The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 373: Rebuilding the Devils

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Corey Masisak joins the show to deep dive the New Jersey Devils rebuild. We discuss where things went wrong last season, the questions that need to be answered, and how they can fix things moving forward. Topics include: Where things went wrong in 2019 for the Devils Why winning the offseason didn't translate into actual wins How invested the organization is in analytics The pros and cons of Lindy Ruff as a coach How legit Mackenzie Blackwood's second half tear was What Jack Hughes will look like in Year 2 Who stays and who goes in years to come Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Are you ready for the most ridiculous internet sports show you have ever seen? Welcome to React, home of the most outrageous and hilarious videos the web has to offer. So join me, Rocky Theos, and my co-host, Raiders Pro Bowl defensive end, Max Crosby, as we invite your favorite athletes, celebrities, influencers, entertainers in for an episode of games, laughs, and of course the funniest reactions to the wildest web clips out there. Catch React on YouTube, and that is React, R-E-A-X-X. Don't miss it. This podcast episode is brought to you by Coors Light.

These days, everything is go, go, go. It's nonstop hustle all the time. Work, friends, family, expect you to be on 24-7? Well, sometimes you just need to reach for a Coors Light because it's made to chill. Coors Light is cold-loggered, cold-filtered, and cold-packaged. It's as crisp and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. He is literally made to chill. Coors Light is the one I choose when I need to unwind.

So when you want to hit reset, reach for the beer that's made to chill. Get Coors Light and the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart. Celebrate responsibly. Coors Brewing Company, Golden Colorado. Pelead leaned in and said something to Freddie. Don't let them change you. Keep working on what makes you different and what makes you special. It was great advice, but it caused me some progress.

But what could change Freddie Adieu? Soccer is going to explode and it's going to be around this kid. We're the Beatles. Everywhere we went, it was the Freddy show. And with that came the expectation and with that came the pressure. New episodes of American Prodigy dropped Tuesdays from Blue Wire Podcasts. Progressing to the mean since 2050, it's the HockeyPedioCast with your host, Dimitri Filipovich.

Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. name's amitra philipovic and joining me is my good buddy corey mastsack corey what's going on man so much how are you doing i'm good we're going to talk about the new jersey devils today you excited i am um i am too i'm too we're going to keep the theme going i've been doing uh these deep dives rebuild of rebuilding teams on the pdo cast during the off season and um it's been fun so far we've done the the sabers the red wings and the sharks and now we're going to do the devils today um and listen i know like all these teams are going now on an event fan bases are going on month nine or so of no hockey, and it appears that, you know, the league

had promised them they're going to get at least some extra prep time before the 2021 season, and now it appears that's not going to be the case. But at least they're getting full episodes devoted to them on the PDOCast. So that's got to count for something. I would say so. You know what? During this whole process, there was a point where I was actually keeping track of the days, and I would mention it every now and then in a story or a mailbag, like, hey, it's been 154 days since the last Devils again. And then I realized that that was probably doing more damage to my to my psyche and to other others so i've just it's it's coming up on nine months i actually it might be nine months uh yeah it would be uh nine months this week so there you go it's some

kind of like cruel reverse advent calendar right um yeah um okay so we're gonna try to loop in some big picture concepts here that kind of you know obviously are related to the devils but also we can tie into different fan bases and different teams uh just so there's something kind of hopefully of not or interest to everyone out there beyond just Devils fans. But where do we begin with this team? Because normally I've been starting these podcasts with sort of the general overarching theme of like where things went wrong, how they got to this point. And with this Devils team, I don't necessarily want to go too far back because it

feels like certainly like their situation has changed quite dramatically. At a couple different points over the past, whatever, six, seven, eight years, basically since the end of a lose tenure. But I kind of want to focus more in on last year because it felt like heading into that 2019-20 season, there was a lot of this, you know, hope or optimism surrounding the team. They were one of the most active ones that off-season. I certainly loved pretty much all of what they did.

I thought they added a ton of talent without really sacrificing anything too substantial for the future. And it felt like they were all pretty smart, calculated moves. and obviously they had very little to show for it and had this kind of season from hell, pun not intended. But kind of where the wheels go off? Kind of how do we reconcile the fact that I think, and I don't want to put words in your mouth,

but I imagine you similarly went into last year thinking, all right, this should be a better team that they've been in the past, and then they ultimately didn't have very much to show for it in terms of audience results. Right. Yeah, I mean, if you're going back to the beginning of the rebuilding project, it really, you know, it started a couple of years too late because Lou Amarillo wasn't interested in rebuilding and then Ray Shiro came in and started it.

And so, like, basically, I think you're right. I mean, every, I mean, they were universally praised for what they did last summer. I was, you know, they, the whole, like, they won the offseason, you know, put up a banner for the offseason championship, whatever, those sorts of jokes. But, and now you look back at it and like with, you know, 20-20 hindsight, it's, it kind looks like, you know, they were on a path towards rebuilding this thing into contention, and they sort of, you know, I feel like they sort of try to use the express lane. Like they basically, they said, okay, it's, we've got all this cap space and we've got, you know,

they knew they were getting the number one pick and they were getting this guy that they projected to be a future star. And so, and they already had Nico Hesier, who they think is going to be a future star. So it was like, okay, it's go time. And that didn't really work out. You know, like, like you said, each, each move on its own was good. And I feel like that's, I've had to write this a bunch of times since he was fired. But like Ray Shiro's tenure is basically, like the overarching theme of his tenure is he won a lot of trades. He did not really sign anybody to any really bad contracts. And it still just didn't work.

It didn't know it or it just hasn't worked yet. And so part of that is they were. were in such a huge hole whenever he took over in 2015 that it was going to take a long, long time to longer than maybe the ownership group thought to get things right. And they just weren't there yet. So, you know, they made, you know, they sort of everything changed last year. They, you know, they've fired the coach. They fired the general manager.

I think the biggest thing, the biggest sort of theme shift or whatever you want to call it is that they were sort of operating on Taylor Hall's timeline. You know, he was, right, like they made the playoffs in 2018. He won the Hart Trophy. It's like, this is Taylor's team. And I keep going back to this. Like, if that, if the rule wasn't in place that you can't sign more than 12 months out, I think he wins the Hart Trophy.

And like on July 1st of 2018, he signs, you know, an eight-year, $80 million contract. Then he's the face of the franchise for a long time. Now, given what has happened since then, maybe that would, would have backfired. But, so anyway, so they were kind of on Taylor Hall's timeline, and they made some of those moves, obviously. Like, you don't bring in P.K.K. Suban and Wayne Simmons and Nikita Gusev, it was a little bit younger, but those guys were all, you know, in their mid to late 20s

or older, and you don't bring those guys in if you're not on Taylor Hall's timeline, because those are win now type of players. And so given that everything went wrong last year, everything has now shifted to Jack Hughes and Nico Heshire's timeline, which is a top. totally different. It's like kind of a reset of a rebuild, basically. Yeah, I feel a bit for Ray Shiro, because when I was like prepping for this podcast, I didn't sort of realize how much they're still paying for the last kind of decisions Lou made on the way out. When Shiro inherited the team, it was about as dire of a situation

as you could have from in terms of like the contracts they had and sort of what shape the pipeline was in and sort of just how many assets they had in as an organization. And I thought he did for the most part a pretty good job rebuilding that from the ground up and you know making some shrewd moves like poaching Kyle palmyriar from the ducks obviously the one for one trade flipping larcen for hall um there was a number of of moves he made that that sort of were good in vacuum as we're saying here in isolation and then you take a step back and you look at the big picture it's like okay well they had one playoff appearance and one playoff win total in that five years under race hero and i know they were starting from square one, but basically it took like a miraculous MVP season from Taylor

Hall just to get them to get them to that point. And after that fell apart, they didn't really have much to show for it. So it's kind of tough to sort of put that five-year kind of arc for the organization into context, given all of those different sort of different ideas and different timelines. Right. I mean, I think the two biggest things were, if you look at other teams that have quote-unquote had good rebuilds. They, whether it was even going back as far as Pittsburgh, like look into Sidney Crosby, that's part of it. But they also had several good young players already in the organization on the day that

they drafted Cinescrosby. You look at Toronto, they already had other guys in the organization that are part of the core the day they drafted Austin Matthews. And I think that's been the biggest thing. like you look at the ones that haven't worked or have taken longer, like the oilers and the sabers like took tort completely down to the studs and had like nothing in the, whenever the day that they drafted Taylor Hall or the day that they drafted Jack Eichel, like there was just, you know,

they were literally coming from ground zero and, or the first floor or whatever. And I feel like the devils were even in a worse spot than that because they didn't have, when Ray Shiro took over in 2015, they had either the worst or second worst prospect cool in the league. And they just, there were no, there were no good young players in, you know, maybe you could say like, like, I guess Adam Henrique and Adam Larson were the closest thing they had to like good young players in the organization. And they just, they didn't even have like, like the veteran players.

