GDT: 2019 NHL Draft Day 2: 1:00 EST

[StevenToddIves]

This can only be based on a very short memory of past drafts. When you grade out guys who have the offensive results of Okhotyuk, very few of them reach the NHL. If you want to limit it to players drafted in the first 3 rounds, you won't do a ton better. It isn't that offensive production is *necessary* in the NHL, but rather that offensive production in lower leagues suggests the kind of ability with the puck that will allow a player to play in the league - plenty of guys go from being offense providers at the lower level to being one-dimensional in the NHL.



Great, ask them. Parayko was an overage pick but he put up offense in the year he was drafted. Brandon Carlo is a wildly overrated player around here. He's a fine mid-pairing D who provides almost no offense. The physical element is all about shots for and shots against. That's it. If a player doesn't positively influence those it's hard to be any good.



So you also are saying the Devils drafted for need. Drafting for need is generally bad - I will only endorse it in rare circumstances, and this is certainly not one of them.



You've been at this how many years and your assertion is that they are undervalued? I don't understand unless you just aren't seeing the results and only focus on prospects. The days of drafting the pure tomato cans in the first round are over, unfortunately for New Jersey, but where are these D around the NHL getting big ice time and providing massive value to their team? Carlo is one guy. I just searched for D who played 1200 minutes last year and sorted by PIM - the guys in the top 20 of PIM who I think you would describe as a 'physical, defensive defenseman' are Ian Cole, Darnell Nurse, Erik Gudbranson, Nikita Zadorov, Roman Polak, Scott Mayfield, Joel Edmundson, Tyler Myers, Robert Hagg, Radko Gudas, Josh Manson, Brenden Dillon.

Of these, Cole, Nurse, Gudbranson, Zadorov, and Myers were drafted in the 1st round.

Mayfield and Hagg were drafted in the 2nd round.

This doesn't strike me as these players being undervalued. Most of these are bottom-pairing guys. I like Gudas a lot and Dillon's pretty good but a lot of these players I don't think are very good. Then there's the giant penumbra of guys under this who were high-floor players who didn't make it at all or are fringe guys.



When I hear this about high floors for players drafted in the late rounds I get very skeptical. Misyul is the one guy I don't mind because I suspect there's value in the MHL because of how poorly scouted it is. The USNDP and the OHL, the notion of getting value there, I'm quite skeptical - everyone saw those. That said, I don't want high floors - I want high ceilings. Santini was a high-floor guy - great, the Devils got 100 games of below-average play out of him, then managed to move him.



I think this will all sound quite absurd in a few years. If anything, the Devils overreacted to what should be a non-existent 'trend'. The puck is the important thing and yeah they've got a lot of guys in the system who know what to do with it, but it doesn't mean they can go picking players high who don't seem to know that.

I can't say I judge physicality by amount of penalty minutes a player accrues. Again, that's an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable through numbers, something which does not work in hockey. In hockey, you need more metaphysical qualities than simply "shots for/shots against". While some of the players you mentioned are certainly better than they are given credit for by the analytics community (Nurse, Carlo, Manson) others are simply third-pairing D who like to hit (Hagg, Polak).

Two players who Case McCarthy reminds me of, for instance, are both Carolina Hurricanes: Brett Pesce (3rd round, 2013) and Jake Slavin (4th round, 2012). While they are not "physical" in the sense that they look all shift long for open ice hits, they both are big guys who clear creases and dominate forwards in the corners -- they are expert in separating the offensive player from the puck and then quickly getting the puck up ice. So, I would consider them "physical defensemen" more than any player who has patrolled the Devils blueline for years, despite low penalty minute totals.

For instance, Brett Pesce and Jake Slavin had fewer penalty minutes last year than Jake Gardiner, who is probably the softest and worst defensive defenseman in the entire NHL. How is it possible that two players like Pesce and Slavin who play such a heavy game have fewer penalties than a guy who will avoid contact at any cost? Simple -- Pesce and Slavin are rarely beat one-on-one, and they rarely need to grab a jersey or hook or trip to recover for mistakes, whereas a guy like Gardiner gets beat with regularity and then needs to recover from this by dragging the player who beat him down from behind.

