Battle Of Hudson

The 2015 Devils Fan Appreciation Night Poster (via Facebook)…without players, coaches, names or numbers

I really didn’t want to waste my time on yet another blog for this sorry 2014-15 Devils season – particularly after Tuesday’s home finale fiasco – but with the official close of the team’s campaign this evening in Florida I feel a bit duty-bound to offer up one more team thoughts/summation post before going into hibernation during the playoffs (sans a possible draft lottery post, depending on what happens next Saturday when that occurs).  Even if there are too many unknowns to offer up anything more than thoughtful guesses as to what will happen next with this organization…all that is known for sure is this might be the most important offseason in GM Lou Lamoriello’s nearly thirty years with the team.

Before I do get to the overall picture and what lies ahead, I will rant a little about the events of ‘Fan Appreciation Day’ which turned out to be Fan Depreciation Day when a great majority of Devil players no-showed in a 4-2 loss that sounded more competitive than it was, completing a home-and-home sweep by a combined 10-3 score that rendered us into mere clown props for the Rangers on their way to the President’s Trophy.  Quite predictably the crowd was pretty close to 50-50 in terms of Devil fans and Ranger fans.  Also predictably once the Rangers won, only their fans remained to cheer the Rangers clinching the best regular season record, and when the Devil players attempted to salute the few diehards remaining (I honestly didn’t even remember there would be a team salute, though this team really wasn’t worthy of one after that ‘effort’ Tuesday), they were loudly booed.  Embarassing but honestly it was a fitting end to such a horrendous season. Ironically, when I heard the boos going down the steps I thought it was our fans booing the Rangers for saluting their fans after clinching home-ice advantage for the entire postseason.  Perhaps the only salvation is this organization paid for its arrogance in attempting to shoehorn a team celebration into a Devils-Rangers game that everyone knew would be a split crowd to an extent.

It doesn’t even seem like the organization themselves cared about Fan Appreciation Day, oh the 30% discount at the team store was nice if you were willing to brave the resulting lines (really not an option in my case, considering traffic kept me and my friend from getting in the building until 7) but the actual giveaways themselves were a joke.  A team poster that was little more than an empty locker with a jersey and championship stickers painted above the locker – see above.  No player/coach names or pictures.  Combined with the fact there were no team awards and you can see GM Lou Lamoriello’s dissatisfaction with this season just with those symbolic gestures, even if it hasn’t been readily apparent in press conferences.  While I can understand suspending the team awards – even if it’s a bit petty considering Cory Schneider deserved to be acknowledged as a team MVP and a few other guys deserved some recognition – I do think they shouldn’t have been so lame with the picture.  Older fans like having the players sign the team poster or just like collecting them, and younger fans don’t really care about the crap season, they just want to get a look at their favorite players.  Just handing out a poster of a locker gives an impression you’re not trying.  Which I suppose is fitting for this year’s Devils team on the whole.  There was also supposed to be a puck giveaway but apparently the team ran out of pucks at multiple exits which is hard to fathom given they knew it would be a sellout and weren’t giving away stuff to Ranger fans.  Another example of mailing it in.

In a way I am glad Lou was so viscerally unhappy, no Devil fan could be happy after a season where the team finished with a losing record (standing at 32-35-14 heading into tonight’s finale) – almost twenty points out of a playoff spot in their third straight playoff-less season since the 2011-12 team, which now seems like another generation ago.   On the other hand I’m not sure how much confidence I really have in Lou at this point to switch it around.  Even when the games lost meaning long ago, the organization still continues to find a way to chap my hide, including their refusal to play both young forwards Reid Boucher and Stefan Matteau in the same lineup while continuing to roll out Stephen Gionta, Danius Zubrus and other pluggers for major minutes every single game.  Memo to Lou: At some point these kids have to play, having them watch once in a while is nice but development is more than that.  Not to mention the overt lack of accountability for repeated no-show efforts this season, although I suspect after the de-individualization of the season wrapup (awards/team poster) there will be hell to pay this offseason.  Until that point happens though, I owe former coach Pete DeBoer an apology on this matter, like others I believed the organization’s recent lack of accountability stemmed from his own attitude but clearly it’s gone deeper than that at this point.

