Not Time to Panic...

The evolution of the New Jersey Devils’ very young season has been… interesting… to say the very least.

·      Game 1: Held without a goal against clichéd Metropolitan Division favorite, Pittsburgh.

·      Game 2: Home opener. Damien Brunner scores his first two goals of the season. Devils surrender two leads and have to score their own equalizer to force overtime. Lose in the shootout to the Islanders

·      Game 3: Sprint out to a 3-0 lead on the Oilers heading into the 3rd period. Give up 4 straight, come back, force overtime, fall in the shootout again.

·      Game 4: Score first two goals of the game, hand lead back to Vancouver by the end of the 2nd period, fall in overtime in Corey Schneider’s return north of the border.

Needless to say, Devils’ Army is already growing restless.

A year after missing the playoffs and a summer after losing both Ilya Kovalchuk and David Clarkson, the Devils’ and their fans still held high expectations.

Sure, the names of Clowe, Ryder and Brunner don’t strike fear in the mind of defenders quite as well as Kovalchuk, but they play the game differently than the retired-from-the-NHL-so-he-can-run-back-to-Russia winger.

Early on, it has been Brunner leading the way with three goals, and Ryder, Elias and Jagr with a pair each. That’s it. Nothing from Travis Zajac, nothing from the 2012 playoff hero Adam Henrique, nothing from even the CBGB line.

The Devils need to not only find a win over the course of their remaining three road games, but they need to find scoring outside of the aforementioned four players.

Sure, the “big money” players are the ones traditionally called upon to contribute the most fire power, but both Zajac and to a more recent extent, Henrique,  are coming off new deals which rewarded their previous performances, and need to start contributing on a consistent basis, otherwise the Devils are in trouble already.

While the offense is struggling early on, the defensive pairings are leaving much to be desired. 13 goals against over the course of 4 games will not erase the sickening feeling of missing the post season 2 of the past 3 years. So far, with very few exceptions, the Devils’ defenders are looking old, slow and confused, a far cry from the way their new defensive coach, Scott Stevens, played the game, even before his retirement.

After a shaky Devils’ regular season debut against the Penguins, Schneider gave his team nearly every chance he could to help them beat Vancouver, but they could only muster the two goals and not effectively clear his sight lines for the overtime winner.

His counterpart, none other than future Hall of Famer Martin Brodeur, has looked extremely rough during his two outings thus far, giving up 7 goals and losing both in the shootout. Yes, he cannot score for his teammates, who apparently have forgotten what the back of the net is during the shootouts, going 0-for-8, but he also allowed goals on 2 of 3 attempts against Edmonton.

The Devils had a very good preseason for a team who had yet another summer of unexpected drama, but they haven’t been able to capture that success and translate that into the regular season so far.

If they don’t solve their issues now, it could be a very long winter in Newark

Lou’s Last Stand or Just Another Rebirth?

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Unrestricted free agency is an inevitable aspect of hockey.

While the age and terms required to reach that point in a player’s career may change, it is still as certain as death and taxes. General Managers are then labored with the duty to evaluate and negotiate new deals for their teams, which without having psychic abilities or infallible predictability, is one undoubtedly one of the most challenging aspects of their jobs.

New Jersey Devils’ GM Lou Lamoriello is no stranger to the UFA game. Being the GM of the Devils also brings with it the media circus that immediately pin any player who has one year left on their deal going anywhere but New Jersey. Recently, it has been a string of bad luck which has haunted Lamoriello in the offseason, but could that trend be ending this year?

Three years ago, Lamoriello traded for Ilya Kovalchuk a week before the trading deadline. This was extremely out of character for the now 70 year-old former Athletic Director of Providence University,  because he rarely traded for a superstar of Kovalchuk’s ability. Add to it the fact Kovalchuk was a UFA and you could clearly tell there were ulterior motives/ers behind the move.

That summer, the circus of signing Kovalchuk to a new contract was one of the largest blemishes on Lamoriello’s otherwise stellar career. The only other gaffe that could come as close to tarnishing his reputation was the summer coming out of the 04-05 lockout in which the Devils saw future Hall of Fame defender Scott Neidermayer change allegiances to the Anehiem Ducks and he was replaced with Dan McGillis and Vladimir Malakahov. Malakahov was later traded to make cap space thanks in large part to his oversized contract and the Devils lost a first round draft pick in order for the Sharks to take the player.

The Kovalchuk disaster also cost the Devils a first round pick, to be surrendered at next June’s draft. The Devils were fined $3 million on top of being humiliated by the selective enforcement of the NHL higher ups regarding their alleged salary cap circumvention which had been done by a handful of other teams as recently as the pervious summer.

During the very next summer, the Devils were again faced with a massive free agency dilemma: Zach Parise.

