The best case scenario for a human is to live a fulfilling life, gradually decline, and die in peace. But watching a general manager’s decline into old age mirrored in his aging team makes for fascinating drama. And the New Jersey Devils, with general manager Lou Lamoriello making the decisions at the not-so-young age of 71, is the test case.
When evaluating the health of a franchise, it is important to look at both the present and future. So the Devils’ current roster, drafting and development, and salary cap management are the three major factors Intelligent Hockey will examine here.
Current Roster:
This was the oldest team heading into the NHL trade deadline and, with a move to be made, they did the unthinkable: They increased their collective age while adding salary for a player outside the realm of top-six forward. That is hard to do! The Carolina Hurricanes happily dumped the 31-year-old Tuomo Ruutu on the Devils while swapping for the Devils’ youngest roster starter, 23-year-old Andrei Loktionov, and a conditional third-round pick in the 2017 NHL Draft.
Ruutu is an energy player with little scoring upside, and the Hurricanes were so delighted to move him and his $4.75 million cap hit that they agreed to retain some of his salary. Rutuu missed most of the 2013 season with an offseason hip injury, and New Jersey now assumes the rest of his four-year, $19 million contract. Despite Lamoriello’s best public relations machinations, Ruutu moves the needle nil.
The Devils’ highest paid player right now is Travis Zajac, who is compensated as if he were a No. 1 center, even though he is fantastically ordinary. His ability to drive play meshes well with the team’s puck possession numbers, but his boxcar statistics are more telling of how utterly replaceable he is: 13 goals and 26 assists. Sometimes the conventional statistics are misleading, but when defensemen like the Coyotes’ Oliver Ekman-Larsson and the Rangers’ Ryan McDonagh also have 13 goals and slightly more assists (27 and 29 respectively), it is time to get worried. O E-L is 22 and McDonagh is 24.
At 28, Zajac is who he is at this point. The prime for a forward is around 23 to 27, and this season begins the eight year contract Zajac signed for $46 million. He turns 29 in May. Even Zajac’s distribution numbers are favorably misleading, as 12 of those 26 assists came on the power play. The truth is, at this point in his career we know Zajac would be better served as a No. 3 center on a very good team. Think Derek Roy with St. Louis, or Carl Soderberg for Boston. But with his massive average annual compensation, he is forced into a star role he is not equipped to handle. When that contract was doled out, we knew it was horrible because he had no hope of living up to it, no less outplaying it.
Moving down the Devils’ salary cap chart, two things become evident: Ryane Clowe is being paid WAY too much on an extensive term, and Adam Henrique’s contract looks pretty affordable right now. Henrique has been discussed in this space before. As a center, he is probably closer to a Cody Hodgson than a Ryan Johansen, but he could definitely fill the No. 2 center role on a good team. At $4 million AAV for five more seasons, that deal works. Moreover, he has been one of the Devils’ three best forwards this season. Unfortunately, those other two forwards are a combined age of 79 (and when Patrik Elias turns 38 next month, their combined age will be 80).
Undeniably, Jaromir Jagr has been fantastic for the Devils this season, and what he has been able to do at 42 is unbelievable. But when he is the best forward, that should raise some concerns. And he is New Jersey’s best forward. Elias is signed for two more years at $5.5 AAV. Clowe is injury-prone and not good at hockey anymore, which is problematic because the Devils just signed him this past summer to a big contract. Michael Ryder, 33, is a streaky, one-dimensional player. After those guys, there are a lot of energy players littering the roster. The one notable young player is Jacob Josefson, who will be discussed in the prospect section.
Aside from Henrique, this team has no future on the offensive side. They have watched Zach Parise, and then David Clarkson and Ilya Kovalchuk, leave in consecutive summers. That has been a big part of their sharp decline, but the poor management for any contingency plan falls squarely on Lamoriello.
The Devils have a pretty good defensive corps, with Andy Greene as their No. 1 defenseman and Marek Zidlicky as a wily puck-mover. Mark Fayne is steady, and potential is evident in Jon Merrill and Eric Gelinas.
Drafting and Development:
If attempting to pinpoint the catalyst for why the New Jersey Devils are coming apart at the seams, this would be where to start. Even though Zajac got a lot of ink above, he is the logical starting point here because he signifies the last time the Devils took a core player in the first round. Since 2004 when the Devils drafted Zajac, New Jersey has drafted zero first-round or second-round forwards who are getting consistent starter minutes in the NHL on any team right now.
