Devils 2021 team discussion (news, notes and speculation) - part XXIX

[JrFischer54]

Bahl was acquired in a package for a pending UFA. We also got a 1st round pick which turned into Dawson Mercer who has lit up the Q this year.

I don't think anyone has penciled Bahl into anything.

he was a second round draft pick and I know how this board loves those so if he was drafted by us in the second round he absolutely would be penciled in by this board for a top 4 role.

 

[Bleedred]

He didn't have bad numbers in Washington though...he had some of the best PK numbers in the league by a DMan

I was only going by his 5 on 5 numbers.

Perhaps his penalty killing was why we acquired him.

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

At this point I could care less, he’s got months to rest after the next two weeks and his pro games played in his three years have been 43 (split between the AHL and NHL), 47 and 30 so far this year, might as well go to 37

Yeah if he's healthy and the backups have lost the trust of the team throw him into the fire.

 

[billingtons ghost]

Say we signed Koulikov this past year to a 4 year as opposed to a 1 year. That one likely would have worked out well.

If the choice is a lesser player on a 1 year, vs a better player on a 4 year. I think I go the latter. Our D is very much in need.

Especially if we are considering moving Subban next year, which I'm sure this board is going to be all about.

I don't know man. I love Kulikov more than the next guy, but 4 years would've had me scratching my head - plus he wouldn't have done that for a low #, since he was looking for a prove-it contract and he's going to get more after this year.

Again - I'm most hopeful that we'll see a trade first - but I'm with you on picking up a decent middle-pairing guy on a 3-yr deal.

 

[MartyOwns]

Still, to me, trading for Sieg's was a signal they didn't have much faith in Bahl in the near term, vice versa, good showing by Bahl could squeeze a less then impressive Sieg's.

i think the sieg trade was simply washington sending out the message that he was the odd man out, and we took a shot. still too early to judge the return IMO but in general i like those kinds of opportunistic trades

 

[AfroThunder396]

Remember that Seigenthaler was essentially sitting in the press box all season. He's already played 6 games for NJ and played 7 for WSH all of this season. He's obviously a little rusty, and not having any familiarity with team mates or system is a huge issue. They threw him straight into the deep end. I'm not going to judge him until he's had a full camp.

IMO Bahl was always quite overrated, a nice prospect but he has little to no offensive ability to speak of. People always overrate height in a defenseman and throw out lazy Chara comparisons. IMO he's already been surpassed by Okhotiuk in both the short and long term, and has much much less raw talent than Shak. Obviously he's still young and developing, but I think a better version of Siegenthaler is all I'm really expecting from him.

 

[Bleedred]

At this point I could care less, he’s got months to rest after the next two weeks and his pro games played in his three years have been 43 (split between the AHL and NHL), 47 and 30 so far this year, might as well go to 37

My issue is I’m doubting he’s healthy.

He went from being a very late scratch against the Penguins last week after being in the starters net in the morning skate (the explanation was an injury during the last Rangers game); to getting thrown back in there after the two embarrassing clobberings we took with the two clowns and played in both games of the back to back. He played last game and didn’t look so hot. I’m worried we’re forcing him to play to save face for the Wedgewood-Dell disaster (Misty Dell, as Wedgewood played some competent games, which Dell really has not other than maybe his first) embarrassing us and ringing up the score again.

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

i think the sieg trade was simply washington sending out the message that he was the odd man out, and we took a shot. still too early to judge the return IMO but in general i like those kinds of opportunistic trades

IDK i hope Fitz didn't just give up a 3rd on a lark like that and he actually sought out Siegenthaler based on scouting reports/analytics and acquired him. I'd like to avoid those types of reactive moves (Andreas Johnsson for example) unless the price is just too good to pass up.