Sticking to his past practices and own principles, Lamoriello did not negotiate with Parise on a new deal during the season. The winger was coming off major knee surgery which kept him out nearly the entire 2010-2011 campaign so it is understandable why Lamoriello had some reservations about how large of a deal he wanted to offer the Minnesota native.

Feeding the New Jersey fans and media false hope of “I love it in here” and “I want to be here,” Parise dragged his charade out until July 4th where it came to light he not only had an never-before-heard close friendship with former Nashville Predator Ryan Suter, but was having conversations with him regarding free agency during the season and playoffs. The same playoffs where Parise was supposed to be captaining his team to the Stanley Cup Finals, not vanishing midway during the Eastern Conference Finals and barely showing up during the Finals.

With Parise gone, the Devils struggled to fill his void in an already meager free agency pool. While they found a keeper in Andrei Loktionov, acquiring Bobby Butler and Steve Sullivan while re-acquiring Alexi Ponikarovsky did not pan out as well as they had hoped. In the end of yet another strike shortened season, the Devils missed the playoffs for the second time in three years.

This summer was going to be different: Same core returning with only a few question marks hovering over a few players’ heads contracts wise, but the Devils were in prime position to exploit the free agent pool.

At the NHL Entry Draft, Lamoriello even traded away his coveted 9^th overall first round draft pick in order to acquire a reliable goaltender who, if re-signed following 2014-15, is the heir to the Brodeur throne. Tall order, yes, but Schneider has proven in Vancouver he is more than capable of handling not only the full-time goaltending duties, but stealing games here and there for his team.

On July 5^th, they landed their first two prizes: Ryan Clowe and Michael Ryder. Clowe gives the Devils what they lost in David Clarkson: grit, toughness and an ability to contribute offensively. Sure, Clowe hasn’t amassed the goals which Clarkson has over the past two years, and his performance in New York this past post-deadline was abysmal at best, but he’s on a less-media frenzied team and will have a handful more opportunities to contribute. Ryder, meanwhile, brings the Devils another power play specialist. At the time it was believed he could alleviate some of the focus off of Kovalchuk and thus create more success. Key phrase: at the time.

Just over a week after Lamoriello made his free agent frenzy moves, the hockey world was hammered with a shocking announcement: Ilya Kovalchuk was walking away form his $100 million dollar contract, “hanging up his skates” and returning to Russia.

Lamoriello was his typical diplomatic self when handling the post-retirement conferences. Choosing his words extremely carefully, you could hardly tell Lamoriello was disappointed in the decision but you knew it. The player he had worked so hard to appease the higher-ups in not only acquiring but retaining, had just up and abandoned his team.

The move stung worse than the Parise decision, where he at least left to stay in the NHL for larger dollar signs. Kovalchuk generated a massive crater in the Devils’ already problematic offense.

In traditional Lamoriello fashion, however, he began to scour the market for low-budget but high potential players.

Immediately, the Devils were linked to first year player but UFA because of his age Damien Brunner, formerly of the Red Wings. While the news and public conversation between the two sides were few and far between, it made the rumors more and more believable due to Lamoriello’s strict no public negotiations policy. The Brunner situation stalled publicly, Lou was quietly securing another asset.

Ever since he hit his free agency following his tenure with the Penguins, every Devils’ fan had dreamt of the prospect of Jaromir Jagr coming to New Jersey to play alongside his friend and countryman Patrik Elias. While time and age have cooled those emotions, it was hard not to crack a smile when Lamoriello landed the Czech winger.

While Jagr’s post season in Boston left much to be desired, the future Hall of Famer still has plenty to offer a team who was just slapped in the face by Kovalchuk.

Entering camp, the Devils finally went public by extending their formal invitation to Brunner two games into the preseason. He made an immediate impact on the team, gelling well with anyone he was on a line with. Before the team’s final game against the Flyers, the two sides reached a 2-year, $5 million contract.

Entering the team’s opening night contest against the Penguins, the Devils will have at least 4 new forwards in the lineup [Brunner, Clowe, Jagr and Ryder], and potentially a 5th in Ratislav Olez.

Not bad potential for a team who is projected to finish towards, if not at, the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

Could this season potentially be the last one for Lou Lamoriello as it potentially is for his career defining find in Martin Brodeur? Only time will tell.

If it is, however, the moves made this offseason have assembled a strong team which will surprise many across the hockey community. While there are no guarantees in professional sports, there are also no written laws which state teams must play down to the level which they are predicted to by so-called experts.

Lamoriello has built a team to win-now and while offensive prospects have not panned out as well as they had in the past, the Devils are also in a position organizationally to have a steady diet of defenders reach the NHL over the next few years as well as having solid goaltending security for the foreseeable future.