meh. goalies, injuries, lack of parts of the game. Some parts are good, team lost the play off chances only before 3 games until the end. 10 points is nothing for a team with injuries and worst goaltending.
Injury talk is a cover up so no will notice that we traded all, and I mean All of our depth for Meier and Bratt's salary and to make room for the young defenders....
I'm just thinking about where to start next season. This year sucked and everything and everyone played a role in that but you can't change the past. The core players are the same ones who were on a very good team the year before. So to me the issue is less with them and more with the lost support players who were obviously not replaced for this season. I'd say the drop off from Wood to Tierney is a bigger deal than guys like Hischier and Bratt and even Jack in his limited games doing more or less what they did the year prior.
Totally. Losing Damon Severson and Miles Wood was a bigger deal than missing Dougie Hamilton for the entire season, every part of Timo’s body being broken for more than half the season, and Jack Hughes playing without a shoulder.
I think there is a point though that this year's team had AHL guys that were pressed into duty. Tierney, Wilman, Halonen, etc. Shane Bowers played 8 games this season. Clearly injuries derailed the Devils as did losing Dr. Evil and then Siegs and Marino struggling for whatever reasons. The goalies didn't help but as shown in some earlier posts the team wasn't appreciably better this season when the goalies played well. Hopefully next season the callups are guys like Foote and Clarke and other prospects rather than dead end guys.
Injuries are the problem. You can deny it but its not true. Devils were unbalanced but productive team. After one injury goes to another, we left as depth as shape. Vegas missed playoff because of injury, they won SC next year. Im not telling Devils will win SC, Im not telling they will repeat previous season, but they will be play off team if they will not be so injured as they were this year. Like it or not Hamilton was huge part of 6 on 5 game, as he was huge part of salary cap. More healthy Timo and more injured Timo are two different players.
Clarke and Foote? As opposed to Sharangovich, Zetterlund Boqvist?
My thoughts on all of this is somewhere in the middle. I think this year's team with last year's injury luck makes the playoffs, but it's still a worse team in the end. We still ice a lot of Tierney, a lot of Smith, a lot of dead end guys that shouldn't be getting NHL time instead of healthy scratching Boqvist and Holtz and Sharangovich because of how deep we were.
You're right. Giving up 10OA, Mercer and Casey is a lot to give up. But that's what you need to offer to land a player like Tkachuk. Tkachuk isn't a dime a dozen player. He's a league rarity and you don't get that by low balling. This isn't a Meier situation. Meier had his team by the throat. It was give him 10 mill and then he was going to walk. They had little to no leverage. Brady is already locked up for a few years. They don't have to trade Brady at all if they don't get a good offer.
Plus let's be honest, I think the #10 OA and Holtz are getting overvalued here, while Casey is probably undervalued by the rest of the league. I don't think he'd trade Mercer but he's probably still got a ton of value if it came to it.
The injuries were a big problem made bigger because of the loss of depth. The injuries would have been a problem to last year's team, too, but they would have handled it better. If the argument is depth is the whole problem or injuries were the whole problem, the answer is in the middle. As it is every time someone implies X is the whole problem.
He's one of the most overrated Devils in the last few years, at least by a small sect of the fanbase.
I agree with this also. I agree with both sides of this argument to a point.
Sure, most of that has been gone over throughout the year. No interest in getting into those subtleties with the user I’m responding to though.
I personally don't think that's the best way to frame the argument... injuries vs depth. The argument is really why did this team miss the playoffs in a very weak Eastern Conference.
While I would have been happy to wave goodbye to Ruff last week, having Travis Green for 21 games was such a disaster that I wanted to beg Lindy to come back and would have been all for fans signing a waiver to not chant any disparaging about Lindy at least until the season finale or they get kicked out.