Gardiner is a great example of how analytics falsely quantifies defensemen. In my opinion (and several people in NHL front offices would agree), if you flipped Gardiner to the Bruins and Carlo to the Leafs in that first-round series, the Leafs would win the series. Carlo shut down and punished Leafs forwards all series long, while Gardiner was an abject horror show, almost a liability every time he was on the ice. If you are an opposing forward on a one-on-one or in a corner or going after a rebound, who is the defenseman you would rather be competing against, Carlo or Gardiner? I mean, it's not even a debate -- it's no contest.

Hockey is about balance. I would no way go into a season as an NHL GM with a blueline of Carlo, Manson, Dillon, Zadorov, Pesce and Edmundson. But that being said, you'd have the same chance (zero) of winning the cup as a team with a blueline of Gardiner, Pysyk, Brodie, Gostisbehere and Honka. If you are going to have a high-end offensive D like Erik Karlsson, you are better off pairing him with a physical, defensive-minded guy. Damon Severson playing with Will Butcher is a pretty good defenseman. But when they put him with Darnell Nurse in the World Championships, Severson looked absolutely dominant.

Teams need a balanced blueline to win, plain and simple. Analytics cannot quantify this. Will Butcher needs to be paired with a defensive player, just as Case McCarthy will be the perfect partner for an offensive minded guy (Ty Smith). While I agree with you that drafting for need is bad, the Devils took two of the four defensive D (Misyul and McCarthy) far lower than where they deserved to go. I agree they reached a bit for Okhotyuk -- I would have loved Grewe or Legare there -- but overall the Devils draft has to be considered filled with high-value picks for their draft position (Misyul, McCarthy, Gritsyuk, Moynihan, Pasic).

All analyses aside, turn that frown upside down. The Devils did a great job this weekend, and the future is bright.

 

[MartyOwns]

I think this will all sound quite absurd in a few years. If anything, the Devils overreacted to what should be a non-existent 'trend'. The puck is the important thing and yeah they've got a lot of guys in the system who know what to do with it, but it doesn't mean they can go picking players high who don't seem to know that.

i really don’t think the devils said “me see big players, me want big players too”. give them a little more credit than that. we have guys like smith and butcher- what we need are guys that can provide balance...a harmony of offensive ability, quick puck transitions, and punishing body checking. this draft addressed that

 

[Nico the Draft Riser]

So whats the claim.... defensive dmen should be extinct?

 

[Oneiro]

Triumph echoes my feelings on a lot of these picks. It feels like they spent quite a few of them fishing for a specific outcome - a big mobile two-way guy who will rack up secondary points and play a smart but non-dynamic (aka non-skating/puck skills-heavy) game while punishing the opposition. I think that profile is very hard to find period, let alone in the later rounds, and there's a reason most of the best guys who somewhat fit that mold (Pietrangelo, Jones, Suter, Weber) are drafted in the first two rounds.

The team's problem with physical play is not really a question of personnel but coaching and development.

 

[TheDuke93]

This can only be based on a very short memory of past drafts. When you grade out guys who have the offensive results of Okhotyuk, very few of them reach the NHL. If you want to limit it to players drafted in the first 3 rounds, you won't do a ton better. It isn't that offensive production is *necessary* in the NHL, but rather that offensive production in lower leagues suggests the kind of ability with the puck that will allow a player to play in the league - plenty of guys go from being offense providers at the lower level to being one-dimensional in the NHL.



Great, ask them. Parayko was an overage pick but he put up offense in the year he was drafted. Brandon Carlo is a wildly overrated player around here. He's a fine mid-pairing D who provides almost no offense. The physical element is all about shots for and shots against. That's it. If a player doesn't positively influence those it's hard to be any good.



So you also are saying the Devils drafted for need. Drafting for need is generally bad - I will only endorse it in rare circumstances, and this is certainly not one of them.



You've been at this how many years and your assertion is that they are undervalued? I don't understand unless you just aren't seeing the results and only focus on prospects. The days of drafting the pure tomato cans in the first round are over, unfortunately for New Jersey, but where are these D around the NHL getting big ice time and providing massive value to their team? Carlo is one guy. I just searched for D who played 1200 minutes last year and sorted by PIM - the guys in the top 20 of PIM who I think you would describe as a 'physical, defensive defenseman' are Ian Cole, Darnell Nurse, Erik Gudbranson, Nikita Zadorov, Roman Polak, Scott Mayfield, Joel Edmundson, Tyler Myers, Robert Hagg, Radko Gudas, Josh Manson, Brenden Dillon.

