Jesus Fitz, couldn’t you have waited at least like a few hours after I finished my last blog before doing another big trade?! I don’t have the energy for this and want to go back outdoors lol

Well then, apparently he wasn’t done for the day completely remaking his roster as former #7 overall pick Alex Holtz and 2023 playoff cult hero Akira Schmid were both sent to Vegas for a physical back six player in Paul Cotter and yet another 2025 pick, this one in the third round. While I can’t say either guy being moved was a massive shock at this point, both of them in the same deal for essentially another role player is basically sticker shock considering for all of Holtz’s issues he did score 16 goals last year in a very limited role while Schmid was thought by many including me to be the goalie of the future after last postseason.

My, how things change in one year – at least in Schmid’s case. Holtz has been a bit of a lightning rod for longer than that, passed over by management last year and kept in the scratch box for at least half a season before the player himself requested to be sent down to the AHL so he could play games again. This year he started strong with a bunch of goals in the first half (sixteen overall this season, but a -15 and only 28 points despite somehow playing all 82 games) but petered out in the second half and again fell out of favor with two different head coaches, the GM publicly ripped him before the trade deadline and even team Sweden’s selection committee at the World Championships left him off their roster this Spring in favor of a few non-NHL players.

The fact Holtz wasn’t included in either our Timo Meier trade in 2023 or our more recent Jacob Markstrom trade suggests he had little value around the league and this trade pretty much confirms that. If anything, it seems as if Holtz was more of a throw-in to this deal than Schmid, who granted will always be a cult hero here for what he did in ten days last April to bring us back from the abyss in a certain playoff series.

Cult hero isn’t the same as regular contributor though, this season he took a step back at both the NHL and AHL level with sub-.900 save percentages at both, and with Nico Daws now healthy after his hip surgery last offseason (and having a great flash at the NHL level before wearing down himself) and Isaac Poulter also now ready to challenge for AHL time, there was a bit of a glut down there and one of these guys was likely going to be offloaded sooner rather than later regardless. Perhaps it was a bit harsh on Schmid, as were some of then-coach Lindy Ruff’s comments about him after a poor game early this season but he’s the oldest of the three and now that he was guaranteed to be stuck at the AHL level for at least another season, he’ll hopefully get more of a path to playing time in Vegas than it seemed we were willing to give the 24-year old at this point.

While I’m the first one to beat the drum that Holtz had little value around the league, this return even surprised me though. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but packaging both of them you’d figure would return more than a back six player who couldn’t even get into Vegas’s playoff lineup and a meh draft pick next year. Sure he hits, and god knows Fitz’s been obsessed with adding size today – it seems as if he wrote a note to his wife and scribbled on it ‘size no matter what’ a la Kevin Costner in the movie Draft Day with a certain player he wanted to draft.

I have compared Fitz’s whole day to Costner going nuts and wanting to remake his entire franchise in one fell swoop on Draft Day. Some of it is more understandable than others, I do think Fitz jumped the shark a bit in the draft itself – even drafting overagers in the later rounds to hit the size quota, not to mention TWO goalies. If it wasn’t obvious Schmid or one of our other AHL guys were about to hit the road, it became so the minute Fitz doubled down on the goaltending position with another pick in the fifth round. It’s almost as if last season broke his brain as far as needing more goaltending and size. Sure we did clearly need both, but THIS much? And they have to actually be able to you know, play for it to matter.

Ultimately I am okay-ish with Fitz getting rid of two players who clearly weren’t a part of the plan for another trombone player who’ll round out the drummers in our band (sorry, but this Lou reference definitely fits). It just seems like Fitz is in total desperation mode though. Maybe he should be, despite his well-publicized extension in the middle of last season the Devils really can’t afford another season out of the playoffs with the supposed best young core in the league. At some point it won’t be that young anymore, especially the more slower vets Fitz decides to add to it. Perhaps that extension actually wasn’t very long, either way Fitz is definitely acting like a GM on the hot seat, and that almost never turns out well for the desperate teams.

He does deserve a chance to make this work (a la Joe Douglas with the Jets), hopefully for both of them – and me – it doesn’t bomb in both cases.