Like if you look at the Rangers, uh, rebuild from, you know, this like kind of rebuilding they've done the last couple years, they traded, you know, Matt Zuccarello and Ryan McDonough and like these like good players that got them these huge rich. turns to sort of, you know, kickstart the rebuild. Like Ray Shiro's first year, he traded Lee Stepniak, who was a player, a player tryout contract that they turned into a DC. He actually had a good year and they turned it into a, whatever it was, a second or third round pick.

Like, that's the type of moves he was trying to make to dig out of this massive hole. So that was the, you know, it's like, that's, to me, that's like the first part of that five years. And then the second part is you're right. Like so much happened that went right for them in 2018. Like, you know, Taylor All has an MVP season. And the goal-tending, the sequencing of the goal-tending that year was just absolutely crazy. It was kind of like a team that gets hot in baseball just by the right run sequences.

Like, Corey Schneider was great for 35 games and then got hurt. And then Keith Kincaid had the best 20-game stretch of his life. And basically, in those 55 games, they got enough points to make the playoffs because in the other 25 or 27, the goal-tending was terrible and the team was terrible. Yeah, it's funny how that works sometimes. It's, and, you know, some of the, like you mentioned, the least Epniac move. I think we can, we can fast forward that even. And, you know, even into this offseason where obviously Ray Scherl wasn't running the team,

but they've always stuck out to me. I think the hurricanes do this the best, and they've gotten kind of the most premium assets, whether it was taking on Brian Bickle's contract and getting Table Tera Vinen for their efforts, or whether it was getting that first round pick for, just one year of Patty Marlowe's salary that they bought out. But teams, like we often harp, like having salary cap flexibility is a massive asset. Like you can use that because we know time and time again, teams are going to get themselves into trouble and you want to be the one that's around to throw them a lifeline for some

sort of a sweetener or even just taking good players off of their hands that are under contract. And this Devils team really sticks out in terms of the way they operated over the past two, three years or whatever. I mean, dating back even to when they just basically took Marcus Johansson for a couple picks and then wound up flipping him for a couple assets later or, you know, any number of moves like Ryan Murray this off season, for example, Andreas Yonson, even Nikita Gusev last summer. And so it's moves like those that I really like value. And I'm like, oh, this is the, this is the mark of a smart organization. But ultimately, I don't think many people really want to hear that when you look.

up at the sort of scoreboard and there's no real results to show for it. It's like, okay, well, that's great, but what did it ultimately amount to? Right. And so that's a thing. Like, if you just compare this offseason to last off season, last off season, last off season, they had, you know, oodles of cap space, right? And that's exactly what they did. They were the only team in the league willing to pay, take on P.K. Sub-Band's full contract.

So that's why the predators did to deal with them. They didn't have to retain any money. You got to the end of the summer and the, and Vegas was out of money. And so they had to trade Nikita Goosev, and the devil traded for him and signed him to a two-year $9 million contract that day. Like those two moves were,

we have capped flexibility, and we're going to swoop in and make these moves. And by doing those moves, people said that they, quote, unquote, won the offseason. Now, this year, they've done essentially the same thing, but I think they've been smarter moves in that, A, they didn't have to give up as much, and B, the guys that they've added this soft season,

and like you mentioned Johnson and Murray and then also signing Cory Crawford to you know kind of a cut rate deal it's sort of been like targeting needs that can help the team be competitive without necessarily giving up as much future capital

because I do think that that's one thing like we've talked about how Ray Shiro made a bunch of great moves or good moves at least a couple great ones he still did part of the again going back to the fact that he had nothing to trade but he needed to make trades. He also traded away a lot of draft picks. I went through it the other day and I think

it's, I think they gave up a net of 13 draft picks and all the different trades that they made. Now, they still made 42 picks in five years. But it's still like the idea that like you're a rebuilding team and you're trading away all the second and third round picks like one of those might have turned into something good. So I do think that this summer, you know, this summer, this off season they did it for, you know, for a fifth round pick and a, you know, basically a younger version of Andreas Johnson, Johnson, who, you know, Joey Anderson might be a good player, but it's not somebody that was going to be like a core guy. I think those are, you know, they've filled some needs that they needed to help the team right

now, but also it didn't hurt what they're still trying to build for the future as well. Yeah, the Miracle-Muehler trade really sticks out and hurts in terms of giving up assets for someone who I guess they just really whiffed on in terms of a talent evaluation perspective. But, yeah, I mean, I guess the reason why I sort of started off this podcast, taking this angle and why we keep hammering at home is because when I was thinking about what this team's been doing to get out of the situation or the decisions they've been making most recently, I once again really like the offseason they had. You know, they kind of like, it was a very calculated approach.

I really, you know, the Ryan Murray one, I think people can sometimes lose a sort of perspective or can kind of overinflate what a massive steal that was for them. But I do think ultimately, despite the fact that I really, really, you know, don't trust him to stay healthy. And I don't think anyone should at this point, considering he's played 60, 44, 56, and 27 games the past four years. He's still only 27 years old. And most importantly, the commitment is they gave up a future fifth and he's got one year left

on his deal. And he's been effective when he's been on the ice. So I think, you know, worst case, obviously, is he has some sort of catastrophic injury and they just don't retain him and they just wasted that future fifth. But a very reasonable outcome, I think, in sort of a middle best case scenario. is he plays pretty well for a limited number of games, and they can probably flip him to some other defensive, needy team during the season for an asset that's much better than a future fifth.

So I kind of view that as a no-brainer, even though I thought the reaction to what a steal it was for the Devils was maybe slightly over-inflated. Right, and I do think there's a couple things there. Like, one, you're right, like he has had so many, he's missed so many games with various injuries, but it's one major thing is that he's got, like a degenerative disc issue in his back.

And there was, you know, at least according to him and his, you know, sort of his people, there was sort of a breakthrough early part of 2020 before the season ended. And, you know, he went to the, went to the bubble and everything was felt good at the bubble. So there, you know, there was sort of like a, there may have been, there might be some reason for optimism that he's going to be able to stay healthier moving forward. But again, like you said, you're not, that's not something. that you should be willing to bet heavily on or make any or give up a lot to get to get so the fact that they didn't have to give up a whole lot i think think the other thing is that he like he just he just they just the single biggest issue that they've had over the last two seasons is they've just been a complete mess in their own zone their defense core is you know they've got some guys that that move the puck

pretty well and can can help out on offense but they really they really just they've had so many problems getting the puck out of their own zone and and and you know he's Well, you said, when he's healthy, he's been one of the better, you know, sort of defensive defensemen in the league. And not just like a defensive defenseman where he, you know, he runs around and hits people. Like he's, he's good at getting the buck out of his own zone. He's good at, you know, shifting things from defense to offense. And that's really one thing that they need it. I do think, you know, to kind of take us a bit of a step back here, and we're going to get into all these moves and how Murray fits, like in terms of their on-ice product.

And we'll extrapolate all that. But I think with this devil's team, when we're having this deep-dive conversation about them, the focus in terms of what's going on off the ice in terms of like who's making the decisions and sort of the bigger picture view of it is a far more interesting piece of the puzzle. To me than it is the actual sort of players that are currently on the roster right now. You know, obviously you're working into Jackie's and Nickley Hissier and all that. But just when covering this team and sort of thinking about how these decisions are being made, all the voices involved, kind of the direction and like organizational unity and all of that. what really sticks out to me, and I'm not sure sort of how much reporting you did on this

or how much, how many conversations you've had with people, but, you know, this offseason, there was a lot of reporting done about sort of direction they were going to go in in terms of who was going to be the GM, whether Tom Fitzgerald was going to stare, whether they were going to go hire someone else, and they were doing this big sort of interviewing process

that Pierre LeBron and Elliot Freeman were constantly reporting about. They were looking for a new coach and they ultimately settled on Lindy Ruff. Like, let's get a better sense in terms of how they came to those ultimate decisions because that's where I'm really fascinated because it feels like it's a bit sort of counterintuitive to what you think of from an organization that's both owned by the same people that own the Philadelphia 76ers who have been so into analytics and now are being run by Daryl and also a New Jersey Devils team

themselves that has people like Tyler Delo and Matt Cain in place and clearly is at least giving a lot of thought to how they can apply analytics to improve their team and get an advantage. It seems like there's kind of like a dichotomy between those two ideas running in concert. Yeah, okay, well, let's start with this. It was a weird, the process

to use a famous 76 or the process to get from letting go of John Hines and then letting go of Ray Shiro to where they are now was not like the straight line traditional what everybody expects to happen, right? Like, you know, they fired the coach, and then they fired, then they parted ways with Ray Shiro.