 

[MartyOwns]

IDK i hope Fitz didn't just give up a 3rd on a lark like that and he actually sought out Siegenthaler based on scouting reports/analytics and acquired him. I'd like to avoid those types of reactive moves (Andreas Johnsson for example) unless the price is just too good to pass up.

well yes, i'm assuming they would do their homework. i was just saying i don't think this is a guy the devils asked about because of bahl or any other reason, i think an opportunity was presented and they beat out a few other bids.

 

[HBK27]

I'm fine with Bahl playing. Rorate every young prospect we can into at least one game.

Yeah, I'd like to see a few more of the younger guys get some NHL games this season.

I think Bahl would be an emergency callup tonight, so does that still leave the team with 4 non-emergency call ups for the remainder of the season?

 

[Billdo]

I don't know man. I love Kulikov more than the next guy, but 4 years would've had me scratching my head - plus he wouldn't have done that for a low #, since he was looking for a prove-it contract and he's going to get more after this year.

Again - I'm most hopeful that we'll see a trade first - but I'm with you on picking up a decent middle-pairing guy on a 3-yr deal.

If the Devils signed Kulikov to a four year deal going into this season this board would've melted down.

 

[Blackjack]

So I'd like to put a fallacy to rest here.

This "NHL forwards 'peak' at 24" is complete horseshit, 'on average' or not.

NHL forwards peak over an incredibly wide range. From 24 to 32. They may 'begin' to peak at 24, but the reality is that for most the difference between a year 24 season and 28 season could be all over the map. Sure, decline sets in at 30, but there seems to be this silly prevailing wind of:
"oh, he's 25, we've missed his peak" when in reality the next four years might be the most productive of a player's career -

The difference between a player's 24 season and their 28 season might be statistically negligible, or it might be an incredible improvement at 28 or an incredible falloff. The variability player-to-player is tremendous.

and to not be 'peaking' at 24 sure can have a ton to do with:
- playing on a crappy team
- playing for a crappy coach
- playing in a crappy system
- playing with crappy linemates
- playing out of their role

Now, of course, you guys can cherrypick the hell out this, and I'll drop a Gordie Howe on you... having his best scoring years at 25 (95pts). And 29 (89). And 35 (86), and 40(103). (scoring ~100 points in the WHA until he was 50, too)

Sure, I agree with all of that. Maybe a better way to say it is that performance becomes much more varied at age 24, whereas with guys younger than that, there is a more consistent trend of year over year improvements.

As far as Zacha is concerned, he's been in the league for a while now, and some of his deficiencies have been very consistent.

- Does he forecheck well? No, he rarely generates any pressure on the forecheck
- Does he cycle the puck and maintain pressure in the offensive zone? No
- Does he defend the rush well? No, he doesn't consistently deny zone entries or bother puck carriers in the neutral zone
- Does he shut down the other team's cycle and generate zone exits? No

Zacha's weaknesses kind of line up with a lot of Wood's weaknesses, even though they're very different players. That's part of why I'd like to see at least one of them traded. Anyone who pays any attention to my posts knows how much I love Jesper Bratt's game, but frankly, Bratt is weak on a lot of these things too. He's not a good forechecker, and he doesn't defend the rush well either. Ideally, you exploit Bratt's tremendous vision and game breaking ability and cover up his weaknesses by providing him with a player that can forecheck and do some of those other things. I could see Bratt being very good with a Kuokkanen or Mercer in the future.

A lot has been made this season about how the Devils generate most of their offense off the rush rather than cycling the puck in the offensive zone, and I think it's because they just have too many players that are weak forecheckers and offensive zone cyclers. It's part of why I'm so high on Maltsev. Right now he's inconsistent and makes some mistakes, but I see a guy that wins an awful lot of board battles and maintains possession of the puck when you don't expect him to. If he had Zacha's skill and skating ability, he might be one of the best centers in the league.

As critical as I am of Zacha's game, I actually really like him as an individual. He seems like a great teammate, he's enthusiastic, unselfish, and doesn't complain. I know that he's friends with Bratt and Hischier and Butcher and all those guys, and it does pain me to be so cold and clinical when criticizing his game. But I just see him as a big reason why this team has been struggling for so long.

