Dalton Prout came to the New Jersey Devils at the Trade Deadline in exchange for Kyle Quincey. He was just plain awful, but he has the chance to play better next year.
The New Jersey Devils made some moves to sure up most of its roster this offseason, but there are still huge holes on the blue line. The only significant move the team made was trading for Mirco Mueller, which isn’t going to fill the hole.
Speaking of disappointment, Dalton Prout is still on the Devils roster. Prout came to the Devils at last year’s Trade Deadline. He then played pretty terribly for 14 games.
The one thing he was seemingly good at was ending up in the penalty box. He spent 30 minutes there after the trade. This really hurt the Devils since they were uncharacteristically bad at the penalty kill. Prout hurt the Devils much more than he helped him.
So why hold hope that Prout can be anything more than a bad defenseman?
Prout’s ceiling isn’t very high, but let’s play Devils advocate (see what I did there?). His first three seasons with the Columbus Blue Jackets were spent going back and forth between the NHL and AHL. After scratching and clawing, he was able to solidify himself on the roster for two seasons.
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He fell off the wagon completely last season. With the Blue Jackets actually playing well, he could only crack the lineup for 15 games. This clearly did a number on his confidence on both ends of the ice. After averaging more than one shot per game in 2015-16, he dropped more than half that last season. He’s obviously not an offensive defenseman, but being afraid to take a shot shows something was wrong mentally.
Now, he has a full offseason to get his mind right. Prout can spend the whole season being a part of the Devils roster, a roster that gets more and more tight knit. He definitely needed a change of scenery (who wouldn’t under John Tortorella), but doing it midseason may be too much of a shock.
Again, this is all the best case scenario for Prout. It’s much more likely that he has trouble making the roster and spends most of his time in Binghamton. That doesn’t mean fans can’t try to be positive. He wasn’t taken in the Expansion Draft, so he’s in New Jersey. Fans might as well hope for a miracle and a playable defenseman.