Part of the, it's pretty clear from everybody's reporting, and what everybody has heard, that one of the reasons that Ray Shiro is no longer the general manager is the managing partners have an idea of how this organization or any of the organizations that they own should run and their vision of how that should work and Ray's vision of how that should work didn't really line up. And I mean, look, the simple way to put it is they want, you know, Josh Harris and David Blister want more voices in the room before the final decision is. made or when the final decision is made on and ray is shiro was idea is more of a maybe a traditional like the GM has the final say and that's that kind of kind of thing not that's not that not that ray shiro didn't listen to other people that worked for him or whatever but they just wanted a more

you know like a more group oriented approach and so um look yeah you know Josh and david they they hired tyler delo and they hired meck and they put together this entire analytic staff they that was their thing that wasn't ray shiro's thing um so uh yeah so you so you get to that point that's that's sort of where the break came from um well wait can i can i interrupt you there for a second in terms of the timeline so that makes sense um but they also the timing of it was a bit weird to me do we have any more clarity in terms of why they let ray shiro handle the taylor hall trade before right pivoting and then throwing Tom Fitzgerald and throw fire.

And admittedly did a great job. You recouped a ton of assets. Had a lot of stuff to work with, obviously. But, you know, got basically two firsts back for way Coleman, got a pick somehow from the Sabres for Wayne Simmons, got two assets for seven games of Sammy Vatin. And he had an awesome trade deadline and acquitted himself very well in a tough situation. But like, the timing of that is like, okay, we're going to let this guy make a massive decision for this organization in terms of trading away our best player. for future assets and then a couple weeks later we're going to just hand over the keys to a different guy after he's done that like that always struck me as sort of bizarre right and i think

there was i would say that it's relatively clear that there might have been something coming there and that after that trade was made there was maybe more um what's the right word like there was more uh disagreement and where things should be going and how things should be done um so but you're right that so that so that you see that part of it was weird the fact that they they did it after the whole trade and not before and then you know they basically gave tom fitzgerald the rest of the season as sort of a job interview and like he said i mean there was every you know he got great reviews on all of the traits that he made um and then the other to me the other weird part of the process was that they you know it went on for a long

time. I mean, this was, he was, you know, maybe one, maybe the longest interim GM in the history of the league, because the pandemic happened and there was just no, there was still like no specific motivation to just quickly name, you know, they could have just named him GM in April if they wanted to, but they didn't. And so they, they let him run the coaching search. So like they were, they were interviewing coaches. Tom Fisher was interviewing coaches while they were also interviewing GMs to see if they other GM candidates before they decided that, that, yeah, they, they liked the way that Tom Fisher was. Gerald ran the coaching search, and that was also part of how he became the full-time GM. So, yeah, so like I said, the whole, basically everything that got from December to now, it doesn't necessarily, you know, line up with exactly the way people expect it to all happen. But I don't necessarily think that everybody, you know, the people in charge of the organization are really, like they, I think they like the results and they like where things are. I think that Fitzgerald proved to them that he is going to, to his vision of how to run things is going to line up more with the managing partners.

And so, you know, like you said, there's likely to be more, maybe more input from the NLICs group moving forward. It's hard to say exactly how much they have all the time. But, I mean, you know, if you looked at the moves that they made this summer, you know, it's pretty easy. You know, you would say that any teams, analytics department would probably be in favor of of those those three players those three big name players that they added yeah yeah so anyway so and then the other thing too i think is there's

like they're they're trying there's like sort of this this other thing happening in the organization where um one thing i had heard you know let's say a year ago or 18 months ago was um you know the the the devils were probably behind other organizations when it comes to the other on-ice stuff like the development staff wasn't wasn't like robust enough or you know at the time until they hired Delo and Kane they didn't have like a

full fully fledged analytics department so like some of the other things that they've done is they've they've added a full-time European development coach who's like over there and is able to actually meet in person with well not necessarily meet as much during the pandemic but is able to

have more interaction with all their prospects that are playing over there. They've added a full-time AHL goalie coach and they're creating like a overall goaltending department that some other teams have. So I think those are these are all sort of things that are that are kind of working and in conjunction with having Tom Fisdrell as the general manager and having Martin Brodor as sort of a senior advisor who maybe will be the president of team operations someday but we'll see

and where the direction of things are going, I guess. Yeah, I guess sort of the reason why I brought that up is because, you know, clearly when you're looking sort of, I'm very interested in how organizations are sort of built from the top down and everyone pulling in the right direction and sort of, it's very telling which way they're going to go sometimes. And when you have an ownership group that has demonstrated with the 76ers of what they're sort of the lengths they're willing to go to in terms of fully embracing analytics and really kind of turning the keys over to that and fully embrace.

raising it as opposed to kind of these half measures where you've got a staff, but no one really knows how much you're listening to them. They did interview in the process, and we know this because it was reported, like Mike Gillis and Lawrence Gilman both came up. And the reason why I bring this up is just because, you know, I know from especially speaking with Gilman and now it's been a while, he's been working with the Leafs since, but there's a feeling at the time that like the two of them would have loved the idea to potentially kind of. of get the band back together and, you know, had this appetite to build something special again like they did with the Canucks and sort of instill their vision while also learning from

what went wrong at the end of their tenure with the Canucks and kind of adding to it. And they've both been very introspective and trying to learn more about analytics in the meantime. And so I think there's so much value in this current climate, especially with the pandemic and not knowing, you know, where the cap's going to be at, how much more. money you're going to have to play with in terms of having people running your team who are shrewd businessmen that can be very creative and optimize that money and sort of squeeze that value out wherever they can. And so it felt like they, not to sell Tom Fitzgerald short because as we said, everything he's done so far has been really good. And there's a lot of reasons to be encouraged

about him running the team and valuing the input of Delo and Kane. But it feels like they stopped a little bit short of like the ultimate sort of group of voices and in minds to run this team and I guess that's why I brought it up because it felt a little bit disappointing from the outside they were like they were so close and they were kind of sniffing around it but then for whatever reason they sort of pivoted and went a different direction with the person they already had right and there was also we can't forget there was also the sort of shrouded in mystery potential uh flirtation with John Chica as well um although that was not necessarily from what i've you know been told not necessarily

strictly a hockey related thing um but yeah no you're right i mean i think that's i think that's sort of the you know the overall theme of of where they have gone in this in the last whatever it is now nine 10 12 months uh is that like from the outside they you know no one I don't think anyone necessarily thought, like, oh, this is, they made the home run hires, or they won the press conferences by hiring, by just keeping Tom Fitzgerald and, and also hiring Lindy Ruff as coach. I mean, that was not, obviously, we, you know, we can get into that also, but that wasn't necessarily, you know, there was Gerard Colant was out there and, and Peter LaVuette was out there

and all those guys. So, but, yeah, no, you're right. I do think they, you know, they, they talk to a bunch of people. and I do think, you know, it's hard to, I, I've wanted to talk to some other, like even some, some of the 76ers writers, 76ers writers about this too. Like, they're, you know, they are, Harris and Blitzer sports entertainment are the people who, you know, hired the guy who started the process, but they're also the guy who fired the guy who started the process before he finished it. And so, like, and, you know, it's, you know, now they've gone, they've kind of come full circle. You know, it's actually, I was reading, Earon Weitzman did a book on the whole thing,

tanking to the top that I read this summer during the pandemic. And, I mean, just some of the stuff, the sort of palace intrigue stories that were going on behind the scenes there were pretty crazy. I mean, beyond the stuff that was even out in the open, like you hire the guy who starts the process and then replace him, you know, with a guy who ends up with the whole,

the burner Twitter account situation and all that. So, you know, they've, I feel like the pendulum on them as NBA owners has swung from being all in on analytics to not all in on it to now they've come back to they hired the guy who groomed the guy who did the process. So I don't, you know, I, the thing that I know, the thing that I can say with the most sincerity is that I know the people that know those guys well. and I mean know them beyond just like the media, you know, person and being covered in the media situation. Right. Is that they really believe that they're, A, very smart and B, like, have a good idea of, like, where they should be in terms of, like, using all the information that they have available to them to make the best decisions. I guess it's the right way to put it. So, you know, like, whether it's, you know, people that work for them or work for them or people outside the media who know them as, like, kind of friends. like they're just, or, you know, people that, like, I think, you know, I think they knew they were going to, I think they had an idea of like they wanted to interview people like he's like Gillis and that like, and then I think eventually they just, you know, Fitzgerald sort of won them over. And it's kind of in the same way that they weren't really expecting Lindy Ruff to be the, to be the guy that they were going to hire as a coach, but he also kind of won them over. Well, it's because the reason why I'm so fascinated by it is because like, you know, NHL organizations are for the most part so, um,