 

[TheDuke93]

We are at the bottom of the nhl in points and cap hit this has been the case for a long time. So you were saying sustained failure?

Managing your cap properly doesn't mean you will be good, mismanaging your cap will 100% make you bad. It's like the saying you can't win the season in the beginning but you can certainly lose it.

 

[Unknown Caller]

Remember that Seigenthaler was essentially sitting in the press box all season. He's already played 6 games for NJ and played 7 for WSH all of this season. He's obviously a little rusty, and not having any familiarity with team mates or system is a huge issue. They threw him straight into the deep end. I'm not going to judge him until he's had a full camp.

IMO Bahl was always quite overrated, a nice prospect but he has little to no offensive ability to speak of. People always overrate height in a defenseman and throw out lazy Chara comparisons. IMO he's already been surpassed by Okhotiuk in both the short and long term, and has much much less raw talent than Shak. Obviously he's still young and developing, but I think a better version of Siegenthaler is all I'm really expecting from him.

In watching Bahl, he's actually pretty smooth and mobile for his size. He may not have dynamic offensive capabilities or be a huge point producer, but he is more than capable of making clean transition passes and jumping up into the play.

He was actually quarterbacking the second powerplay unit in Binghamton, so he's far from a grenade handler. I think he is considerably more proficient on the offensive side then Siegenthaler, although he's obviously not going to be a Ty Smith or Reilly Walsh.

 

[billingtons ghost]

Sure, I agree with all of that. Maybe a better way to say it is that performance becomes much more varied at age 24, whereas with guys younger than that, there is a more consistent trend of year over year improvements.

As far as Zacha is concerned, he's been in the league for a while now, and some of his deficiencies have been very consistent.

- Does he forecheck well? No, he rarely generates any pressure on the forecheck
- Does he cycle the puck and maintain pressure in the offensive zone? No
- Does he defend the rush well? No, he doesn't consistently deny zone entries or bother puck carriers in the neutral zone
- Does he shut down the other team's cycle and generate zone exits? No

Zacha's weaknesses kind of line up with a lot of Wood's weaknesses, even though they're very different players. That's part of why I'd like to see at least one of them traded. Anyone who pays any attention to my posts knows how much I love Jesper Bratt's game, but frankly, Bratt is weak on a lot of these things too. He's not a good forechecker, and he doesn't defend the rush well either. Ideally, you exploit Bratt's tremendous vision and game breaking ability and cover up his weaknesses by providing him with a player that can forecheck and do some of those other things. I could see Bratt being very good with a Kuokkanen or Mercer in the future.

A lot has been made this season about how the Devils generate most of their offense off the rush rather than cycling the puck in the offensive zone, and I think it's because they just have too many players that are weak forecheckers and offensive zone cyclers. It's part of why I'm so high on Maltsev. Right now he's inconsistent and makes some mistakes, but I see a guy that wins an awful lot of board battles and maintains possession of the puck when you don't expect him to. If he had Zacha's skill and skating ability, he might be one of the best centers in the league.

As critical as I am of Zacha's game, I actually really like him as an individual. He seems like a great teammate, he's enthusiastic, unselfish, and doesn't complain. I know that he's friends with Bratt and Hischier and Butcher and all those guys, and it does pain me to be so cold and clinical when criticizing his game. But I just see him as a big reason why this team has been struggling for so long.

You make some good points - and I see your logic.

I just think you can do the same critique of literally every player on our team at this point because they are young. Nobody on this team really knows how to play defense at forward except for Zajac, and well...

If you can find a way to disparage Jesper Bratt (and your criticisms are completely fair, imho) you can find a way to disparage anyone on this team. It's only a small jump to Nico at this point.

Even our best defensive guys - like McLeod are extremely inconsistent and make mind-warping errors.

