The future of the New Jersey Devils brightened up on Wednesday when the club announced it had re-signed Cory Schneider to a reported seven year $42 million contract. While that solidified the Devils' in net, the team still had a lot of needs to address this offseason.
Another area the Devils needed to fix was defensemen, and specifically too many defensemen. Last season, New Jersey had nine NHL caliber defensemen on the roster and the division of ice time hurt the development of some of the rookies. With the buyout of Anton Volchenkov and loss of Mark Fayne to free agency, the Devils finally have a set group of seven defenseman barring injury. This will give Eric Gelinas, Adam Larsson, and Jon Merrill plenty of ice time to grow up and mature. They need to see regular minutes and with Volchenkov and Fayne gone, they will do just that.
Rotating the defensemen and goaltenders caused too much of a headache for the team last season. The Devils needed to fix both and they did.
As for the team's needs up front, it's a different story. The biggest reason New Jersey missed the playoffs last season was the team's intermittent offense and overall complete failure in shootouts. To try and add a boost in both departments, general manager Lou Lamoriello went and signed former Calgary Flame Mike Cammalleri to a five-year $25 million contract. In his career to date, Cammalleri has tallied 236 goals in 669 regular season games. What should be alarming to Devils fans is Cammalleri's production as of late. The 26 goals he scored last season was the most he has scored in one campaign since scoring 26 back in his first season with Montreal in 2009-2010.
This move feels similar to the signing of Michael Ryder last summer. Ryder's numbers weren't as spectacular as the Devils needed and he only scored 18 goals despite a 22-game goalless drought. Bottomline is that the Devils need someone who can score anywhere from 30 to 35+ goals and Cammalleri is not the guy that will do that considering he only reached that 30-goal milestone twice in his 11-year career.
On July 1, the team also signed veteran forward Martin Havlat. At this point in his career, the 33-year-old Czech will not significantly boost the Devils' offense either, but will definitely be a solid depth forward for the team if it can find consistant production from the top two lines.
The Devils needed to make a big splash in signing big time forwards but did little more than make a ripple.
Signing three players who are all over the age of 30 (Scott Clemmensen was signed to compete for a backup job at the age of 36) brought up another problem for this team, age. The average age of the team is around 31.5, the oldest in the league. The Devils need to get younger and quicker and their acquisitions do not help in those regards.
New Jersey did, however, have a decent draft. With the 30th overall pick, the team selected center John Quenneville, cousin of Joel Quenneville, the Blackhawks head coach and former Devil. Quenneville has compared to an Adam Henrique-ish style which fits New Jersey's philosophy perfectly. Their next best pick was defenseman Josh Jacobs, who will be heading to East Lansing in the fall to play with the Michigan State Spartans under Tom Anastos. By drafting Jacobs, the Devils have now drafted a defenseman in the second round five times in a row and six out of the last seven.
Jacobs will join the likes of promising talents Steven Santini and Damon Severson on the back end. Add Quenneville to the depth chart that already includes Reid Boucher and Stefan Matteau and the Devils have a bright future ahead of them.
The Devils have proven they can have a dramatic improvement from one season to the next. In 2010-2011 the team missed the playoffs only to come to within two wins of the Stanley Cup the following season. Fortunately for this team, there is still plenty of time between now and opening night in Philadelphia on Oct. 9 to make a move or two to really put this team into contention.