Digging that this thread exists, since it's been tough to follow the team as religiously as usual during this downturn.
I'm curious to see something key within the next year or two: if the player development system has fully shifted to being Shero's baby now that the transition from Lou will be a few years past. Something that's so overlooked in both hockey and baseball is that while having top prospects is obviously the ideal situation, it is best coupled with a player development system that does everything it can to maximize the talent available at the minor league level, even those who don't initially project to be top line prospects.
Speaking as a Mets fan, we saw over the years how the Mets went through a rebuild (that probably should've been more thorough than it was, but the Wilpons didn't want Alderson to trade everything away since they wanted at least the illusion of being competitive from 2011-2014 or so), and yes, acquiring top prospects played a role in that rebuild working out, namely the R.A. Dickey trade bringing back Syndergaard and d'Arnaud. However, a lot more of the Mets' rebuild was done with guys who were already in the system, but who now got to develop under the Sandy Alderson regime and not the Omar Minaya one. Suddenly, guys who were considered decent but not elite prospects, guys like Jacob deGrom, for example, started coming up and blowing away expectations. Even this past year, 2016, many people thought the Mets had tapped out a lot of their minor league talent trading people away for the 2015 pennant drive, yet guys like Robert Gsellman still came, again, seemingly out of nowhere to be major contributors to getting them back to the postseason in an injury-ravaged season. This is what a really good organizations gets going: the ability to let player development step in even when there's seemingly a lack of outright elite prospects handy.
This is what I want to see for the Devils going forward. I know the two sports aren't entirely analogous, especially as the minor league systems aren't structured the same exact way, but I feel like the improved records of Albany over the past few years indicates not only a desire by ownership and Shero to provide the AHL affiliates with a better product, but also that there may be more work being done to focus on overall roster talent development at that level. A true rebuild doesn't only include getting top flight talent; it's also highly predicated on building depth, which is most effectively done from within. A better, more holistic development system hopefully means that going forward we'll be seeing a more complete Devils team.
Combine that with cap space and hopefully a top draft pick this year (and whatever Shero chooses to do with the extra 2nds and 3rds), and things suddenly aren't quite so bad as they seem at first glance. I know Puck Daddy said it recently, that it's hard to see any kind of plan in place in Jersey, but this is where Shero should earn his keep: if player development is indeed improved the way I'm hoping it is, if the cap space and draft picks are used smartly, it really should put things back on the right track within a couple of years. Doesn't mean everything will be perfect by any stretch, but it's ok to hope.