Of these, Cole, Nurse, Gudbranson, Zadorov, and Myers were drafted in the 1st round.

Mayfield and Hagg were drafted in the 2nd round.

This doesn't strike me as these players being undervalued. Most of these are bottom-pairing guys. I like Gudas a lot and Dillon's pretty good but a lot of these players I don't think are very good. Then there's the giant penumbra of guys under this who were high-floor players who didn't make it at all or are fringe guys.



When I hear this about high floors for players drafted in the late rounds I get very skeptical. Misyul is the one guy I don't mind because I suspect there's value in the MHL because of how poorly scouted it is. The USNDP and the OHL, the notion of getting value there, I'm quite skeptical - everyone saw those. That said, I don't want high floors - I want high ceilings. Santini was a high-floor guy - great, the Devils got 100 games of below-average play out of him, then managed to move him.



I think this will all sound quite absurd in a few years. If anything, the Devils overreacted to what should be a non-existent 'trend'. The puck is the important thing and yeah they've got a lot of guys in the system who know what to do with it, but it doesn't mean they can go picking players high who don't seem to know that.

What about guys like Pesce, Hjalmarsson, Vlassic, Hamonic, Orlov, Russell, Greene, Parayko and Girardi? Now not all of these guys are in their prime obviously but all of them at a time were shutdown defensemen that kept the puck away from our net and helped their team to win games, not a single one of them went in the first round, so its frankly absurd that you think that drafting "defensive defensemen" is a waste of a draft when the teams #1 issue is being hard to play against. Every single one of those players in their prime was frankly awful to play against and won their puck battles and got their team back on offense. They play as partners and you will never see Girardi and Russell on the ice at the same time unless its the PK, you pair a shutdown guy with Severson and you have yourself a legit top 4 pairing. This is how you build a defense, unless you have a Doughty that can carry a whole unit.

 

[Classic Devil]

I can't say I judge physicality by amount of penalty minutes a player accrues. Again, that's an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable through numbers, something which does not work in hockey. In hockey, you need more metaphysical qualities than simply "shots for/shots against". While some of the players you mentioned are certainly better than they are given credit for by the analytics community (Nurse, Carlo, Manson) others are simply third-pairing D who like to hit (Hagg, Polak).

Two players who Case McCarthy reminds me of, for instance, are both Carolina Hurricanes: Brett Pesce (3rd round, 2013) and Jake Slavin (4th round, 2012). While they are not "physical" in the sense that they look all shift long for open ice hits, they both are big guys who clear creases and dominate forwards in the corners -- they are expert in separating the offensive player from the puck and then quickly getting the puck up ice. So, I would consider them "physical defensemen" more than any player who has patrolled the Devils blueline for years, despite low penalty minute totals.

For instance, Brett Pesce and Jake Slavin had fewer penalty minutes last year than Jake Gardiner, who is probably the softest and worst defensive defenseman in the entire NHL. How is it possible that two players like Pesce and Slavin who play such a heavy game have fewer penalties than a guy who will avoid contact at any cost? Simple -- Pesce and Slavin are rarely beat one-on-one, and they rarely need to grab a jersey or hook or trip to recover for mistakes, whereas a guy like Gardiner gets beat with regularity and then needs to recover from this by dragging the player who beat him down from behind.

Gardiner is a great example of how analytics falsely quantifies defensemen. In my opinion (and several people in NHL front offices would agree), if you flipped Gardiner to the Bruins and Carlo to the Leafs in that first-round series, the Leafs would win the series. Carlo shut down and punished Leafs forwards all series long, while Gardiner was an abject horror show, almost a liability every time he was on the ice. If you are an opposing forward on a one-on-one or in a corner or going after a rebound, who is the defenseman you would rather be competing against, Carlo or Gardiner? I mean, it's not even a debate -- it's no contest.

Hockey is about balance. I would no way go into a season as an NHL GM with a blueline of Carlo, Manson, Dillon, Zadorov, Pesce and Edmundson. But that being said, you'd have the same chance (zero) of winning the cup as a team with a blueline of Gardiner, Pysyk, Brodie, Gostisbehere and Honka. If you are going to have a high-end offensive D like Erik Karlsson, you are better off pairing him with a physical, defensive-minded guy. Damon Severson playing with Will Butcher is a pretty good defenseman. But when they put him with Darnell Nurse in the World Championships, Severson looked absolutely dominant.

