Forge Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 1 minute ago, beekay414 said: I think it's a mixture of forcing Shero to fire Hynes and then Shero wanting to trade Palmieri. I'm sure you saw the comment about the guy on reddit who said Palms was supposed to be traded on Friday but the ownership stepped in and said no. That could've been the breaking point and they truly did agree to mutually part ways. I'm still willing to bet we trade Simmonds and Vatanen unless we just go apeschit these last 6 weeks before the deadline and push for a playoff spot. That's annoying if true. We should trade palms if the deal is good. He'll be 30 at the end of his contract. I can't blame Ray if he didn't want to sign that next grenade of a contract and his value is good. People are way too into the fact that palms is a native. Honestly, Shero left this team in far better shape than how he got it, even if he didn't do great Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 13, 2020 Author Share Posted January 13, 2020 Just now, Forge said: That's annoying if true. We should trade palms if the deal is good. He'll be 30 at the end of his contract. I can't blame Ray if he didn't want to sign that next grenade of a contract and his value is good. People are way too into the fact that palms is a native. Honestly, Shero left this team in far better shape than how he got it, even if he didn't do great I agree to some extent. If the offer was a legit, you seriously consider it unless Palms is going to take a 4-5 year team friendly deal. Though, I don't think he's going to age poorly. I will say this, after watching these two games this weekend, Blake Coleman really grew on me so I should probably apologize to those guys who defend him so hard. He's a terror every shift with the effort level. I dunno. We're in a really weird spot now going forward as we have absolutely no clue what to expect and it's pretty damn frightening. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 13, 2020 Author Share Posted January 13, 2020 This team is just starting to click now that we have actual guidance behind the bench and it's showing great promise. We beat the brakes off two of the best teams in the league this weekend playing structured hockey on both ends of the ice. We're not far off. The right coaching hire (and that very well could be Nas) and we start seeing very different results going forward. Also, PK Subban is starting to be that #1 shut down guy on defense. He's throwing his body around and playing sound hockey. If he can get the offense going, that'll be a huge boost. It's almost like John Hynes and his philosophies were the issue. Shero may have been an issue there too, as you remember, he threw the players under the bus in the presser after firing Hynes. Trading Hall and firing Hynes was the best thing for this franchise. They actually look like an NHL team now and far from a bottom feeder. They've got wins over Boston, the Islanders, Washington and Tampa Bay in their last 7 games. Team looks night and day different right now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 13, 2020 Author Share Posted January 13, 2020 I know it doesn't mean anything but, if you take away our two horrible stretches (0-4-2 to start the season, 0-6-1 after Thanksgiving), we're 17-11-4. Even if we manage to win only 40% of that stretch, we'd be 22-18-5 (say we went 5-7-1 in that stretch instead of 0-10-3). If we were basically an NHL .500 team, would we really be complaining about progress? That would put us at 49 points in 45 games which is still respectable even if we had expectations this year that we haven't matched. I mean, is 5-7-1 too much to expect out of a stretch where we played Winnipeg, Buffalo (x2), Philadelphia, Edmonton, Boston, Florida, NYR, Vegas, Nashville, Colorado, Dallas and Chicago? I don't think I'm being crazy here. We were so screwed by the Hall and Hynes situations that it clearly effected us on the ice. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 13, 2020 Author Share Posted January 13, 2020 I honestly think we're a playoff team next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canadian Saint Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 Hope you guys don't mind me chiming in, but I thought Shero was doing a damn good job rebuild you guys. Yes he's had missteps (Hynes, Subban contract), but not only has he stocked your pipeline with talent, but generally your team looks on the up and up. I thought you guys crushed the Hall trade, and while you have some bad contracts (Schneider, Subban etc.), most of those end before your key RFAs need to be signed. I thought he was inching you guys towards competing, and while obviously it didn't work out, I think you guys could have done a lot worse. My only worry If I was a Devils fan, if the whole management angle is true, is the NHL is an old boys club. Hopefully you guys get a good GM and a veteran coach. You guys are on the cusp of a playoff push I reckon. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 7 hours ago, beekay414 said: I agree to some extent. If the offer was a legit, you seriously consider it unless Palms is going to take a 4-5 year team friendly deal. Though, I don't think he's going to age poorly. I will say this, after watching these two games this weekend, Blake Coleman really grew on me so I should probably apologize to those guys who defend him so hard. He's a terror every shift with the effort level. I dunno. We're in a really weird spot now going forward as we have absolutely no clue what to expect and it's pretty damn frightening. Yeah, it has to be a real good offer for Palms to be moved this year. He's not a rental and on a good deal. But I do look to move him this year or next. Coleman and Palms suffer the same issue which is that they are both 30 years old when their next contracts start. That's bad timing more than anything. Its really hard for me to have any real interest