IMO the Devils did the same thing the Hurricanes have done by chasing the best available player in an area of need in several windows, but unlike the Hurricanes … they got them. And sadly for the Devs, the guys they got haven’t fit very well or just haven’t provided good value for money. Palat, Hamilton, Meier, Pesce and Markstrom were all ballyhooed acquisitions and you could argue that only Pesce is currently giving them anything like what they’re paying for … although Markstrom was really good for them last year. Palat was a complete waste of cap space, Meier has never come anywhere close to justifying his paycheck, and while Dougie was pretty good before the injuries, he doesn’t even fit their plans anymore. You could make a pretty good argument that they’d have been better off missing on most of those guys and keeping their assets, draft picks and cap space for lower profile players who fit their system better … oh, actually having a consistent system would have probably helped too.
Oh, and I hate to tell Rupper this, but they’ve have also been better off sticking to Bruno’s run and gun system when they had it going. When he says stuff like “they don’t have an identity” and “they’re not tough to play against” we all know what he means. He means they aren’t physical enough. Maybe that’s because they were built to fly and since they got gun-shy when they bombed out of the playoffs playing that way one time, management panicked and decided to be more conventional. I agree with one thing for sure. They’ve got a top six built for transition, and a back end that doesn’t do enough to trigger them. They let Bruno walk, preferring Lindy Ruff and then went with that idiot Keefe when that didn’t work. It should be a relatively easy fix because a lot of the right pieces are in place, but they’d have to commit to going back to firewagon hockey and nobody seems to be making those noises.
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