Teams need a balanced blueline to win, plain and simple. Analytics cannot quantify this. Will Butcher needs to be paired with a defensive player, just as Case McCarthy will be the perfect partner for an offensive minded guy (Ty Smith). While I agree with you that drafting for need is bad, the Devils took two of the four defensive D (Misyul and McCarthy) far lower than where they deserved to go. I agree they reached a bit for Okhotyuk -- I would have loved Grewe or Legare there -- but overall the Devils draft has to be considered filled with high-value picks for their draft position (Misyul, McCarthy, Gritsyuk, Moynihan, Pasic).

All analyses aside, turn that frown upside down. The Devils did a great job this weekend, and the future is bright.

The Devils had a great weekend, but now have a very lopsided defense. We need some more of those defensive-minded defensemen to pair with Butcher, Severson, and Subban.

 

[Nico the Draft Riser]

Triumph echoes my feelings on a lot of these picks. It feels like they spent quite a few of them fishing for a specific outcome - a big mobile two-way guy who will rack up secondary points and play a smart but non-dynamic (aka non-skating/puck skills-heavy) game while punishing the opposition. I think that profile is very hard to find period, let alone in the later rounds, and there's a reason most of the best guys who somewhat fit that mold (Pietrangelo, Jones, Suter, Weber) are drafted in the first two rounds.

The team's problem with physical play is not really a question of personnel but coaching and development.

But thats exactly why you throw 3-4 darts at the same board. Its all better odds at finding one of the rarest pieces in the NHL right now, which is a big mobile defensively gifted dman

 

[GameSeven]

The Devils had a great weekend, but now have a very lopsided defense. We need some more of those defensive-minded defensemen to pair with Butcher, Severson, and Subban.

...and, ideally, Smith

 

[MartyOwns]

kept the puck away from our nut

that’s a very important job

 

[Goptor]

Triumph echoes my feelings on a lot of these picks. It feels like they spent quite a few of them fishing for a specific outcome - a big mobile two-way guy who will rack up secondary points and play a smart but non-dynamic (aka non-skating/puck skills-heavy) game while punishing the opposition. I think that profile is very hard to find period, let alone in the later rounds, and there's a reason most of the best guys who somewhat fit that mold (Pietrangelo, Jones, Suter, Weber) are drafted in the first two rounds.

The team's problem with physical play is not really a question of personnel but coaching and development.

I don't think that is correct anymore. Schenn, Gudbranson, Alzner, etc. type players are falling to mid-teens like Chychrun nowadays instead of top 10.
Mid-late first rounders from 10 years ago are now going in the 2nd like Robertson this year.
Those type of players are available in the 3rd and 4th round.

The big difference is teams are realizing that the low-ceiling/high-floor projection is a lie. You can't guarantee an NHL spot just by being big and fast. The players still need to be good. It makes the defensive defenseman role a much riskier pick than previously assumed.

 

[TheDuke93]

that’s a very important job

My favorite typo I have ever made.

 

[Triumph]

I can't say I judge physicality by amount of penalty minutes a player accrues. Again, that's an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable through numbers, something which does not work in hockey. In hockey, you need more metaphysical qualities than simply "shots for/shots against". While some of the players you mentioned are certainly better than they are given credit for by the analytics community (Nurse, Carlo, Manson) others are simply third-pairing D who like to hit (Hagg, Polak).

Two players who Case McCarthy reminds me of, for instance, are both Carolina Hurricanes: Brett Pesce (3rd round, 2013) and Jake Slavin (4th round, 2012). While they are not "physical" in the sense that they look all shift long for open ice hits, they both are big guys who clear creases and dominate forwards in the corners -- they are expert in separating the offensive player from the puck and then quickly getting the puck up ice. So, I would consider them "physical defensemen" more than any player who has patrolled the Devils blueline for years, despite low penalty minute totals.

These guys are just good players. I don't think of them as physical defensemen. They don't hit people. They're just good. I liked Henrik Tallinder. He was just good.

For instance, Brett Pesce and Jake Slavin had fewer penalty minutes last year than Jake Gardiner, who is probably the softest and worst defensive defenseman in the entire NHL. How is it possible that two players like Pesce and Slavin who play such a heavy game have fewer penalties than a guy who will avoid contact at any cost? Simple -- Pesce and Slavin are rarely beat one-on-one, and they rarely need to grab a jersey or hook or trip to recover for mistakes, whereas a guy like Gardiner gets beat with regularity and then needs to recover from this by dragging the player who beat him down from behind.

