Nik Bethune said:
Hobbes said:
He also wasn't helped by the PK Suban trade being such a dud. And that one involved tw0 2nd round picks going to the Preds, too...hard to draft well when you're giving away picks.
EDIT: actually they did still have a bunch of 3rd and 4th round picks (and a 2nd) last summer. Too early for any of those to be panning out yet. They also haven't yet had a single NHL game out of their 2018 draft class.
It's the 2015 and 2016 drafts that really sunk him. In both drafts the Devils had 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th round picks and they really got very little to show for it. Mackenzie Blackwood may be a good starter one day but taking Pavel Zacha 6th over Werenski, Provorov and Rantanen looks pretty rough right now.
I just went through his trade history and really didn't see any massive blunders there. He did give up a couple 2nd rounders and two misc non-factor players for Suban and that hasn't panned out, but it wasn't really a bad move/idea at the time. I think for the most part it was felt that Shero got the better of that deal. He's made a bunch of assorted little moves that were largely inconsequential, but there only other trade of any significance was the Hall-Larson deal where it looked like he fleeced Edmonton at the time, and it became even more lopsided when Hall performed as he did. The most recent Hall trade it's a bit too early to evaluate but I guess on the assumption that Hall wasn't going to re-sign, he made out about as well as could be expected. Basically on the trade front his moves were pretty uniformly beneficial to the Devils.
I also went through his UFA signings and nothing sticks out as being excessively horrible. Their cap is perfectly under control now that Hall is gone, and even before that they were okay. They don't have any deals on the books that look like they're really killing them...
...except one.
Schneider signing that fairly lengthy 7x$6M didn't seem too unreasonable at the time. He was consistently a .920+ goalie and in the Vezina conversation leading into the contract (his contract year was 69 games .925/2.25) . His first year of that deal was fewer games (58) but he still posted a .924/2.15 so it seemed perfectly reasonable. And then for whatever reason Schneider utterly fell apart in 2016-17 and goaltending has been the Devils' problem ever since. You cannot win in this league with .90x or worse from your combined netminders. So far this year the only team that has given up more goals is the Wings. Ouch!
I tend to think that the Devils are the kind of team that (with Hall still there) ought to have been a legitimate playoff-contender type of team this year (ie be fighting for one of those wildcard spots) and it's their goaltending that's killed them...and probably that's a huge factor in Hall's decision to leave. He'd seen 3 years of crap goaltending, didn't see much hope of it improving, and wants a chance to win.
It's hard to know how much of Schneider's implosion to hang on Shero. By the time it became apparent that Cory was never going to return to his former abilities, I don't know that he could have found a buyer and I doubt NJ would want to take the hit for a buyout on that contract. Burying him in the minors still ties up $5M for another 2 seasons after this one which really hurts. Neither of their other two goalies is showing much life either, although Blackwood at least is still young and might develop into something (if getting shelled every night this year doesn't mentally cripple him for life).
I'd almost file this one under "sh*t happens" and Shero had to pay for it.