traditionally or conventionally run you've got like the owner and then the GM just handles everything day to day and reports the owner and then the GM's dealing with the coach and then you got the players and it's sort of this like neat line and I think I wonder if that's the best way to do it because that's a lot on the plate of one person even if they do have advisors and consultants and people who sort of have their ear but it seemed like you know I remember Elliot Freeman wrote about how gillis wasn't maybe even particularly interested in coming back to any HL as a GM, he wanted to be more of like a president of Hocop's, where he sort of takes a bit of a step back, but then has a sort of has a voice or makes the ultimate decision. And it seemed like,

you know, with Dello and Kane and his analytics department, it would have made a lot of sense to have various voices kind of doing that sort of a group thing or trying to come together or something and then taking it to someone of a higher stature like Gillis, who then kind of considers all that and then runs it up the flagpole to the ownership. who sort of trusts him to make the final call. And so it seemed like it was such an obvious fit from that regard. And instead they went with, I think, a much more sort of traditional sort of sitting GM that is basically just running everything on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah, I agree with you there. I mean, I do think that that's, you know, one of the sort of the prerequisites for whoever they hired to be the general manager was definitely that there was, whoever that person was going to be was going to basically have to listen to to all of the lieutenants and all the various different things and um you know there was going to be a more holistic approach to the whole process so like i said i think the you know i'm you know like they they basically gave don fitchgerald you know whatever what did that end up being six or seven months of like on the job uh almost like an on the job interview slash training or whatever and

you know, really they had to, you know, they obviously, they had to feel comfortable that he was going to do things the way that they were, the way that they envisioned to eventually, you know, to pick him over. Like you said, because there were other, there were definitely, they definitely interviewed, you know, a lot of people and had some pretty enticing options to choose from. All right. Let's take a quick break here. We're going to hear from a sponsor. And then we're going to get into sort of the biggest remaining questions or how they fix things on the other side of the show. 2020 has really forced us all to reshape the way we work and try to become more efficient in the process, whether it is having Zoom meetings on a daily basis or working remotely from home, or if you're running the PDOCAST,

watching and rewatching old games as opposed to new ones because there's nothing currently to talk about. We've all had to make adjustments to become more efficient. Fortunately, for businesses out there that are looking to make the most of their hires moving forward, Indeed is here to help. Indeed's the number one job site in the world with more total visits than any other job site. They help you find quality candidates quickly so you can focus on hiring the person you need to keep your business going. And unlike other job sites, Indeed gives you full control and payment flexibility over your hiring. You only pay for what you need. You can pause your account at any time and there are no long-term contracts. I think the NHL could use something like Indeed.

Think about Bedminton Oilers, for example, who for some reason decided to come back this following year with Miko Koskenin and Mike Smith and Nenn. If they had had something like Indeed to use, hopefully they would have been able to find a better candidate that would have been more suited to their needs and they would have addressed the big opening they have a net. So that's just something to consider. But Indeed's new way of matching you with candidate instantly delivers a short list of quality candidates whose resumes on Indeed match your job criteria that you can contact the moment you sponsor a job, which makes indeed the only job site that can move as fast as you do. And right now, Indeed is offering our listeners a free $75 credit to boost your job post, which means that you can't. more quality candidates will see it fast. So try Indeed out with a free $75 credit at Indeed.com slash Blue Wire. This is the best offer available anywhere.

Go right now to Indeed.com slash Blue Wire. Let them know we sent you. This offer is valid through December 31st. Terms and conditions apply. Sponsoring today's episode of the HockeyPedio guest is Bet Online. You might not be going to a game this year as we wait for the world to sort itself out and for this pandemic to end and for it to be safe to go back. to live sporting events, but in the meantime, you can still be in on the action and bet online.

Bet Online is going the extra mile to make sure you can get in on every possible chance to win this season. From game spreads and totals, the team, player, and coaching props, Bet Online gives you more options to wager than anywhere else. Obviously, there's no hockey or basketball on right now anymore with their season's over, but football's still on. And down the road, when we know when the NHL season is going to be getting back, you're going to be able to go on there and start wagering on future.

like championship, who do you think is going to win next season, Stanley Cup, wagering on wins, you know, player props. There's going to be a lot of good stuff there. So I recommend going there now and familiarizing yourself with it and trying it out and taking for a spin and then getting ready in advance of the next season. So just head to Bet Online today and take advantage of all the great sign-up bonuses they've got there. Don't forget to use the promo code BlueWire at betonline.org.

They'll let them know that we sent you. That's Blue Wire, all one word. Bet Online, your online Sportsbook experts. We're getting at that point in the year where we all need to start thinking about what we're going to get the people in our lives for the holidays. Sometimes it's tricky to know exactly what to get someone

without breaking the bank. There's only so many socks and ties and tukes and gloves and gift cards you can get before enough's enough. So this year, how about thinking outside the box and trying something new by mixing it up with a Harry's holiday shaveset? It's an idea that's thoughtful, festive, and just as importantly practical.

It's a gift that's actually going to be used. Unlike a lot of those Christmas gifts you get every year where you pull it out once and use it and you realize all right whatever that's done with and you just discard the side and never think about it again with the harry's shave set it's something that you can keep using because the blade refills are as low as two dollars each moving forward so if you get it for someone and they like it and they want to keep using it then each time they use them moving forward they're going to be reminded of what a cool gift it was and especially the person they got it for them what a thoughtful individual that was so it really is the

gift that keeps on giving and if they don't like it for whatever reason harry is back by 100% quality guarantee so they can get a full refund. It also comes ready to gift. This holiday shave set comes in a pre-packaged holiday themed gift box, and if you want to get it for a special to someone, you can make it even more personal by engraving the razor handle and really spicing it up. And you can feel good about your gift knowing that 1% of each sale

is donated to charitable organizations. So this holiday season, new customers can get $5 off plus free shipping on any Harry's limited edition holiday shave set when you go to harries.com slash pdo. The set comes with a weighted handle, three razor cartridges, foam and shave gel, and a travel cover,

and it's all packaged in a handsome holiday gift box. So just let them know we sent you by using the promo code PDO, and you can get all that. Don't give socks this year. Delight the guys in your life with Harry's. To claim your $5 off plus free shipping, just go to harries.com slash PDO.

All right, so I've gone ahead and put together sort of four really big overarching questions that I think we're going to hopefully get answers to this season or at least get a better insight into how to treat them. And it'll dictate the sort of future outlook of this team. So I'm going to start off with the first one here. How will the Lindy Rough experiment work? And the reason why I bring that up is because I do think it's a very interesting fit

given his background and given, you know, his two most recent tenure. with the personnel they have. And I think it's a potentially combustible situation. We'll see how it turns out. But we've been kind of tiptoeing around the fact that, you know, we talked about Confist Gerald and how they brought him in full time as the GM. And then he hired Lindy Ruff this offseason. So let's kind of get into that decision and how it's going to look like with this team,

why they went that route, the pros and cons, all that good stuff. Yeah. Okay. Right. So I went into the whole searching for a coach process, sort of expecting them to go with somebody younger. You know, like if they were going to sort of recommit to the rebuild and the timeline around Hughes and he's year, you know, I kind of thought like it would be a younger coach who would sort of grow with them. You know, but at the same time, that's sort of where they went with John Hines. He was, you know, one of the youngest coaches in the league whenever they hired. him. I mean, I think the

one of the biggest reasons why Lindy sort of grew on them or sort of sold himself as a guy who would work with this team is that he you know, if you look at his time in Dallas, they were you know, definitely a

sort of high-powered offensive team. This is, they, with John Heinz in charge, they had some success, but they were also one of the slowest-paced teams in the league. And with the offensive guy, you know, they're still sort of waiting for the young offensive players to really break out and become what they think they're going to become.

And so I sort of look at where Ruff was with Dallas. And then also with his time with the Rangers, you know, there are some guys that sort of fit this idea that like, you know, the young defenseman that, you know, excelled with him in Dallas and then, you know, like Adam Foxx's with the Rangers. John Klingberg with the stars and, you know, can someone like Damon Severson or Ty Smith or Will Butcher have the same type of sort of renaissance or improvement with him in charge? And I also just, I think that like playing at a faster pace and creating more offensive chances and those types of things are just something that they are, you know, sort of looking for given the personnel that they have and the people that they want to build around. Yeah. So the pros that I came up with are he will certainly give the younger players freedom to kind of develop and try things with the puck and play creatively. And that is a big pro because we know typically a lot of NHL coaches don't have an appetite for that or as soon as something goes wrong, they're going to quickly pull the plug on it.