Gardiner is a great example of how analytics falsely quantifies defensemen. In my opinion (and several people in NHL front offices would agree), if you flipped Gardiner to the Bruins and Carlo to the Leafs in that first-round series, the Leafs would win the series. Carlo shut down and punished Leafs forwards all series long, while Gardiner was an abject horror show, almost a liability every time he was on the ice. If you are an opposing forward on a one-on-one or in a corner or going after a rebound, who is the defenseman you would rather be competing against, Carlo or Gardiner? I mean, it's not even a debate -- it's no contest.

Gardiner was hurt all series, so yeah, trading a healthy defenseman for a not-healthy defenseman seems like a pretty good trade and I'd make that deal as well. In general NHL front offices are far too willing to use injured players rather than guys at their best.

I'd much rather have Gardiner overall. People in NHL front offices are the people who let Subban go to the Devils for spare parts. It's not just the salary cap.

Hockey is about balance. I would no way go into a season as an NHL GM with a blueline of Carlo, Manson, Dillon, Zadorov, Pesce and Edmundson. But that being said, you'd have the same chance (zero) of winning the cup as a team with a blueline of Gardiner, Pysyk, Brodie, Gostisbehere and Honka. If you are going to have a high-end offensive D like Erik Karlsson, you are better off pairing him with a physical, defensive-minded guy. Damon Severson playing with Will Butcher is a pretty good defenseman. But when they put him with Darnell Nurse in the World Championships, Severson looked absolutely dominant.

He looked dominant in an exhibition tournament. I like Severson and he's been shortchanged partner-wise almost the whole time he's been here, but I'm not going to use results in an exhibition tournament against mostly non-NHLers as evidence of anything. Hockey's about outchancing the opposition, not balance.

Teams need a balanced blueline to win, plain and simple. Analytics cannot quantify this. Will Butcher needs to be paired with a defensive player, just as Case McCarthy will be the perfect partner for an offensive minded guy (Ty Smith). While I agree with you that drafting for need is bad, the Devils took two of the four defensive D (Misyul and McCarthy) far lower than where they deserved to go. I agree they reached a bit for Okhotyuk -- I would have loved Grewe or Legare there -- but overall the Devils draft has to be considered filled with high-value picks for their draft position (Misyul, McCarthy, Gritsyuk, Moynihan, Pasic).

All analyses aside, turn that frown upside down. The Devils did a great job this weekend, and the future is bright.

Analytics can quantify this - if one guy is bleeding chances against, he's bad. Butcher doesn't need to be paired with a defensive player. He needs to be paired with a good player. If he's paired with a player who shares his strengths and weaknesses there will be limitations, but this idea of balance is overrated. I'm not saying defensive defensemen have no use - far from it actually, I do think players like Slavin and Pesce represent amazing value when they are actually good. I loved Mark Fayne. It's just so hard to find this sort of player and so hard to confuse him with guys who aren't good.

I'm not that upset about the draft overall - we got Hughes and Subban. I can't wait for the season to start. And this is the only time I'll complain about this draft - once September rolls around these guys are Devils and I hope for the best from them.

 

[glenwo2]

anyone else wake up this morning feeling like they banged a supermodel last night?

No. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn, though.

 

[Triumph]

What about guys like Pesce, Hjalmarsson, Vlassic, Hamonic, Orlov, Russell, Greene, Parayko and Girardi? Now not all of these guys are in their prime obviously but all of them at a time were shutdown defensemen that got kept the puck away from our nut and helped their team to win games, not a single one of them went in the first round, so its frankly absurd that you think that drafting "defensive defensemen" is a waste of a draft when the teams #1 issue is being hard to play against. Every single one of those players in their prime was frankly awful to play against and won their puck battles and got their team back on offense. They play as partners and you will never see Girardi and Russell on the ice at the same time unless its the PK, you pair a shutdown guy with Severson and you have yourself a legit top 4 pairing. This is how you build a defense, unless you have a Doughty that can carry a whole unit.