in signing guys to 5 - 6 years deals that cover ages 30-35/36. That's just bad asset management most of the time. Especially given that both are going to get hefty raises from what they currently make. I'm not looking to shed the bad contracts we have, get competitive, then have issues with more bad contracts. ZBC has been on the war path about people saying that, but the fact is, you can throw money into vets and free agency and have there be a right way to go about it. There's a difference between signing a guy at 27 than there is signing a guy at 30, and there's certainly a difference between us signing free agents and a lot of the rest of the league (we are just not that desirable for the most part). I have no problems with going out and signing a Pageau or Namestnikov in free agency; those are likely moderate contracts, and even if they do get five years (somehow), its only coming out to their age 32 season, so any drop off would hopefully not be that significant. Coleman is probably easier to keep on board than Palms, but it depends on the contracts. I think Palms very easily could get 7+. And I just have no interest in giving him that for seasons 30-35. That's probably going to be a deal that ages like Zajac's. Coleman probably only gets like 4-4.5 I would assume, so that is much easier to take in over the long haul. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 7 hours ago, beekay414 said: This team is just starting to click now that we have actual guidance behind the bench and it's showing great promise. We beat the brakes off two of the best teams in the league this weekend playing structured hockey on both ends of the ice. We're not far off. The right coaching hire (and that very well could be Nas) and we start seeing very different results going forward. Also, PK Subban is starting to be that #1 shut down guy on defense. He's throwing his body around and playing sound hockey. If he can get the offense going, that'll be a huge boost. It's almost like John Hynes and his philosophies were the issue. Shero may have been an issue there too, as you remember, he threw the players under the bus in the presser after firing Hynes. Trading Hall and firing Hynes was the best thing for this franchise. They actually look like an NHL team now and far from a bottom feeder. They've got wins over Boston, the Islanders, Washington and Tampa Bay in their last 7 games. Team looks night and day different right now. Nas has actually been much better than I thought. Whether or not he lands the permanent job here, I do think that he's going to be a head coach at some point. The Hall situation had gotten bad. I'm not sure that the team is in a better structure without Hynes, but I think the team not having to worry about Hall is better off. The Nas / Hynes thing is just different. I posted it earlier, but we are better at some things, but we are also much worse at a whole lot of other things with Hynes. I simply didn't agree with Hynes' strategy, and I hated his lineup decisions, which were often just horrific, not to mention his need to tinker with things that were working while leaving things that were broken the same. Nas has them firing pucks, which for some reason Hynes was basically against? Lol. I never understood that at all. One of the dumbest coaching strategies I have seen. Who says, "hey guys, the object of the game is to score goals and you score goals by shooting the puck at the net....so do not shoot the puck at the net unless you get the clearest and cleanest of all possible shots"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 7 hours ago, beekay414 said: I know it doesn't mean anything but, if you take away our two horrible stretches (0-4-2 to start the season, 0-6-1 after Thanksgiving), we're 17-11-4. Even if we manage to win only 40% of that stretch, we'd be 22-18-5 (say we went 5-7-1 in that stretch instead of 0-10-3). If we were basically an NHL .500 team, would we really be complaining about progress? That would put us at 49 points in 45 games which is still respectable even if we had expectations this year that we haven't matched. I mean, is 5-7-1 too much to expect out of a stretch where we played Winnipeg, Buffalo (x2), Philadelphia, Edmonton, Boston, Florida, NYR, Vegas, Nashville, Colorado, Dallas and Chicago? I don't think I'm being crazy here. We were so screwed by the Hall and Hynes situations that it clearly effected us on the ice. The one thing that often gets overlooked in stretches like that, and can make the team seem better than it may actually be is that we are going through a run of a lot of back up goaltenders. On the season, we have actually faced a teams #2 or #3 goalie more often than we have faced their starter. In 45 games, we have faced a teams back up / third stringer 24 times. That's kind of insane. We are that team for opponents. Obviously, sometimes those teams have truly 1a/1b splits (like the Islanders, for example), but still something to keep in mind. In particular, after the Hall trade, we have been on a tear of back up goaltenders faced (9 out of the last 13 games faced). The fact that we are the second worst offensive team in the league while facing that kind of goalie competition is startling. Obviously, we are not as bad as that start (and there were several blown leads in there, such as the first game to the Jets), but we aren't as good as some of the recent stretches either. I expect positive offensive regression from our forwards (and it has come a little bit, as scoring is up slightly for us). So I expect things to continue to get better under Nas. The team is playing a lot freer now, and while that isn't the way I wanted it to happen (bottoming out, trading Hall, firing Hynes), if it gets us moving forward in the right direction, I'm all for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 7 hours ago, beekay414 said: I honestly think we're a playoff team next year. I think probably 2 years, possibly 3. I