And we saw that with his stars team where, as you alluded to, they led the league in scoring in both 2014-15 and 2015-16. And I remember I had Mike Johnson on an early version of the PDO cast, and he had been doing a Stars game, I believe, on the national broadcast. And so he had spent some time with Ruff and kind of sitting in on the Star's practices and talking to people around the organization. And he sort of told me about how Ruff was really unique in the way he ran his practices, and the way he sort of focused on what the players did well and positive. reinforcing that as opposed to just kind of showing them tape of all the mistakes they made or

things they needed to work on. And the players love playing for them. And it was a good fit. And they had a lot of success. And that was great. And I think for this devil's organization, I think there is a certain element of as well. Like, you know, the Minnesota Wild are kind of going through this themselves in the West where when you mention the Minnesota Wild to someone like a casual fan or someone who's not a fan of the team, they instantly kind of like roll their eyes. and they're like, oh, my God, like, what a, what a sort of traditionally kind of boring defensive team that you instantly kind of tie to that name, that name recognition. Whereas with the devils, they certainly haven't been this way for a while,

but I still feel like there's kind of that element of, oh, they're just like the defensive team that's trapping and making hockey boring. And it's going to take something drastic. The change is going to take obviously continued success as well, but I think kind of going all in on the route of being an offensive, fun, exciting young dynamic team certainly has its merits. And I think from that perspective, Ralph makes a lot of sense as the guy you'd want kind of steering that ship.

Right. I do think this is probably way too simplistic and way too sort of narrative-driven, but it's pretty easy to see a scenario where it almost, honestly, it reminds me of my first beat, like the first team that I've recovered was Bruce Bruejo's first year in Washington. and so like Glenn Hanlon was the sort of disciplinary and the guy

who taught the young kids how to play defense and to be professionals and all that stuff and then Bruce Bruchro came in and and you know let the horses out of the barn and it could very well the same a similar thing could might happen here in New Jersey we'll see I mean I could I could absolutely see you know stories being written

you know six months from now or a year and a half from now about how like, you know, guys like Nico Hesier and, and Jasper Rat, like, you know, saying like, oh, you know, John Heinz really taught us how to be, you know, defensively responsible and taught us how to be pros and Lindy's giving us the freedom to, you know, become the offensive players that we think we should be. Listen, did a lot of things well in Dallas. On the flip side in those four years with the stars, only three teams gave up more goals than they did. In his final year, they were 29th in both expected goals against and actual

goals against. And I know you could certainly argue that it didn't help having Carly Letton and Antonymi as his two goalies there. But, you know, just remembering what those stars teams look like. They certainly bled chances. And it was during that time that the term starsing became a thing when they were just spectacularly implode and have these massive defensive breakdowns and their games would just turn into kind of calamity of errors. And it's, you know, that's something you certainly have to consider. And the other thing is, you know, when you think back to how that star's tenure ended, they were so sort of kind of traumatized or horrified by those lasting images of how bad

those stars teams were defensively and how they fell short, that Jim Nills coaching hires since then have been Ken Hitchcock, Jim Montgomery, and Rick Bonas. And the team just like did a complete 180. in terms of going fully in on defense. And to great success, I mean, they, you know, they were competing in the Stanley Cup final this year, but it's just kind of a memory because it has been a few years now, so it's a refresher in terms of how Lindy Rough's last time

running an H.L bench wound up turning out. Right. And I, like, it was one of those things where, like, whenever they hired him, I was definitely like, but really, Lindy Rough? And then I sort of went back in, like, kind of did more digging on him because that was the other thing it kind of happened pretty quickly like it wasn't you know i had had months to look into you know dig into the numbers with

gerard galon and peter lavalette and all the other guys that had been been rumored um but or you know connected to the job but uh well i mean one of the things that i with with lindy was like we were right like they did have i mean you know he never had ben bishop you know or that level of a old tender. They did, you know, they just, you know, for as many chances as they created at one end, they gave up at the other end. And so, and I do think that it'll be interesting to see how that works if Corey Crawford and McKenzie Blackwood play just basically if, if Cory Crawford and McKenzie Blackwood

can replicate exactly what they did last year together, I'm interested to see how that will work with Lindy Rough's system. Because I think one of the biggest complaints that a lot of devil's, fans had the last couple years was they have, or basically since McKenzie Blackwood kind of became, you know, a credible NHL goalie was they have this, they have this young goalie and who might be a pretty good goalie in the making and they have these good young offensive players. Why not play that kind of a more aggressive, more risky style than what they were playing?

But I do, I also think like, well, like two things about rough. One, like his best team or the best chance that he probably had to make a big run. Tyler Sagan got hurt in like the first game of the playoffs and was out. And they still got to like game seven of the second round, even without, you know, their number one center. So that I feel like Lindy's time in Dallas might have looked, might be remembered a little bit differently if if they had gotten, you know, let's just say even to the conference finals. But and then the second thing is that, I mean, the guy has been a coach for forever. And he didn't coach the Dominic Aschic era Buffalo Sabres the same way that he coached to the Tyler Sagan and Jamie Benera at Dallas Stars. So, like, I'm definitely guilty.

I'm like, this is, like, I want to go back and, like, watch Stars games from those, those couple of years. And, like, this is how, you know, like, the Jack Hughes is going to develop like this because Tyler Sagan developed like this. And John, this, look at this John Klingberg thing that Damon Severson can do. But at the same time, you know, it's been a while. And he's kind of proven to not be, he's kind of the anti-Hitchcock in that he doesn't coach the exact same way with every team that he coaches. Look at you with a glass half full approach. I honestly like I 100% honest like I was like what Lindy rough what and and like that was like the one thing like after a couple of days I even like I texted a couple people uh you know in the organization and I was like you know what like this makes a little more sense than I thought it did 48 hours ago or 72 hours ago I just I think the reason why people were taken aback a bit and myself included was they essentially hired the person who was responsible for overseeing the defense of arguably the worst defensive team in the league.

I know like it's unfair to sort of look at the statistical profile of the full three years. He was in that job or in that in that gig because part of that was, you know, there was this rotating cast of people. They were certainly rebuilding for a large chunk of it. But even if you look at last year, for example, like I think no team gave up more high danger attempts than the Rangers did. Only Chicago gave up more shots. And the Rangers gave up more, or conceivated.

did more expected goals against than the Detroit Red Wings did. So he did some fine work in terms of developing the actual individual talent. And everyone that's come across Lindy Rove personally speaks highly of the role he's played in terms of helping them become better hockey players. But I just think when you view it from the perspective of the job he's coming from and what he specifically did there, I think it's certainly not surprising that at least Rangers fans, for example, were generally pretty excited about the hire. Yeah, and obviously that it's the Rangers too.

I mean, that's part of it. But you're right. Like it's, it was like a perception-wise, it was, you know, when your biggest rival, when you hire an assistant coach from your biggest rival and those, their fans are ecstatic that, that, the, about the move. It's sort of like the, you know, like Ohio State fans signing petitions for Michigan to keep Jim Arbaugh. But, but yeah, no, you're right. I do think it's, and it's such a weird, I've talked about this with so many people in the last few months. like how do you like does lindy rough get credit for adam fox and and even i guess you get

tony de angelo becoming really good offensive defenseman does he get does he get like the criticism for uh you know some of the other younger guys not be not we're progressing as well does he get like does he is it his fault that the the system ran the way that it did it's you know it's weird like how how we ascribe like blame like blam anchor or praise for assistant coaches is really a sort of an area like, you know, like whether it's, I don't know, it's just a hard thing to say. Like, I feel like anytime you evaluate an assistant coach in the NHL, it's almost always, is he the power play guy or the penalty kill guy and is the power play good or is the penalty, right? Like, that's easy. Like, you know, for years, for the past three or four years now, the devils have had one of the, you know, a top 10 penalty kill.

And Elaine Nazardine is the guy in charge of that. And, you know, I mean, he's clearly one of the best penalty-killing coaches in hockey. And conversely, the devil's fans hated the fact that he was named interim coach and didn't want him to be the full-time coach because they didn't like the way the defense score was playing under John. But again, is that John Hines's system or is it Nazarendi-on? So it's sort of a weird, I don't know. I just, it's like I just think it's kind of like an unknowable thing.

Like how much you can sort of pick and choose like, he should get a lot of credit for this, but also he should get a lot of criticism for this. Well, let's stick with the theme then. My second big question for the Devils is, and since it's related to Ruff and the defense, can McKenzie Blackwood build on his second half? And is he the goalie of the future and is he the real deal?