I think your critique is just targeted at these guys in particular because we've been staring at them the longest and the incremental improvements have been the most painful to watch.

It's easier to be pleasantly surprised by Sharangovich (whom I adore). Hey look! new toy!

 

[TheDuke93]

In watching Bahl, he's actually pretty smooth and mobile for his size. He may not have dynamic offensive capabilities or be a huge point producer, but he is more than capable of making clean transition passes and jumping up into the play.

He was actually quarterbacking the second powerplay unit in Binghamton, so he's far from a grenade handler. I think he is considerably more proficient on the offensive side then Siegenthaler, although he's obviously not going to be a Ty Smith or Reilly Walsh.

He turns his back to play a lot and get's caught, leads the AHL in shin pads per 60 and just throws people to get out of trouble that he got himself into leading too more penalties. But as many have pointed out it is his first pro hockey season, the AHL team is very weird and it generally takes ogres a while to develop.

 

[MartyOwns]

Managing your cap properly doesn't mean you will be good, mismanaging your cap will 100% make you bad. It's like the saying you can't win the season in the beginning but you can certainly lose it.

agreed. but then again, you have teams like chicago and tampa bay that have 'mismanaged' their cap to achieve success, only then to get out of trouble with cba loopholes and LTIR frogshit. so, as long as you mismanage your cap in an unethical way, you'll be fine.

 

[FooteBahl]

Big Bahl playing tonight

After getting married and the birth of my two children, this is the best day of my life. Could FooteBahl happen tonight?!

 

[billingtons ghost]

In watching Bahl, he's actually pretty smooth and mobile for his size. He may not have dynamic offensive capabilities or be a huge point producer, but he is more than capable of making clean transition passes and jumping up into the play.

He was actually quarterbacking the second powerplay unit in Binghamton, so he's far from a grenade handler. I think he is considerably more proficient on the offensive side then Siegenthaler, although he's obviously not going to be a Ty Smith or Reilly Walsh.

I can't wait until 5 minutes in when someone posts: "Wow, Mirco Mueller has grown... and why did he switch numbers?"

jk. I'm really hopeful for this guy, and now have a reason to be excited for tonight outside of extending our nascent win streak.

 

[Guttersniped]

Pretty interesting distinction looking at the

Shara Zajac Kuok line

vs the

Shara Hughes Kuok line.

The latter dominates possession, but not scoring a ton, and giving up a bunch of goals.

While the former, was even possession wise, but scored a bunch and was very stingy in terms of goals allowed.

Should be noted too, that the Zajac line played more difficult minutes, lots of d-zone draws, pretty strict matchups against top lines, though they did enjoy a full complement of defesemen behind the them.

Shara Hughes Kuok, gets a ton of o-zone starts(73%), and does not get those strict matchups(though without Zajac around Hughes does get a higher share now then he did before) but after trading Kuok, losing Vats, and without Subban and Hughes for a bit, one can figure that plays heavily into the goals against.

The goals for though does continue to be an issue for Hughes's lines this year. Domination in terms of possession #'s, but not enough scoring.

Using the the line states the Hughes line has a PDO of .881, an on ice SV% of 81.61%, an on ice SH% of 5%, CF% of 64.01%, SCF% 64.58%, HDCF% 65.12%, xGF/60 of 2.92 and xGA/60 of 1.42.

The Zajac line had a PDO of 1.095, an on ice SV% of 96.51%, an on ice SH% of 12.99%, CF% 50.34%, SCF% 48.59%, HDCF% 47.46%, xGF/60 of 2.52 and xGA/60 of 2.89.

I know, I know, boo hiss advanced stats. Anyhoo the Hughes line clearly smokes the Zajac line. The comical bad luck, aka the putrid PDO, mostly stems from the general low point of the season.