Not that I’m sorry about DeBoer being fired though, it was really time for a change after he presided over two and a half seasons of losing, and his removal paved the way for former #4 overall pick Adam Larsson to finally show his true talent in the second half of the season under the coaching trio of Lou, Adam Oates and Scott Stevens.  Defensively Larsson made great strides in the second half excelling on the top pair with Andy Greene, as well as becoming a stout penalty killer this season.  While Larsson’s 21 points in 63 games don’t look particuarly impressive from an offensive standpoint, consider that he had only four in his first 22 games, most under the previous administration where he was playing 14 minutes and below a night, even being scratched for most of October before injuries finally put him back in the lineup.  His offensive production picked up after the new year as well, despite not getting much in the way of power play time.  Another defenseman who improved under the new staff was Eric Gelinas, who granted had decreased offensive production this year (just six goals and 18 points in 60 games) which is a concern, but at least showed a bit of improvement defensively after being scratched for a two-week period in February.

Unfortunately the other young defensmen took a step backwards in the second half.  After twenty-year old Damon Severson entered the NHL with a bang (4 goals, 4 assists and a +6 in his first 11 games), being given too much too soon eventually caught up with him the way it did Larsson his rookie season.  Though he wasn’t helped by an ankle injury in December, his game was already going downhill before his injury and never again reached the lofty heights of those first 11 games.  In his last 39 games, Severson had just eight points – all assists – with a -18.  Sophomore Jon Merrill also struggled mightily at times, especially early in the season when he was recovering from a concussion during training camp and then missed time with an arm injury as well.  Merrill’s 14 points and -14 in 66 games were not overly impressive although there’s still plenty of time for both to take a step forward next year.

Of course there was supposed to be more of a veteran presence on defense but between Bryce Salvador’s season and possibly career-ending back injury in the fall and Marek Zidlicky getting traded there was plenty of opportunity for the young guys.  Although the organization insisted on shoehorning Mark Fraser into the lineup despite the fact he was alternately a free agent and in the AHL for the first three months of the season.  Amazingly Fraser led all defensemen in plus minus with a mere +4 in 33 games, but it’s not really indiciative of the fact Fraser was in the lineup most of the games where we got outshot by a particularly high margin.  Fraser played the majority of his games while the goaltending was sizzling hot from early January on.  In fact the team’s brightest ray of hope going forward was both its goaltenders.  Between Schneider proving he could excel as a #1 (2.25 GAA, .926 save percentage and 5 shutouts in 67 starts on a defensively challenged team) and rookie Keith Kinkaid stepping in admirably from early December on (six wins, 2.59 GAA and a .915 save percentage in 13 starts), this organization showed there is life after Martin Brodeur.  Whether every Devils fan is willing to acknowledge it or not, given the lack of wins for Cory stemming from this team’s biggest issue – the lack of offense.

Even taking into account the fact scoring is down around the league (amazingly enough there won’t even be a 90-point scorer, never mind a 100-point scorer), the Devils’ offensive futility is still scary bad.  Leading point-getter Adam Henrique has just 43 in 74 games.  And while Mike Cammalleri’s 27 goals is a fine total considering his 67 games played, and he proved to be one of the few big-name UFA’s who brought what was advertised in recent years, it’s pretty telling that he’s first in goals on the team by a mile.  Henrique and plugger Steve Bernier are a distant second with sixteen goals, and Bernier started the season in the AHL, beaten out for a roster spot by scrapper Jordin Tootoo.  The lack of production from younger players is particularly galling, since aside from Henrique the Devils had just eight goals from forwards aged 25-and-under, six of them from Jacob Josefson who at least was able to carve out an everyday niche in the lineup, though his eleven points in sixty-one games don’t suggest much upside offensively.  While Matteau and Boucher each showed flashes down the stretch of being contributors next year, neither one’s shown anything sustained to suggest they should be gifted spots – though they probably will be given the utter lack of talent up front.