And to give some stats in the pro-McCenzie Blackwood camp, it would be that after John Hines was fired, which was a 28-game example for Blackwood, he had a 925 save percentage which was top 10 in the league plus 6.3 goals saved above expected and he was so good that and his statistical argument was so strong that our good pal Dom luschishin actually had him as his calder pick and was scrutinized for it but i thought the merits based on the statistics that i just laid out were certainly there and he was fantastic down the stretch including a ridiculous span of games in february where he had that memorable 52 save performance

He had a 46 save shutout. He was playing really well. Now, it is a very small example. We're talking less than 30 games. So it's always very dangerous to put too much stock into that and make these widespread proclamations based off of it. But given the way he's looked in the past and given the pedigree coming in, I certainly see the reason for optimism. So I think figuring out what they have in him and sort of how he can follow up that really promising stretch is a very important question for the devil's moving forward. Yep.

I think so, too. I think, like, if you pull back a little bit and you go back even to the year before, I mean, he's now, he's got 70 games in the NHL at basically this, and he was, you know, 9-17, one year and 9-16 the other year, 9-15. It's right in the same. It wasn't a straight line to get there. It was, he was really good in his sort of, I guess we'll call it his first rookie season, because he didn't play 25 games.

He was really good that year. He was clearly the team's best goalie. when Corey Schneider and Keith Kincaid both kind of imploded. And he had one terrible game. He actually had one terrible period in Calgary where he gave up six goals in the period. And so he had like a 920. He was in the low 920s for the entire season except for that one period and that knocked him down to 917. But so that wasn't your, that wasn't a very big sample.

It was 22 or 23 games. And then you add on the 47 from this year this past season. So now you're at 70, and this is sort of one of the things, obviously, with goaltending is how many games do they have to play before you can feel comfortable that this is what they are? And so I think, you know, he is still pretty young. I think he just turned 24 in the past week or so. And I think he has proven that he's got a good chance to be at a minimum, like an average starting goaltender. I think if his, like if you were trying to plot out the different ways that his career could go, I think, like the median is that he's going to be an average NHL starting goaltender.

And there's also the potential for more. Again, this is sort of a, like, it's pretty easy to buy into the narrative of McKenzie Blackwood because he didn't start playing goaltender until he was like 13. He's like a super athlete compared to other goaltenders. And he just sort of, he got with this goaltending coach, the guy who sort of also trained Matt Murray, and he was kind of a late bloomer. and he was the athlete who sort of learned the technical part of the position. And as he's gotten that down, he's gotten better and better, better.

So I do think, I mean, just for me personally, like, when you watch him play, when he's playing well, that, like, he looks the part, like, that's what a goaltender is supposed to look like to me. Like, he's economical with his movement. He's huge. He's got his legs do the pinball flipper thing really well because he's so athletic. He just makes, you know, he makes a lot of saves. and it just looks the part. Like it's not, you know, some goalies, the numbers say that, you know,

they have the numbers, but it just doesn't always look right necessarily. So I do think, you know, they've basically got a couple years here now, or at least one year with Cory Crawford. They sign them to a two-year deal, but I, you know, if you look at, it's pretty, you know, if you're going to bet on who, which member of the New Jersey Devils is going to be a member of the Seattle Cracken in 12 months, as of today, it would be,

if Cory Crawford has a good year for the Devils, they're probably going to have to make a trade with Seattle to keep them because that would seem like such an obvious move for them to make. But so they do have, they sign Cory Crawford to be sort of though, you know, the split time. I imagine that if we do end up with a 56 game season and the games are going to be super compressed,

I would, you know, if they both stayed healthy, it should be somewhere near 50-50. I don't think either of them is going to necessarily have a chance to play 40 games or whatever. So, you know, I think that's the sort of the idea is that they, you know, Corey Schneider was an excellent off-ice mentor for McKenzie Blackwood. McKenzie will rave about Corey Schneider for the rest of his life. But they really, the team needed a guy to, you know, stop the puck,

whenever McKenzie's not playing. Like the numbers, basically from the day that McKenzie Blackwood entered the NHL to now, the number, the, the win, just the sim. simple win-lost record of the devils when McKenzie Blackwood plays versus when he doesn't is astounding. They are basically a playoff team when he plays and the Red Wings when he doesn't. Yeah, it's tough to overstate how valuable is going to be not having to give 25 games to the combination of Corey Schneider and Louis DeMang. And if they do have Crawford for just a one year, as you alluded to, it's a good year to have

them considering the uncertainty of how condensed the schedule is going to be, how many back-to-backs and like three and four nights or whatever they're going to be playing. and so they can afford to go with that 50-50 split. And I was surprised that, you know, I understand that why teams, especially given the finances, involved this offseason, weren't willing to give Crawford more money. I mean, he's going to be 36 before he even plays a game for the devils

and he has an extensive injury history. But just based on the way he looked last year, I thought he was fantastic. You know, he performed very admirably behind, like a top, bottom two or three defensive six. system and in the postseason as well kind of really carried the Blackhawks and made them even slightly competitive against Vegas in a series they had no reason being in I mean to get to get a feel for like how bad the Black Ox were in that playoff bubble.

Corey Crawford faced 103 high dangerous shots in nine games. Robin Lennar faced 112 in 16 games in seven extra games he faced just a handful more high dangerous shots and Samian Varlamov behind that Islanders shot system. 139 in 20 games. So he was getting peppered by both quantity and quality and held up admirably. And that's a big question for this Devils team, especially with Lindy Ruff as their coach, in terms of what they're going to look like. You know, the personnel, especially in the blue line, is still a big question mark.

We don't know what we're going to get from various players. And so the goaltending is going to come up big and having two reliable options there is going to be huge. So I think it's a massive step in the right direction. I think the opportunity is going to be there for Blackwood to take another leap and maybe not play a significant number of games, but show that he can do that from start to finish next season. Yeah, I think if, I think if people were looking for a preview of whether or not Cory Crawford can still kind of do it, like that, to be that series against Edmonton was sort of like

that's what it might look like some nights with, and it's partially because Lindy's going to be the coach and everybody's expecting there to be a lot of like high flying shootouts, but also like you mentioned the defense corps, like I think really looking back over the last couple years,

that some of the conservative nature of how the devil's played was tied to the fact that they were trying to protect the defense corps and protect the goaltender. I mean, I think that was certainly something that probably needs to be brought up that, I mean, if the Blackhawks had like a bottom three defense score. I think

maybe the 2018-19 season for the Devils was probably a low point for a franchise that, you know, was basically once built around Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermeyer and Brian Rolfsky to have, you know, to have what they have. I mean, like I, I'm,

you know, I think some some Devils fans believe I believe in him too much, but I think Damon Severson is going to be I think he's already a good NHL defenseman and I think he's going to be, you know, he can be, let's say, a number two or a number three on a Stanley Cup contending team. And I think Ty Smith is going to be really good.

Eventually, maybe not, you know, he's certainly not, like, at his peak right away once he comes into the NHL this year or very soon. And then, you know, I think Will Butcher, you know, has shown that he can be very valuable in the right role. It's just trying to figure out if he can, if he can expand it beyond, you know, sort of being like the offensive. you know, anger of like a number five guy. And then beyond that, you know, I mean, you know, Murray and P.K. Suban are kind of, you know, they seem like maybe short term,

short term situation. So, you know, I really like, if we sort of pull back, like one of the, to me, one of the biggest questions for them between now and let's say the year that they think they can make the conference finals is they've got to find at least one more top pairing defensemen and maybe two. Yeah. Yeah, there's going to be a bit of a ways until then. Okay, so these were kind of the appetizers. Let's get to the main course here. My third question. And this really is like the most important question, but I wanted to save it and kind of ease into it.

How will Jack Hughes come back in year or two? And is he going to develop into what they both drafted him to be and need him to be ultimately? Right. I honestly, like to me, you know, this season is not going to be measured by like, are they going to be a playoff contender in April? role or are they going to make the playoffs or are they going to have the number five pick? To me it's, you know, how will everyone feel about Jack Hughes at the end of it versus how everyone felt about him now? And so, like, obviously he had statistically, you know, the worst season by a number one

pick that's a forward that played in the league at 18 in a long time. I mean, it is kind of interesting that, like, basically every forward in the salary cap era the pick number one has been, you know, wildly productive until him. But like the guys right before that, like, it goes back to Patrick Stefan, but then, you know, like Vinnie La Covelli and Joe Thornton were back to back right in there too. And those guys had essentially the same type of years that Jack had this past year. So like a couple of things with him. Obviously, there's, you know, there was some bad luck involved.