Assuming you are speaking here of Andy Greene and not Matt Greene, I'm all for these sorts of players (although Russell and Girardi were rarely good). The trouble is that in attempting to get them you rarely do - it's often when you try not to do that it ends up happening. Was Andy Greene really brought in to New Jersey with the expectation that he would be a penalty-killing machine? Absolutely not - he barely played there in 08-09. Here we are 10 years later and he's basically leading the league in PK ice time. I remember a Devils fan who insisted that Andy Greene would never be an NHL player because of how he played at the front of his net.

Russell was a top scoring D in the WHL. Vlasic was a point a game D in the Q the year after he was drafted. Parayko scored a lot in college. So yeah, maybe some of these guys's offense comes around later on, but that's not a bet I would make.

 

[TheDuke93]

Assuming you are speaking here of Andy Greene and not Matt Greene, I'm all for these sorts of players (although Russell and Girardi were rarely good). The trouble is that in attempting to get them you rarely do - it's often when you try not to do that it ends up happening. Was Andy Greene really brought in to New Jersey with the expectation that he would be a penalty-killing machine? Absolutely not - he barely played there in 08-09. Here we are 10 years later and he's basically leading the league in PK ice time. I remember a Devils fan who insisted that Andy Greene would never be an NHL player because of how he played at the front of his net.

Russell was a top scoring D in the WHL. Vlasic was a point a game D in the Q the year after he was drafted. Parayko scored a lot in college. So yeah, maybe some of these guys's offense comes around later on, but that's not a bet I would make.

But I don't care even the slightest that they are not scoring, if they can skate and move the puck up the ice even a little, all that that matters is becoming tougher to play against. People are going to bitch and moan about every single offensive defensemen being bad at defense and every defensive defensemen being bad at offense. Unless you get a Doughty you very likely are not getting both, there were some forwards that I liked were we drafted these shutdown type prospects but that does not make these bad picks. We targeted an area of need and drafted guys within the range were scouts and draft heads expected them to go, people cried when we went forward heavy for three straight years, now we do the opposite and its a bad draft.

 

[StevenToddIves]

These guys are just good players. I don't think of them as physical defensemen. They don't hit people. They're just good. I liked Henrik Tallinder. He was just good.



Gardiner was hurt all series, so yeah, trading a healthy defenseman for a not-healthy defenseman seems like a pretty good trade and I'd make that deal as well. In general NHL front offices are far too willing to use injured players rather than guys at their best.

I'd much rather have Gardiner overall. People in NHL front offices are the people who let Subban go to the Devils for spare parts. It's not just the salary cap.



He looked dominant in an exhibition tournament. I like Severson and he's been shortchanged partner-wise almost the whole time he's been here, but I'm not going to use results in an exhibition tournament against mostly non-NHLers as evidence of anything. Hockey's about outchancing the opposition, not balance.



Analytics can quantify this - if one guy is bleeding chances against, he's bad. Butcher doesn't need to be paired with a defensive player. He needs to be paired with a good player. If he's paired with a player who shares his strengths and weaknesses there will be limitations, but this idea of balance is overrated. I'm not saying defensive defensemen have no use - far from it actually, I do think players like Slavin and Pesce represent amazing value when they are actually good. I loved Mark Fayne. It's just so hard to find this sort of player and so hard to confuse him with guys who aren't good.

I'm not that upset about the draft overall - we got Hughes and Subban. I can't wait for the season to start. And this is the only time I'll complain about this draft - once September rolls around these guys are Devils and I hope for the best from them.

I've always thought you've known your hockey quite well, but I am forced to vehemently disagree with the notion that "balance is overrated". Darnell Nurse's top-notch defensive and physical acumen freed up Damon Severson to play the game he was born to play -- aggressively joining the offensive rush without worrying about consequence, pinching in from the point, etc. If the Devils were to pair Severson with a guy like Jake Gardiner, he would never be able to attempt such a style of play because of the constant awareness that his partner was a defensive liability.

So, while the analytics would tell you that Gardiner is a better player than Darnell Nurse, it's actually far from the truth. They are incomparable through statistical analysis, since they are not even remotely similar players. Using analytics to compare Gardiner to Gostisbehere is, however, applicable; these two play a very similar style. And Gostisbehere would equally limit the effectiveness of a Damon Severson. So you need balance.