Aside from the fact this team needs an infusion of young legs, they also need some of their vets to bounce back.  As much as I love the guy, Patrik Elias looked either finished or disinterested at 38 years old (soon to be 39 later this week) on a bad team.  While it’s hard to expect miracles at this stage of his career, the fact he only was able to produce 34 points and a -19 in 68 games is frightening enough to suggest next season – the last on his current three-year deal – may be the last of his career.  Or at least his last as a Devil, although seeing him join a random team at this point of his career would be almost as much of an eye-sore as Marty retiring in a Blues uniform after playing all of seven games there.  Jaromir Jagr also looked finished or disinterested at times here, but his resurgence since being traded to Florida suggest the Devils were at least a bit premature in cutting his icetime in favor of Tootoo – who granted was hot for a couple weeks, but is really still a fourth-liner that got first-line icetime.  At least Jagr got to play unlike Michael Ryder and Martin Havlat, short-term vet signings who deserved and got spots in the doghouse for poor play.  Neither will be back next season.  Perhaps Danius Zubrus won’t be either, as his play continued to decline this year although he’s got another year left on his deal and the organization still seems to favor him over fellow plugger Tuomo Ruutu, who’s younger and still signed for two more years.  Maybe the most troubling of all the vet struggles is a guy who’s younger than any of the above – Travis Zajac and his meager 24 points in 73 games despite playing in the top six for most of the season.  Although Zajac had a brief resurgence last year approaching fifty points on a line with Jagr, his play in the offensive zone has been largely ineffective since longtime linemate Zach Parise went home to Minnesota.

Somewhat fittingly the Devils’ main success stories up front came from reclamation projects, as Scott Gomez returned and may actually finish third on the team in scoring despite only playing 57 games and not being under contract for the first two months of the season while the organization finally was running out of patience with Damien Brunner, who moved back to Switzerland after the Devils terminated his contract.  Perhaps if that switch was made sooner the Devils would have been in the race longer, then again it might have been bad considering our only real positive takeaways this season were the draft picks we acquired for Jagr and Zidlicky at the deadline, as well as the high first and second-rounders of our own we’ll have.  I mentioned Bernier above, his resurgence was almost as big a surprise as Gomez though he did have a good year two years ago, he followed it up with such a bad one last year he got publicly excoriated from Lou even as he re-signed him one more time this offseason.  Arguably Gomez, Bernier and Tootoo (all camp tryouts) deserve new contracts this offseason, though none are really going to solve our main issues up front either.  Neither will Ryane Clowe, whose umpteenth concussion early in the season may prove to be the end of his career just two seasons into the desperate five-year deal Lou signed him to last offseason.

Coaching-wise, Pete finally paid the piper for not developing most of the younger players and three years of failure following 2012’s success but the new staff really proved little better than the old one, with bizarre personnel/lineup decisions and an increasing amount of no-show games still as much of an issue with Oates and Stevens as they were with Pete.  Oates’s PP was a dissapointment and even though the final numbers look good (ranked 9th overall) there was a clear dropoff in both production and consistency after Oates took over the PP from former assistant Dave Barr.  Our PK finished 19th and our D ranked 24th in allowing shots with a whopping 30.8 per game, so as much as I love Stevens I’m not sure he’s really deserving of being the next head coach either with numbers like that – though to be fair on the former, a lot of the PK struggles came early before Stevens’ return when Salvador was still playing and vet d-man Andy Greene was playing on his off side.  While Lou’s vowed there will be one head coach next year, it’s a bit hazy as to who that’ll be.  I don’t think the next head coach should be on the staff but I fear it might be, given both Lou’s recent penchant for hiring in-house guys – Pete aside – and in sticking head coaches with at least one holdover assistant.  Many interesting candidates may become available after a purge this offseason – the Sharks’ Todd McLellan, the Yotes’ Dave Tippett, and others joining recently fired Randy Carlyle and Dan Bylsma, and that’s not counting the Wings’ Mike Babcock who might become the biggest-name coaching FA and cause a lot of teams to wait on their own coaching decisions.

