Gelinas gone, Larsson gone (although for huge asset)..... Merrill did not pan out like we hoped...
Severson is our only hope among our once so promising D....
Things change pretty quickly eh?
I remember how confident we were with Severson, Larsson, Gelinas, Merrill, Helgeson, Urbom, Burlon and even Scarlett and this was just 3-4 years ago.
Larsson panned out for what he brought back. He never reached his "Lidstrom" potential but his skating was never as good so that was a huge longshot.
This was our top prospect list in 2012:
http://devils.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=638986
Lol.
However, going from Matteau and Boucher as our top prospects for forwards to having Zacha, Quenneville, Wood, McLeod, Blandisi, Speers, and Bastian is an astronomical improvement. I'd argue they all have higher potential than Matteau ever did.
Our defense has really flopped with some of those guys though. Urbom really disappointed. But even then Santini is a huge prospect for us. He's won a ton of "awards", winning top dman at U18(I think), top defensive defenseman in hockey east and all sorts of other accolades. Lots of people in hockey think he's the real deal. Jacobs is also very underrated. He was on the all-freshman team at Michigan State and played very well the second half of the year in the OHL this year.
Overall our Santini+Severson+Jacobs>other defense from ~2012. Our prospect pool as improved tenfold. We just need more defense, particularly the left side.