He, if you look at his expected goals, you know, basically his individual one, the ones with him on the ice, you know, like, I think he shot like 2.4%. And like his teammates shot like 4.9 or something absurd. Now there is, look, there's like part of that. At 5 on, at 5 on 5 on 5, the devil shot 5% with him on the ice and 7.7% overall in all situations, which is catastrophically bad. Right.

And so some of the individual stuff with him that is on him. I mean, he does, he is going to have to finish better moving forward. some of his, some of the, you know, like his body not being ready for the sort of the physical nature of everything. Like some of his, some of, you know, some of his high danger chances were basically affected by the fact that he was, you know, sort of absorbing contact while trying to shoot. And it wasn't, maybe he didn't necessarily shoot it as well or places as well as he would like. So, but again, like he's, some of the, some of the, you know, high danger chances that he created for others, those are, more of those are just going to go in. So that's, like,

there's going to be a bump in production this year just if he just does exactly what he did last year the numbers are going to go up but also i think the you know the the obvious thing with him was that he was the first player to ever come from the u.s program straight to the league and essentially come from the u.s hl straight to the league and uh he's you know his body just wasn't ready for it i mean there was um you know he you could see like what he did on the power play he looked like the kid who, you know, lit up the U-18s the year before at times. Like, you know, he was making great passes and doing all sorts of, you know, sort of the fun Jackie stuff.

And anytime he, you know, he'd get like a breakaway, he'd have like a highlight real goal or whatever. But it's, you know, his body just wasn't ready for the, for the grinding stuff, you know, for the hard stuff. And so that's to me the most interesting, I mean, it's the biggest question for the season. And it's also the most interesting, to me, like one of the most interesting things in the entire league is how all of these young players are going to react to the fact that they had like an oversized offseason. They had twice as much time essentially to get ready for this

season as they normally would. And so specifically for a guy like Jack who needed to work on his body, I mean, he's had way longer than anyone would expect it to have. And so, well, that, I, you know, the day before the pandemic started, I was certainly thinking that it's going to take him longer to get to where he's going to be than a normal high pick has taken. But I also am interested to see what he looks like the first day of camp and that maybe this long layoff will actually help him expedite the process a little bit. Yeah, it's a big year for both him and the Devils just because the team sort of needs to figure out where they're at and if they need to recalibrate heading into the last year of his ELC.

I'm still really bullish on his future outlook, and I think context is important here, and you laid out a bunch of it. I mean, he was an 18-year-old making this unprecedented leap from the league he was playing in the year prior, and just because he went first overall, it didn't magically sort of alleviate the fact that he was someone that would have to adjust physically, like every evaluator before the draft and leading up to it. And after the draft was like, it's going to be a bit of a process. like he needs to physically develop. And then we saw it play out exactly like that. And people were like, oh, my God, what a disaster.

It's like, no, we went into it knowing what this was going to look like. I think we've been a bit spoiled maybe collectively by how seamlessly young players have been just entering the league and dominating. But it's important to remember that not everyone develops at that same rate. And this is one of those cases. I think, I mean, you know, with great players, you throw something in their way and they eventually figure out a way to solve it. And I think in this case, the thing Jack Hughes needed to solve wasn't something he could do in season where you're mostly just kind of working on conditioning and stuff, right?

Like he needed the offseason to put on weight, to add strength to just mature physically as a teenager would. And I think that's a really great point you made there about the fact that he not only had an off season to do so, but like nearly a full calendar year to do so. And I'm not saying he's going to come out here looking like the rock and just dominating people physically. but I am very fascinated to see how much that nine, ten months between games is going to do for his ability to just hang physically and sort of shield a puck from opposing defenders and do the stuff that he struggled with in his first year. Yeah, I think one of the things that I sort of felt like I was noticing pretty consistently, at least in the second half of the year. there was also i mean there's also like his his sort of on ice numbers uh they like they they fell off like right like he what's the you know he he he hit the quote unquote rookie wall at some point and sort of um you know so but i but anyway i i just think like whenever you watch him against people

his own age the you know the first thing that stands out is is his skating and how he you know like just sort of like it almost looks like he teleports from one part the ice to the other in the neutral zone. And look, he did have, like, that was, like, his single biggest strength in his rookie year was that, you know, when the puck was on his stick near the defensive blue line, it ended up on his stick on the other side of the offensive blue line. And so he, you know, like, that is something that's going to be, you know, like him be, him helping them get out of danger is going to be, you know, a huge thing moving forward. It's a matter of, like, once it gets into the zone, like being able to use his body and his vision and all those. things to create chances and to score goals. Yeah, it's tough, it's tough statistically to sugar-de-coded because, you know, the seven

goals, 21 points, especially the 5-on-5 numbers where in 700 or so minutes he had just nine primary points and his team outscored 33 to 17. Like, that's bleak. But the reason why I have the optimism is, you know, just watching the tape and trying to figure out kind of what was going on and what happened. Like, it's so easy to see the transferable skills that you're describing. driving there where like the things that he does at an elite level that he did as a prospect that should say are already playing out at the NHL level like his ability to just fly through

the neutral zone and transport the puck from one into the other and like when he has the space to operate like he's just dazzling with the puck on a stick right and there's so few players in the league that can do that already regardless to the age and so as just like as a as a raw starting point for him having that one building block in his arsenal to grow from it is huge now it's going to be up to the devils as well, I think, to surround a player maker like him with other players that can not only kind of keep up pace-wise skate it with their skating, but more importantly, I think shooters that can convert the opportunities he creates. I think part of it was just that necessity. They just didn't really have the horses last year. I mean, there was a lot of minutes with, like, Babel Zaka and Wayne Simmons and Miles Wood. But I think the idea moving forward, it's not going to happen next year, obviously, but down the road of pairing Alexander Holtz is just absolute bazooka of a shot with a huge. uses passing is pretty mouthwatering and pretty tantalizing and I'm excited to see it. So especially since he's already showed that ability to not only create for others,

but drive scoring chance creation at a higher rate, I'm really fascinated as his game grows and as just the team itself hopefully adds talent and gets better, what that sort of partnership is going to look like and whether we're going to be able to start seeing those percentages of shots that he's creating skyrocket and finally start going to start going to. into the net and resulting in actual goals as opposed to this sort of theoretical idea of oh it looked good but ultimately nothing happened right and i think that's like i mean look there was there was a lot of consternation about jack's deployment and his linemates and um and i think and though some of it was definitely justified like it like the i the idea on paper of pairing him with

Wayne Simmons at the beginning of the year, like, look, he's, you know, Wayne is, is a, you know, he was going to basically protect him or not, and not necessarily, you just protect him from, like, you know, people, you know, punching him in the face or blindside hitting him with blindside hits or whatever, but just, you know, you take like a, like a guy who's a known quantity as a power forward in the league and a guy who scores goals and that seemed like it made a lot of sense as a, as a partnership, but, but like, I mean, Wayne had the, the worst year as, of his life as a goal score. So it just didn't, it just didn't work. And, and then Miles Wood sort of moved into that role at some point, too. And it just, you know, they, the coaching staff didn't necessarily trust,

uh, trust Jack to play, you know, the big minutes at even strength. And it's, you know, I mean, look, the results, you know, weren't, weren't good whenever he was out there. So it was sort of a, it was a kind of a constant, you know, tug of war about like, well, should they be playing him a lot to develop him or should they be trying to shelter him? And so, you know, that is an interesting thing with, you know, they do have some interesting guys this year to play with him. Like, he played someone Nikita Gusef last year and it was just an abject disaster. They were, you know, the possession numbers were in the 30s. They were just, they were just, they couldn't get the puck.

Those are the two guys that the team wants to play with the puck the most and they couldn't get it. So whether or not they can maybe try to go back to that now that, like, Nikita Gusef sort of found his, his sea legs in the NHL and looks like he's going to be a, you know, a really good NHL player. and if Jack has grown some, maybe that's a combination that can work. I mean, to me, the interesting one to start with would be, like, Nico, he sure has played with Kyle Palmary pretty much every game of his career or close to it,

but maybe they should try to let Palmary play with Jack and see if that works because they have other guy. Has Nico progressed enough that he can kind of drive his own line because he doesn't have Taylor Hall around anymore and he doesn't necessarily need Kyle Palmary to do it for him? And there's some interesting wingers now, I think Gusev, especially after the Heinz firing, when his sort of usage started to get more consistent. And as he acclimated to the NHL, I think he had like 32 points in his final 43 games

and looked a lot better and a lot more confident. I think Andreas Johnson is going to be a good fit here. Like he was clearly a bit redundant on the Leafs just because of the players they already have and his salary. But he's going to make a lot of more sense on this team, the two ESPERS. I mean, I mean, there's certainly some talent here to play with. and obviously the players they've drafted more recently will eventually get there. But that kind of leads to my final question here.

