With the Devils struggling again, GM Lou Lamoriello is faceing plenty of imminent decisions about the future direction of the franchise.

I could bother to complain about the Devils’ most recent performance – a drab 4-2 loss in Detroit last night that wasn’t even as close as the score would indicate – or the fact I wasted time watching/listening to this game last night as opposed to watching The Amazing Race (and why that’s on Fridays now is mystifying, but beside the point).  I figured I’d go in a slightly different direction with this blog though since let’s face it, right now the Devils are at a crossroads as a franchise.  Despite the departure of Martin Brodeur after last season, age is still very much an issue for key members of this team.  No fewer than five of the starting eighteen skaters are 35+ years old including key forwards Jaromir Jagr and Patrik Elias as well as captain Bryce Salvador and fellow d-man Marek Zidlicky.  All of the above (sans Elias) plus 34-year old Michael Ryder are on the last year of their deals so these guys aren’t exactly long-term solutions any way you cut it.  Not to mention GM Lou Lamoriello just turned 72 a couple weeks ago.  With the Devils again on the road to mediocrity this year eventually hard choices are going to need to be made.  Is coach Pete DeBoer still the long-term answer, whether we rebuild or not?  Do we go down the path of Sanborn’s Sabres and completely nuke the roster or do we keep trying to patch together and retool on the fly, the way we already are in the process of doing with the defense?

Clearly Lou himself doesn’t believe in all-out rebuilds, he hasn’t done one in 27 years as the Devils GM and isn’t about to start now towards the end of his storied career.  And as much as some fans may complain about how we’re spinning our wheels signing a bunch of older guys, the fact is most of them are not signed to long-term deals that are going to clog up cap or roster spots past the next year or so.  If anything I admire how Lou’s trying to retool on the fly (remember a couple years ago when the defense was as old and slow as the forward core is now, or how we had no long-term solution in goal for when Brodeur retired?) although short-term the growing pains are clearly there with this defense and even goalie Cory Schneider to a degree and long-term we still need a LOT of reinforcements up front.  Picking defensemen every year in the second round is nice if you’re going to keep hitting on them but at some point we have to trade from a strength to help a weakness, and use more higher picks to address the forward issue.  Counting on lower-round picks like Reid Boucher – who is slumping in the AHL – isn’t ideal unless you supplement it with some higher-round talent.

Some fans don’t think it’s possible to retool on the fly, it’s either tank or bust – a thinking I abhor.  I can’t believe I’m about to say this but…just look across town for proof it is possible to stay competitive and rebuild to being a true contender at the same time.  Look at the Rangers’ team coming out of the lockout – they had a bunch of short term vets like Jaromir Jagr, Michael Nylander, Michael Roszival supplemented by role players with a young goalie and were able to remain competitive – though I’m sure they were accused of spinning their wheels too since they never got out of the second round until 2012 – all the while Henrik Lundqvist was gaining experience and the Rangers were able to overhaul their farm system and get younger with good picks and some astute robberies trades, like getting Ryan McDonagh for the rotting corpse of Scott Gomez (who may actually be signed any day by the Devils now lol).  Yes it takes longer to ‘retool’ in that way but there’s no real guarantee bottoming out will help long-term.  Plus let’s be honest, it’s not exactly an ideal climate to completely nuke the team with the Rangers being a contender and even the Isles finally improving.

After all if the Devils ever did bottom out, who would be the GM making the moves to eventually get us back into contention?  Would it be Lou at 75, or someone else?  Tank advocates point to how you generally need at least one or two star forwards to win in the post-lockout NHL – unless you’re 2011 Boston and have a bunch of good forwards, along with great defense and goaltending – and with free agency being what it is now with most stars not even sniffing FA post-lockout, the only ways to get said forward are either in the draft or via trade.  Under normal circumstances we would have had three top ten picks in the last four years, but between the trade of our #9 overall two years ago for Schneider and the fact we had to pay a final price for the ill-fated Ilya Kovalchuk contract last year and go down from #10 to #30 in the draft last year, we haven’t even been able to use our top picks to supplement our aging core up front (our other top pick was of course Adam Larsson at #4 in 2011).  The fact that key forwards Parise and Kovalchuk both left for home after 2012, or the fact other highly drafted forwards such as Mattias Tedenby and Jacob Josefson haven’t truly panned out  have also set the organization back further, at least up front.