New Jersey whiffed on Niclas Bergfors (23) in 2005 (although they moved him to Atlanta in a blockbuster trade for Ilya Kovalchuk), Matthew Corrente (30) and Alexander Vasyunov (58) in 2006, Mike Hoeffel (57) in 2007, Mattias Tedenby (24), Brandon Burlon (52), and Patrice Cormier (54) in 2008 (Cormier was also packaged in the Kovalchuk trade), Jacob Josefson (20) in 2009, and the jury is out on 2012 first-round pick Stefan Matteau (29) and the undersized Reid Boucher (99). (Matteau is currently playing for his junior team, and Boucher is in the AHL.) This is an incredible amount of misses over a long period of time, and should be brought up every time people talk about the Devils languishing.
It is easy to point out that those players did not work out, but it is better to put it in context by looking at who they could have had. Not all of the players who follow flourished or showed their potential with the team that drafted them, and some defensemen are included, but building a strong roster is about acquiring good players. If the Devils had taken a top-four defenseman in 2008, maybe they would have felt less of a need to repeatedly draft defensemen like they have the past couple of years. Below is the draft record since 2005 and who they could have had.
In 2005, the Devils drafted Niclas Bergfors one pick before T.J. Oshie was taken by the Blues. In 2006, Corrente was taken with the last pick in the first round. In the second round, notable NHLers Jamie McGinn, Milan Lucic, and Artem Anisimov were taken. In the third round, a little center by the name of Brad Marchand was selected after the Devils made their pick for Vasyunov. In 2007, the Devils took Hoeffel four picks before power forward Wayne Simmonds. In 2008, the Devils took Tedenby three picks before the United States Olympian John Carlson, who played high school and club hockey in New Jersey. In the second round, they selected Burlon and Cormier at 52 and 54 when picks 51 and 53 by their tri-state neighbors, the Rangers and Islanders, became Derek Stepan and Travis Hamonic. One selection after Cormier, the Minnesota Wild took Marco Scandella.
In 2009, the Devils selected Josefson at No. 20 overall. This pick feels like the most egregious because he has shown no indication that he has any hope of a future in the NHL, and because of what was around him right before and after he was selected. At No. 19, the New York Rangers took Chris Kreider. At No. 21, the Columbus Blue Jackets took John Moore. At No. 24, the Washington Capitals selected Marcus Johansson. At No. 26, the Anaheim Ducks took another player who also played high school and club hockey in New Jersey: winger Kyle Palmieri. Ryan O’Reilly was taken by the Colorado Avalanche at No. 33 and Jakob Silfverberg was selected at No. 39 by the Ottawa Senators. Ouch.
It might seem unfair to criticize the Devils for not acquiring players (such as Stepan at 51 and Kreider at 19) who went a pick before the Devils were able to select. However, if a team recognizes ahead of time the value of a player not yet taken, they can trade a mid- to late-round pick to move up, which might have allowed them to accomplish acquisitions like these.
The reason defensemen are included is because, when you select a Carlson or Hamonic or Scandella, it allows you to take another swing at a forward. In 2009, the Devils found Gelinas in the second round at No. 54 and that worked out. But at No. 60, the Detroit Red Wings took Tomas Tatar, and he is a dynamic playmaker.
The Devils were able to get a top-six forward in Henrique in the third round in 2008, and Gelinas and Merrill look to be viable NHL defensemen. (The second-round choice the Devils received in the Kovalchuk trade from Atlanta they used on Merrill.) But the oddest part of the entire Devils’ draft history is their continued inclination to pick defensemen. The argument for grabbing the best player available makes some sense, but with as many failed draft picks as this team has had, maybe rolling the dice on a higher percentage of forwards would have made more sense. The Law of large numbers suggests that one of these picks would have hit.
It is possible that the Devils got more reluctant to draft forwards since none of them (except Henrique) worked out. Their system dovetails with good defensive development, so with a very good defensive corps right now, why do they keep drafting defensemen? At its most basic, the Devils’ system is defensive-centric, and their style of play demands that they suffocate opposing offenses and scratch and claw for goals.
In 2010, they took Merrill in the second round, which was their highest draft pick that year. In 2011, they picked Adam Larsson fourth overall. In 2012, they took Damon Severson in the second round. In 2013, they selected Steve Santini at No. 42, which was their highest remaining draft pick because they traded their No. 9 overall pick for goalie Cory Schneider.
A lot rests on Adam Larsson. Missing on a top-five overall pick can be devastating for a franchise. And the Larsson experiment is not going well, especially because he has stayed in the AHL after being demoted in January. This article from nj.com does not inspire a ton of confidence. With Bryce Salvador and Greene here for another season, and Anton Volchenkov seemingly locked in, the Devils have a fine defensive corps when you combine them with Marek Zidlicky – who will inevitably be re-signed because he is best friends with Elias – and Merrill and Gelinas.
Again, New Jersey’s current system is ultra-conservative and mandates hard defensive play from their forwards. That eases the burden on the defense. In the AHL right now, the Devils have Larsson and Severson working on their games, and Santini plays for Boston College. But those are their best prospects! That is the list. They have nothing in the pipeline at forward other than Matteau and Boucher.