The most obvious change was how the goaltending got worse and worse. Also our defensive core had been healthy and then it wasn’t. Even before that, Smith was wearing down a bit and Severson’s brain started short-circuiting. (Remember thinking Damon was a 1st pair defensemen? Good times.) That line is playing very well and I’m not going to worry about the results because those don’t actually actually reflect how well they are playing. And if they played with better defensemen (and Smith being back is helpful) that would help in offensive production.

 

[AfroThunder396]

If the Devils signed Kulikov to a four year deal going into this season this board would've melted down.

As they should have, you cannot give role players that much term.

Everyone wanted David Schlemko back after he had a career year in 2016, but SJ offered him a 4 year deal and he left us that summer. During that four year contract he's been claimed in the expansion draft, traded twice, and waived twice. We also gave John Moore a 3 year deal based on his analytics and almost immediately regretted it.

Kulikov had a very nice little 40 games for us, but there's no reason to expect that to continue. This season was an anomaly. He has been a bad defenseman for the majority of his career and he will likely continue being a bad defenseman as he ages. A nice 40 games for us in a weird season doesn't change that.

The idea some around here (not necessarily you) seem to have that if we hadn't traded him he would have personally prevented the latest losing streak is nonsense. We turned a bottom pairing guy that signed with us in October into draft pick that will likely be in the top-100.

 

[TheDuke93]

I wonder if the Toffoli deal will change things on that front. I swear every roster thread on these boards is just fans going "why didn't we sign Toffoli?!"

Yeah guy is shooting 17%, shot 15% with the Canucks and shot 15% once with the Kings, the rest of his career he is around a 9% shot. That contract isn't bad and I don't see it aging well.

 

[TheDuke93]

Wood is not better than Grabner or Hagelin - Grabner's best scoring years are better plus he could kill penalties, and Hagelin was a possession fiend even though he had limited scoring touch. Wood is not 'criminally underrated' - he has one above-average skill, scoring goals. Everything else is not. You can't play him on a real line with scoring players - the puck finds him and unless he's going straight to the net it's bound to be a wasted possession.

Hughes has a ton of other above-average skills that compensate for his turnovers. Wood does not. Now that said, Wood has stopped taking dumb penalties this year, but he has also kinda stopped hitting people too. Which is fine - hitting isn't very valuable and unless you're separating a guy from the puck you're not doing a ton.



I love Wood's hustle. But you basically have to build any line with him on it around him, and he's generally not worth building a line around. Obviously if Wood keeps scoring at this rate, it's not hard to do that, but we know that's very unlikely.

I agree with all of this but the past 2 weeks or so, whenever I said Wood was a hard player to play with, he 100% started cycling the puck better and making way more passes count.

 

[Tao Jersey Jones]

Looks like the staff agreed with me.

 

[Blender]

Using the the line states the Hughes line has a PDO of .881, an on ice SV% of 81.61%, an on ice SH% of 5%, CF% of 64.01%, SCF% 64.58%, HDCF% 65.12%, xGF/60 of 2.92 and xGA/60 of 1.42.

The Zajac line had a PDO of 1.095, an on ice SV% of 96.51%, an on ice SH% of 12.99%, CF% 50.34%, SCF% 48.59%, HDCF% 47.46%, xGF/60 of 2.52 and xGA/60 of 2.89.

I know, I know, boo hiss advanced stats. Anyhoo the Hughes line clearly smokes the Zajac line. The comical bad luck, aka the putrid PDO, mostly stems from the general low point of the season.

The most obvious change was how the goaltending got worse and worse. Also our defensive core had been healthy and then it wasn’t. Even before that, Smith was wearing down a bit and Severson’s brain started short-circuiting. (Remember thinking Damon was a 1st pair defensemen? Good times.) That line is playing very well and I’m not going to worry about the results because those don’t actually actually reflect how well they are playing. And if they played with better defensemen (and Smith being back is helpful) that would help in offensive production.

5on5 the Sharangovich-Hughes-Kuokkanen line has been one of the most dominant lines in the entire league. You don't cave the other team in like that night after night and continue to have horrendous luck forever.