Fact is though, some hard choices may need to be made if this team is putt-puttering along on the fringe of a playoff spot again this year.  I could forgive them for not trading David Clarkson two years ago (though if we knew for certain he was going to walk then yeah he should have been traded), and understand why Marek Zidlicky and Jaromir Jagr weren’t traded last year – since both were re-signed in and in Jagr’s case, he invoked a de facto no trade by threatening not to report if he was dealt…not that we were going to deal him anyway though.  The one I can’t understand was why we didn’t trade Mark Fayne last year, with Larsson healthy and rotting in the minors.  Clearly they had little intention of re-signing Fayne, and it made no sense to keep Larsson down in the minors for the entire season until we were out of it.

And this year the Devils have a ton of guys on expiring contracts that can help another team and net us back needed picks to help re-stock the forward core.  Jagr – if he’s as cranky as he’s been most of this season and suddenly becomes more amenable to a trade this time around, Ryder, Zidlicky, even Salvador could be traded for some tangible value.  Thing is, that isn’t neccesarily what Lou will do if we’re on the fringe of the playoff hunt again, especially in an East that doesn’t look too imposing.  And that’s where the crossroads comes into play and where we might veer too far into ‘win now’ mode at the expense of getting help down the road.  Lou’s done a good job of not tying us up long-term with bad deals up front at the very least – though it looks like Ryane Clowe was a bad deal, sadly it might dissapear on IR at this rate.  However going one more spring attempting to protect futile playoff pushes might be one season too long.  While a total rebuild isn’t necessary, at some point there needs to be more assets allocated to getting in younger forwards that can play.  Signing hold-the-fort guys only gets you so far, especially when those hold-the-fort guys (like Mike Cammalleri or Martin Havlat) get hurt.

Of course there’s also the question of the coach…while Lou’s given out a lot of passes to Pete the last couple of years, I can’t imagine even the newer, more patient version of Lou is happy over a number of performances like last night, shots allowed being way up or our PK being historically bad.  Not to mention signs – mostly from Jagr comments – that this team isn’t the good ship lollipop it was in the last couple seasons.  Still, if Pete is fired where does Lou go from here?  It’s not like there’s many proven winners out there whose name isn’t John Tortorella (and even if his last year in Vancouver wasn’t the disaster it was there’s no way Lou would hire a cranky egomaniac like Tort).  Are you going to retool with another young coach, or bring in some washed up vet name like Ron Wilson who isn’t going to excite anyone?  While I get just as crazy as anyone over the lack of accountability for our last two playoff seasons, I’m still more forgiving than most about Lou’s blind spot vis-a-vis Pete since the other options are a bit underwhelming at this point.

Still, if we do eventually turn younger up front, is Pete going to be the right guy for it?  Defenders point to Adam Henrique and Damon Severson as evidence of how he can handle younger guys but I’d argue the book is far from written about Severson (it wouldn’t completely shock me if his rookie season took the same path as Larsson’s in 2011) and Henrique got a real chance because there was literally no other option with Travis Zajac and Jacob Josefson hurt in 2011.  His record with other younger players both here and in Florida is more sketchy.  Even now Larsson still gets benched for making one mistake a game – tipping the first goal past Schneider on the PK last night – while others get to blunder repeatedly with little accountability for them.  In that respect what Lou decides to do with this team going forward may tie in to what he does with the coaching.  Or it should.  While yes Pete had success with by far his best talent in 2012 and proved he can handle a veteran roster, the fact is plenty of coaches in every sport can benefit from good teams or get fired simply for having bad teams while Pete’s managed to avoid the guillotine despite two straight playoff-less seasons, a feat that was last accomplished before Lou became the GM.

Hopefully one way or the other we take a fork in the road this year.  Unless by some miracle we stay reasonably healthy and at least have an illusion of being real contenders by January.  We’re going to have to navigate a brutal November schedule first for that to happen, and so far we aren’t doing too well with that going 0-3 against St. Louis and Detroit.  Assuming this team remains firmly on the bubble, it’ll be interesting to see whether there’s finally a concerted effort to end the illusion of a playoff run and eventually restock the farm with talented, speedy forwards.