But the key to this section is that not only drafting, but also development of players is crucially important. The Detroit Red Wings get feted for their ability to extract the most out of their players; however, it seems very probable that, if some of the players mentioned above had become part of the Devils’ system, they would not be doing as well as they are today. There is a misperception that the Devils excel in drafting and development – Oduya alludes to the Devils’ development of defensemen in the article about Larsson. While this may still be true to an extent with defensemen, it stopped being true with forwards nearly a decade ago.
Salary Cap Management:
A normal team would probably want to give its newly acquired asset as much love and attention as possible, but the Devils do not operate like most teams. After trading away the No. 9 overall pick for goaltender Cory Schneider with the thinking that he will be their goaltender of the future, the Devils have made him share starts with Martin Brodeur.
Brodeur is the face of the franchise, a Hall of Famer, and one of the best goaltenders ever. However, jerking around Schneider seems like a gutsy move considering he is a UFA next summer. The Devils do not have the greatest track record for keeping their prized players on expiring contracts. Moreover, Schneider has voiced his annoyance with the platooning goaltender system. He is clearly irked that he went from sharing time on one team to sharing time on another. Schneider is a smart guy; he is likely very aware of the chasm that separates Brodeur and him in save percentage this season.
Unfortunately for New Jersey, the following scenario seems completely plausible. Brodeur is not ready to retire and wants to play one more season and receives his final contract from New Jersey. Brodeur then shares a disproportionate amount of starts with Schneider despite a save percentage differential of at least ten points. Schneider walks the first chance he can.
Schneider has patiently waited to be the bell cow for a team for quite some time, and given the Devils’ asset-poor situation, which forebodes a dark future, why would Schneider not want to go to a team like the New York Islanders or Calgary Flames where he would be assured to start 60-65 games a year? Do those teams really have a worse future than the Devils? In this hypothetical, it is hard to blame Schneider. At 28-years-old, now is the time for him to be the anchor in goal.
The Devils have two disheartening contracts on their books with the Zajac and Clowe deals, but there are a lot of expiring contracts over the next 24 months. How generous Lamoriello is when trying to lock up players who “play the Devils way” will dictate the team’s attractiveness to GM candidates when Lamoriello is eventually replaced or retires.
When founders Josh Harris and David S. Blitzer of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management bought the New Jersey Devils in 2013, they were buying the rights to operate the Prudential Center and a majority stake in the team. As shrewd businessmen, they likely appraised the team’s assets and, being very smart guys, recognized that it is the oldest team in the NHL with not a lot of young talent. If they did not recognize that initially, they surely do now.
In two years, Jagr and Elias will be gone or in the background. The Devils will have Henrique and some promising defensemen, but that is it. The Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins have the telegenic superstars who allow them to vie for the Cup year after year, and even dismal teams like Buffalo, Florida, Edmonton, and Calgary have a slew of young players – and coming prospects in this 2014 NHL Draft – so they can sell hope.
The NHL restored the Devils’ first-round pick from the Kovalchuk penalty because Gary Bettman can probably read the tea leaves and see this team is spiraling into irrelevancy (the NHL also gave back $1.5 million of the fine the Devils paid). It is nice that the Devils have the No. 30 pick in the upcoming draft, but the bottom-of-the barrel teams will be collecting promising talent from the very top of this draft. And what if the Devils are just competent enough that they avoid landing in the cellar, and thereby miss out on top selections in the star-loaded 2015 NHL Draft?
What the Devils need is young talent that can give their fan base some hope. The wisest route would be doing everything it their power to pry Toronto Maple Leafs’ center Nazem Kadri or Carolina Hurricanes’ forward Jeff Skinner away from their clubs. Both forwards have their faults, but NHL history is filled with examples of teams losing patience with players too early and then having it haunt them when those players kill it with another franchise.
It is unlikely that either Kadri or Skinner will become the next Brett Hull, but both are former top-ten draft picks who have produced robust statistics. Acquiring one of them would be a much wiser strategy than hoping to get a high-end forward through free agency. (And it should be pointed out that the Devils had that chance, but Valtteri Filppula went to Tampa Bay and the Devils got Clowe.)
The new owners are in the uncomfortable position of needing to replace Hall of Famer Lamoriello. He was the GM while his team won three Stanley Cups (having reached five) in his nearly three-decade long tenure. He was a boon for USA hockey, and a man who took a morbid franchise to unfathomable heights.
But those days are not coming back unless things change dramatically, which IH is highly skeptical about. Lamoriello belongs to a different time. The Devils’ antediluvian style of play epitomizes that. Eventually things will change, because right now things are bad and only getting worse.