It's rare that you have a D who is so good in every respect that it does not matter what type of player you partner with them -- there are only so many Drew Doughty's and Mark Giordano's and Dustin Byfuglien's in the world. For everyone else, balance is crucial. So, Will Butcher needs to be partnered with a defense-first guy who can win physical battles -- he's excellent offensively, but let's face it -- he's never going to be a shut-down guy, and he's never going to be physically imposing. That's why you draft a guy like Case McCarthy, especially in the 4th round. And Reilly Walsh is a similar-type RD to Butcher on the LD -- that's why you draft a guy like Okhotyuk or Vukojevic.

I'm glad you're happy with Hughes and Subban -- the Devils are certainly an exciting team to watch for the 2019-20 season. But as much as I like exciting, high-upside wingers, the Devils already have a litany of them in the system: Boqvist, Talvitie, etc. What the Devils needed was defensive-minded physical presences on the blueline, and they got four of them in the 2019 draft, two of them (Misyul, McCarthy) at incredible draft values.

 

[TheDuke93]

I've always thought you've known your hockey quite well, but I am forced to vehemently disagree with the notion that "balance is overrated". Darnell Nurse's top-notch defensive and physical acumen freed up Damon Severson to play the game he was born to play -- aggressively joining the offensive rush without worrying about consequence, pinching in from the point, etc. If the Devils were to pair Severson with a guy like Jake Gardiner, he would never be able to attempt such a style of play because of the constant awareness that his partner was a defensive liability.

So, while the analytics would tell you that Gardiner is a better player than Darnell Nurse, it's actually far from the truth. They are incomparable through statistical analysis, since they are not even remotely similar players. Using analytics to compare Gardiner to Gostisbehere is, however, applicable; these two play a very similar style. And Gostisbehere would equally limit the effectiveness of a Damon Severson. So you need balance.

It's rare that you have a D who is so good in every respect that it does not matter what type of player you partner with them -- there are only so many Drew Doughty's and Mark Giordano's and Dustin Byfuglien's in the world. For everyone else, balance is crucial. So, Will Butcher needs to be partnered with a defense-first guy who can win physical battles -- he's excellent offensively, but let's face it -- he's never going to be a shut-down guy, and he's never going to be physically imposing. That's why you draft a guy like Case McCarthy, especially in the 4th round. And Reilly Walsh is a similar-type RD to Butcher on the LD -- that's why you draft a guy like Okhotyuk or Vukojevic.

I'm glad you're happy with Hughes and Subban -- the Devils are certainly an exciting team to watch for the 2019-20 season. But as much as I like exciting, high-upside wingers, the Devils already have a litany of them in the system: Boqvist, Talvitie, etc. What the Devils needed was defensive-minded physical presences on the blueline, and they got four of them in the 2019 draft, two of them (Misyul, McCarthy) at incredible draft values.

The potential of having a Smith-Severson + Okhotyuk-Walsh as our top two parings in the future has me giddy about our future on the blue line.

 

[StevenToddIves]

The potential of having a Smith-Severson + Okhotyuk-Walsh as our top two parings in the future has me giddy about our future on the blue line.

I agree with your enthusiasm, but it must be stated that all of these defense prospects have a ton of work to do before making the NHL, even Walsh. Smith, to me, is the only sure bet -- he's a bluechip prospect in every sense of the word. I will say that McCarthy's intelligence/strength/compete level makes him, in my mind, a can't miss as at least a third-pairing guy.

 

[Nico the Draft Riser]

I love how underrated Jack is on the main forums - youd think this is a weaker draft than 2017 with the constant RNH comparisons as well as comments about him failing in the leage next year

Oh and dont forget how Jacks stats are a product of his stacked team!

 

[TheDuke93]

I agree with your enthusiasm, but it must be stated that all of these defense prospects have a ton of work to do before making the NHL, even Walsh. Smith, to me, is the only sure bet -- he's a bluechip prospect in every sense of the word. I will say that McCarthy's intelligence/strength/compete level makes him, in my mind, a can't miss as at least a third-pairing guy.

Oh absolutely, but with Shero/Castron I have little doubt that at least one of the four will make it. We shall see what happens, but I am comfortable with whoever they take.

 

[TheDuke93]

I love how underrated Jack is on the main forums - youd think this is a weaker draft than 2017 with the constant RNH comparisons as well as comments about him failing in the leage next year

Oh and dont forget how Jacks stats are a product of his stacked team!

Absolutely laughable lol.