutes this season. So I`m not telling we are weak team or we will lose a lot of games or something like that, but it is pretty reasonable to wait not as great regular season as it was season ago. Last season, many positive factors coincided, and in order to repeat this season, many positive factors must coincide again. Most importantly, the team must work on stability, on reliability throughout the site, on control. If in the end we score less and win less, there's nothing to worry about. Florida and Tampa in their very successful seasons did not achieve much success in the playoffs, but then developed their successes already in the post-season tournament.

No. He made wrong decision even or retooling or was passive. It`s Sherogolian syndrome. You gys just can`t accept that he made wrong decisions for his strategy and picked the wrong strategy from the beggining. Btw ownres were famous for their loving to rebuild. Zetterlund, Okhotiuk, Sharangovich, Ty Smith - Smith was the disaster and the clear mark of how bad Shero was in defensive building. And what defesnemen he picked before with what kind defense devils had all of that time. Zetterlund and Okhotiuk are depth players that were not key players in the trade. Sharangovicjh was up and down but still a good player, who was pick in later round and his development wasn`t really fast from the beggining. He is good, scouts are good,(like they were in case of Bratt), but that`s all. Again - only 5 players, with Sharangovich - only six. Both Okhotiuk and Zetterlund could not be nhlers for Devils this year or bottom lone players. You are making the same mistake when you talk about Lou lefted. 1. Shero decided to retool. He should decided to rebuild. Team was in ruins but still have something in the roster. But no prospect pool 2. He traded early seconds and firsts but didn`t sign players from free market. Everybody give a credit for that, but it was mistake FOR HIS STRATEGY. This deals would endm but he didn`t make roster really better with proven players, he only signed questionable players and made a gambles. 3. There were a lot of gambles. With trading picks, with signing players. The only offseason when he tryied to focus on real building was 2017. 2019 offseason was a huge "all in" with broken Simmonds&Subban, Gusev who never played in NHl. 4. He was very passive. After trading Palmieri he did nothing. After 2018 season when team has only one good line and Kinkaid played over himself and Schneider started to fall again and again, he did nothing. 5. He loved what he has when it cearly didn`t work - Hynes and Co. 6. Huge problem was defense. Team played on shoulders of Schneider, than on shoulder of Hall. He didn`t understand how to build modern defense, what kind of defenseman he need to sign or draft, what kind of defensemen he has in the moment. If you check stats ("advenced" or "simple") you will figure it out may be. When we had Butcher, Severson, Muller who were bad as defensemen in the moment, he added Subban with his bad mobility and meh defensive game. And smith was on the horizon. He didn`t drafted strong mobule defensemen until 2019 draft. 7. He didn`t understand needs and talent. He spent Mcleod pick on Mcleod over defenseman when we had Henrique, Zajac and Zacha in pipe line in the period of retool, When we had nothing in defensive prospect pool after Henrique scored 30 goals and Zajac was still solid. Mcleod had middle six potential from the begging. After his 5 years and Hischier and Hughes were good first round picks, both were 1OA. Overall. bad strategy, bad passive decision making for his strategy, awful defensive building and understanding, bad coaching decision, gambles, clearly weak understanding of how modern nhl is working. Devils were slow little team with bad defense. Because what kind of players he signed and drafted mostly. This is the antonym of the key to success in modern NHL. Reason why Devils had no success. The only once Hall played over his had, Hischier was really good and depth with Vatanen made everything to save the score. And Kinkaid playd over his haed. 1 Shero was lucky to win lottery twice when he tried to be succesfull and fail. 2 He made right decisions with Hischier and Hughes 3 He hired good scouts(not CHL scout, Castron was good but still lost the head scout position) 4 Couple of his trade were fun and successful. If Shero would drafted Patrick over Hischier, or Kakko over Hughes, he would be awful. It`s just fact. Just imagine how badly team was. But he did right decisions with 1OA(after draft luck and seasons failures), so he isn`t awful. He is just bad. Fitz immidietly restructered defesne, changed direction of drafting, showed how good gms trading young players and picks, signed much more players. Even with his failure of goalie position, Fitz at least tried to sign goalies every year, not gamble on health of Schneider or performance of young goalie. This year? Questionable, will see. Contrast of proactive position and understaning of the game is feraking huge. And it`s not like Fitz is perfect - he made his own missing picks, his goalie decisions are questionable. So he is.. really good gm for what he made for now. Shero? You guys just love Hall, Nico and Jack. But only one player from this list was the result of decisions Shero made. It`s like if Nemec will be great defenseman, we will say that Fitz was gineous. Pick looks very good, I liked it much more than if we would draft Wright, but 2nd pick overall was result of Fitzy fail of strategy to compete in the season. There were reasons, but again - we should call thing by their names. And give credit for thing we should give credit for. And Shero deserve a position he is haveing now. He isnt gm, because he was bad gm in his Devils time. Thanks for Nico, thanks for Jack, thanks for Fitz. That`s all after 5 years. Wish him Rangers general maneger job. And from this moment I don`t really care. ___ Because I`m finally got the job on the project I really like. It was a 6 years journey until I got it. Now I`m background artist on animation project I can`t say the name, but project is really good and look pretty. Wish you, guys, I wish you guys that your long-term plans come to life, that you have enough strength for methodical work, and that it pays off with results. This offseason Fitz made his own good and questionable decisions. I like his depth building. But Devils could lost some scoring. Will see how it goes. His goalie decision is questionable too. I like his defensive decisions with Miller and Foote. Yes, Graves and Severson are better duo than what we have with Hughes and Miller for now, but it`s understandable in this situatuin. He protected team with depth and expirience. Devils are true contenders but with some questionable positions, will see if it will work against Devils or not and if it will, how Fitz will fix it.

Hm. I will answer more you later. I clearly understand everything. I'm ok with losing, I understand the situation. He picked wrong strategy and made wrong decisions even for this strategy, he was bad in many aspects I noticed, now we have only 5 players, two of then are 1oa(from years he tried to compete), two of then are 4th liners. No defensemen. After 5 years retool. Its an awful result. Its short answer. Its not me who doesn't understand something- that Shero was bad. I didn't ask success, I asked strategy, moves and work, not gamble and losing high second round picks year after year for losing team without depth and no prospect pool. 5 years of misery.

Holtz will light the league up, Fitz trading Toffolli and his 18 goals for unprotected first and Pens losing Crosby and Malkin because of injuries right after the trade. we will not have top-6 pick next year.