And it's not necessarily as much of a question as it is sort of just like a thought exercise. And I'd say this for any rebuilding team. But kind of walk in that fine line of you want to, especially with like a player that you either don't want to extend or is reaching that point in their career where it makes more sense to trade them for future assets. and like we saw, you know, they cashed it on Taylor Hall as an expiring free agent. They cashed in on Blake Coleman when his sort of perceived value was at an all-time high. They're going to reach these dilemmas, especially with a guy like Kyle Palmyri coming up this season where he's going to be turning 30 years old.

He's on an expiring contract. What's his future? It doesn't make sense to keep him there and sort of use him as one of those players that can help sort of not shelter, but provide a good shot next to either his year or. or do you try to cash in because he's clearly going to be a very appealing name given he's like a 25 to 30 goal scorer with also good defensive impacts and good underlying numbers. I think he can basically play on any team on any line. Like there's going to be a lot of teams lining up to try and acquire him as a rental or as a player during the season. So trying to decide what they're going to do with him moving forward and some of these other names and kind of who's going to be around long term.

Because as you look ahead to this coming season, just like, and this is a good way to kind of put a, put a bow on this conversation the way we started it's i like a lot of what they're done i think there's a lot of reason for optimism but then you look at this proposed division for 2021 and it's got the bruins the rangers the islanders the flyers the caps and the penguins in it and even the sabers now with taylor hall who i think are going to try to be at least better and more competitive this year like it's going to be pretty tough to see this devil's team make a lot of headway there and so when you consider that like kind of what's the timeline going to be like who's going to be around by the time this team really is ready to be good and ready to be competitive.

And so that's kind of my last question or thought with them, especially trying to figure out specifically with Paul Muri what his future is going to look like. Right. So, like, to me, the number one question, the number one long-term question for the franchise is, are Nico Heeshire and Jack Hughes going to be, are they going to turn into the guys who can be the number one and number two players on a cup winning team? And so the second biggest long-term question is, who are the guys? So if they're the Taves and Kane, who are the Hosa and Seabrook and the guys who fill in like the other, it's pretty clear that you've got to have six or seven, you know, high-end players if you're going to be a consistent, you know,

a team that can, you know, consistently compete for the cup. So the number one biggest question for this coming season, the short-term question is, what are they going to, going to do with with paul mary and gusov who are the two you know and then you can throw in Travis zajak who's also a pending free agent but he's got a no trade clause and uh he's been with a team forever so i you know um and then you can also throw in ryan murray too because he's also a ufay but but palmerian goose palmerian gusiv are the two they're the it's just the most fascinating thing about the team right now other than the young players developing because they're both like you said they're i mean they're both valuable players they're both on

team-friendly contracts, and if you get to the trade deadline and you want to trade them and you wanted to even eat half the salary, like the number of teams that would be interested in Kyle Palmary at 2.3 million or Nikita Goosef at 2.25, it's very high. So you're right. And I do think, actually, one of the things that Tom Fitzgerald has said like five or six times since he took over is that Nico and Jack are going to tell him what the timeline are. And which is basically his idea is that, you know, when those guys are ready to drive a contender is when it's going to be go time. And so, like, to me, like, we can, you know, we can talk about, like, whether or not they should sign Mike Hoffman or Mikkel Granlin to a one-year contract or whether or not those guys would even do it.

And how that might help them finish, you know, fifth instead of sixth or sixth instead of eighth in the division this year. but like to me the biggest thing is where are jack and nico on their timeline and if and if they come back and the team surprises and the goaltending is really good and they and it seems like maybe they're closer than it looks right now then i think that increases the chances of them signing paul mary or goose ever both of them because they can say hey look these are two you know n hl top six n hl winger on a playoff team and if we're close to being a playoff team let's keep them and see what we're where we're at next year or the year after that But if they're not, if the young players develop but the team still doesn't win this year, I don't, unless Palmary and Or Gusev are willing to take shorter deals because of the pandemic, I don't see how you can keep those guys on, you know, five, six, seven year deals given that they would, those deals just aren't going to work with the huge slash easier timeline. Yeah, it's tricky to try to nail down that timeline where you want to give, the young player is like a huge

a chance to succeed and stay afloat with a good player to play alongside but at the same time you'd hate the sea of either walk after a kind of a lost season for their organization and not having the show for it or maybe even worse overpay just to keep them

and so it's a tough thing to kind of solve and hammer down I don't think there's necessarily a right answer but I do imagine that especially Palmieri given his profile and sort of longevity of the track record is it's going to be very tempting to trade him because I think there's going to be a long list of

suitors lining up to try to sweeten the pot and potentially win the sweepstakes for him and so we'll see how that plays out Corey is I think that's that's about it right? Like did we cover all the main sort of storylines or question marks surrounding his team heading into next season? Yeah I think so. I mean I think that's like the

you know they need to see where right like they need Hughes and he's here to develop into like you know Sarr slash super star level players. They need some of these other younger guys. And as of right now, they're going to, you know, they're going to go into training camp with several spots open up front. So some of the younger guys like, you know, Jasper Boquist and Nick Merkley and Yanni Koke and all these younger guys that they got, they're going to have a chance to make the roster and show that they're, you know,

they can at least be legitimate NHO role players, you know. And then it's sort of like, you know, like it said, it's, it's like this. They've been preaching, they were, they were preaching patience for years and then there was sort of, you know, an acceleration, like we said, during the 2019 off season and now it's sort of back to the patience thing. And it's just a matter of like trying to thread the needle between like they don't, they're not interested in just throwing away another season or two and playing for high picks and trying to add more talent that way. So can they develop the young players that they have and also sort of, still kind of move forward.

And I also, I think the biggest thing is, like, they've got a lot of cap space right now, and there's, like, this herd from, I think, from some corners of the fan base for them to, like, go add more stuff right now. And I think that, like, given the general economic uncertainty around the league, I think if they sort of keep the powder dry and still have this flexibility in, say, next offseason or the one after that even, there's going to be even, like, they made these moves for Ryan Murray and Andreas Johnson this year. I think there's going to be like even better versions of those players available in the coming off seasons because no one has any money and there's not any money.

There's no one has any cap space right now and there's not any extra space coming anytime soon. So there's going to have to be opportunities. It's just a matter of waiting and sort of being flexible to, you know, like look, if, you know, if Eric Turnack is available next week because the lightning can't get him signed before camp, then then yeah, then go for it. But like maybe the, maybe the Mikhail Sergev of two years from now is going to be a very important. available and that's going to be the guy that's going to lead them to the Promise land. Well, beyond even that, I'd say maybe even closer is during the season being one of the few teams that has financial flexibility, it might be valuable because, you know, you

could certainly envision a scenario where a team goes into the season with one expectation and then something happens or they play worse than they thought or they have injuries and then all of a sudden they desperately need to make a trade or need to cut salary because their owner is sick of losing that much money in and all of a sudden being able to facilitate a like that might become a very valuable asset as well. So curious to see what they do with that. There's certainly going to be players and pretty much everything moving forward. And I'm looking forward to seeing what they do.

Corey, plug some stuff. Where can people find you? What are you working on these days? Do all those teas and all that good stuff. Right. Yeah, so you can find my work at The Athletic. It's a little mom-and-pop sports website. I've heard of it.

That's grown a little bit over the last couple years. Yeah, yeah, no, so we're, you know, every, it's been a long, it's been a long nine months, but we've been, you know, grinding out as much content as we can, you know, and we're also trying to adhere to sort of the standards of what, what is an athletic article, but what have I been working on, I got a thing on the best trades in franchise history coming later this week. I think more so, like, between now and the start of training camp, I'm going to try to do some stuff that like sort of focuses on you know sort of digging into Alexander Holtz and uh shekir Moodleyn uh sort of I mean Alexander Holtz is like the

sort of like the headliner like you know potential franchise cornerstone player that they got in the 2020 draft and then the other two guys that they also got in the first round uh Dossin Mercer and and Shakir are like they're pretty interesting players like for different reasons and and so I think there's going to be some stuff coming, sort of breaking down their games and where they came from and all that. Cool. Well, this was a blast, man. I'm glad we got to do this finally.

And we'll definitely have to have you back on down, sometime down the road. Yeah, absolutely. Anytime. Thanks for having me. Beocast with Dim Philipovic. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovic and on SoundCloud at soundcloud. At soundcloud.com slash hockey PDOCast.