simply think that there are too many problems to fix right now on this squad over one off season. The entire left side of the defense needs to be replaced, possibly an additional right handed defenseman (wait to see what happens with Vats there), a pairing goal tender, and we need both one top tier scorer (comfortable top 6 guy) and some depth (which I would hope would come from bingo at some point in time, but will have to wait and see). The defense is the biggest problem for me. I wouldn't be surprised if we bring Greene back, but it depends on if Ty Smith makes the squad next year, which isn't a guarantee as he has not been as impressive this year as in years past and obviously really struggled in camp. So if Smith makes the team, he's probably our third paring LD. That means either Greene is gone, or we would resign him to be a middle pairing LHD, which is...yikes. If Smith doesn't make the squad, then Greene as a PKing, shot blocking 3rd pairing LHD for 2 million isn't the worst thing ever. But then you still have Butcher, who's probably not more than a bottom pairing LHD, which is problematic, and arguably the worst / slowest skater in the league. Mueller should be gone. Your best case scenario may be that Smith heads to the AHL for a year to get top line minutes there. Butcher is the third pairing LHD here, Greene gets cut loose, and we have someone else playing top and middle pair LHD minutes. That shouldn't be Vats or Sevs playing his off hand, to be honest, which is a problem. Guys like Barrie, Pietrangelo, Muzzin or Krug aren't coming here without massive overpays. I have to imagine that we'd be looking at guys like Nick Holden on a short term deal, TJ Brodie / Scandella / Dillon. Bahl could come up, but it's really tricky trusting top 4 minutes to guys that young with no NHL experience, especially for playoff team types. I just don't think that happens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forge Posted January 13, 2020 Share Posted January 13, 2020 3 hours ago, Canadian Saint said: Hope you guys don't mind me chiming in, but I thought Shero was doing a damn good job rebuild you guys. Yes he's had missteps (Hynes, Subban contract), but not only has he stocked your pipeline with talent, but generally your team looks on the up and up. I thought you guys crushed the Hall trade, and while you have some bad contracts (Schneider, Subban etc.), most of those end before your key RFAs need to be signed. I thought he was inching you guys towards competing, and while obviously it didn't work out, I think you guys could have done a lot worse. My only worry If I was a Devils fan, if the whole management angle is true, is the NHL is an old boys club. Hopefully you guys get a good GM and a veteran coach. You guys are on the cusp of a playoff push I reckon. Very tough situation. The timing was weird, for sure, but I do understand why some people are happy. He had a bad team at the start of it, but in every year but one since taking over, we have still been one of the worst teams in the NHL. For all the positives that he has done (and I agree, I think that there are a lot), he simply hasn't gotten results even though the franchise is in a much better place now then it was when he got here, so it's kind of bizarre all the way around. Honestly, I liked almost all of his trades. I thought they were good value, or good shots to take. Even PK when you consider that the contract doesn't matter one bit to us (we have oodles of cap space moving forward). The only trade that was flat out bad was probably the Mueller & Grabner trades. But for whatever reason, they just weren't working out besides the Hall / Palms trade. Like, I thought the Marcus Johansson trade was awesome at the time. Then he couldn't stay healthy. With the money not mattering, the PK trade for what we gave up was well worth it. But he's struggled. Just a lot of things like that. The biggest problem from most fans seems to be the lack of improvement overall, the lack of progression / success from draft picks, and sticking with "his guys" for far too long. Outside of Tyce Thompson, it seemed like everyone in the organization was just regressing at every level, which was crazy. Nico has worked out, obviously, and I'm happy with that (could have been worse and taken patrick), but we haven't produced any decent prospects outside of that. No impact players. Blackwood could be that type of guy, but too early to tell. Jesper Bratt was a steal of a selection in round 6, but how good is he? He struggles to stay healthy, and so far, he's consistently been a 30-40 point guy, with much the same this year. Great pick for where you got him, but guys like that can also be found. We keep waiting for him to make the step forward, and it simply hasn't happened. Zacha has been a disaster and was rumored to be on the block before Shero departed. Mcleod can't make the roster and appears destined to be a bottom 6 C, same for Bastian. Both could be just top tier AHL guys (Bastian in particular). A lot of picks still around, but nothing that projects to be an impact moving forward. A lot of them have not progressed at all. So I kind of get people's frustration with the team / GM as a whole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 14, 2020 Author Share Posted January 14, 2020 https://www.sportsnet.ca/590/hockey-central-at-noon/go-extension-last-year-pink-slip-ray-shero/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 15, 2020 Author Share Posted January 15, 2020 Lol these are the Devils I remember. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 15, 2020 Author Share Posted January 15, 2020 Nights like tonight are the reason Nas won't be considered for the job 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beekay414 Posted January 15, 2020 Author Share Posted January 15, 2020 So Blake Coleman.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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