Pucks and Pitchforks
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New Jersey Devils Offseason Upgrades: UFA Defensemen

By Tyler Kelley

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 16: Calvin de Haan #44 of the New York Islanders skates against the Carolina Hurricanes at Barclays Center on November 16, 2017 in New York City. New York Islanders defeated the Carolina Hurricanes 6-4. (Photo by Mike Stobe/NHLI via Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 16: Calvin de Haan #44 of the New York Islanders skates against the Carolina Hurricanes at Barclays Center on November 16, 2017 in New York City. New York Islanders defeated the Carolina Hurricanes 6-4. (Photo by Mike Stobe/NHLI via Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /

I recently took a look at some internal upgrades for the Devils. Since we’re addressing defense today, we’ll apply those internal upgrades and work around them.  To start, there’s one major hole left in this defense assuming we’re operating with

LD                    RD

Vatanen

Butcher       Severson

Mueller        Lovejoy

Greene

Fortunately for the New Jersey Devils, John Hynes has shown a willingness to play defensemen offhand as we saw last year with Mirco Mueller rather frequently.  Knowing this means that looking at RD and LD UFA’s is realistic.

Before we get into this, I’ll explain my tiers.  I’m breaking what I believe are realistic UFA options for the Devils into tiers based off contract projections from Matt Cane, @Cane_Matt on twitter.  Numbers will come from Corsica.Hockey, Natural Stat Trick, and Viz’s from Bill Comeau (@billius27).

So let’s get started.  First we’ll take a look at a Viz from Bill using Chace McCallum’s GAR data. GAR is an interesting tool that I think provides a good overall picture of a player and what they do and do not bring to the table.

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