Whoever the new coach is, Lou’s going to have to find a way to infuse the team with more scoring talent, and the GM acknowledged as much saying the team needs two top six forwards while still stressing defense first.  Perhaps Lou gave a hint at his plan on filling those holes after the trade deadline when he alluded to teams in cap trouble in comparison to us having cap space.  Ideally though, you’re not filling that vacancy with a 30+ guy like Patrick Sharp,  you need young legs to compete with the best teams in the league and the biggest proof of that is across town where the Rangers are chock-full of speed and young legs up front.  Whether a move like that would involve trading our #6 pick (or #7 depending on lottery results) remains to be seen.  It’s not out of the realm of possibility considering Lou traded a top ten pick for Cory, if he saw another opportunity like that present itself.  One thing I do not want to see is us using our first and second-round picks on defensemen.  Between the four young guys in the lineup and other recent high picks like Steve Santini and Josh Jacobs, enough is enough.  I get BPA, I get the importance of defensemen but now’s the time to stock the cupboard up front.  Especially since some of the defensemen you drafted are going to start getting paid big money soon and you need cheap players up front for that reason alone, never mind the pragmatic value of getting younger and more skilled up front.

This isn’t accounting for the 7.5% chance of us actually winning the lottery, but as with any other team currently outside the top two, winning the lottery completely changes the equation.  For now it’s just a pipe dream that’s best kept there.  Dealing in reality, the team should still use at least two of its three top forty picks on forwards, and probably all three.  One of the reasons our forward core is so barren is all the high picks we’ve used on defensemen in recent years, which clearly had a purpose but perhaps the team went overboard using another second-rounder on Josh Jacobs last year after already having the current four young guns plus Steve Santini in the system.  With Schneider and Kinkaid manning the net for years to come (assuming Kinkaid doesn’t walk as a UFA this offseason) there shouldn’t be any real reason to use a high pick on a goaltender.  Our draft and FA plan has to be about four words – forwards and more forwards.

For once we don’t have any key UFA’s this offseason to lose worry about re-signing, in fact our only three of consequence up front are the aformentioned Gomez, Bernier and Tootoo.  At least the first two should be re-signed though Bernier might price himself out of here with his production this season.  None will require big money to re-sign though.  Our only UFA defensemen are Salvador (whose career is likely done), Fraser and Peter Harrold.  Odds are either Fraser or Harrold – probably Fraser based on the current staff’s preference to him – will be re-signed as the #7 d-man.  With cap space and not having to worry about losing major FA’s, the Devils can concentrate on improving the talent level, either by trade or FA signing.

How they manage to do that is anyone’s guess though, especially considering the lack of prime talent available in UFA and the seeming reluctance to trade any of our young defensemen…well, that’s what Lou is tasked with after all.  And why this offseason’s so important for him.  Even absentee owners at some point are going to start to look at declining results the last three years and be tempted to pull the plug if it continues.  Perhaps Lou deserves to be on the hot seat himself given how he’s held coaches accountable for bad weeks/months in the past, though it doesn’t seem that a change is imminent there.  At the very least my own patience with Lou’s going to run out if he hires Oates (a failure in Washington) to be the next head coach.  Or if he continues to draft defensemen without addressing the team’s pitiful offense.

In a parity-driven league I acknowledge real improvement’s not going to come easy…after all, it took nearly 100 points to make the playoffs in both conferences this year.  And two non-playoff teams are going to improve with generational players at the draft.  This is where Lou needs to prove he should still be the czar of the Devils at age 73 with the power of both team president and GM, assuming he rescinds his coaching duties effective tonight.  Or acknowledge he shouldn’t be the czar and just be the GM.  I understand the excuses of losing Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk and how that, and former owner Jeff Vanderbeek’s financial problems set the organization back years.  That’s over with now…Parise and Kovalchuk are long gone and money’s not an issue with the new owners.  Now winning’s the only issue.  Although just plain being watchable again would be nice too.