New Jersey Devils: Regrading Every NHL Draft Of Ray Shero Era
Ray Shero has come in and done wonders to the New Jersey Devils prospect pool. With the NHL Draft around a week away, we take a deep look at how those drafts look now.
It’s not hyperbole to say Ray Shero inherited a dumpster fire when it came to the New Jersey Devils prospect system. When he joined the Devils in 2015, the Devils ranked last in the entire NHL in prospect pool. From 2005 to 2014, the Devils drafted seven NHL-caliber players. That’s awful. And it could be six if you don’t consider Mark Fayne NHL caliber.
This Bleacher Report article from 2015 shows that the Devils draft that year would take over all the top spots on the prospect list by a considerable amount. Before that draft, the Devils best NHL prospect was Steven Santini. It’s not a great position to be in. Now, the Devils have the 19th best prospect in all of the NHL.
This was thanks to Ray Shero. He already has six NHL ready players through his own drafts. He’s done a masterful job replenishing this system and giving us dozens of prospects that actually have a chance to become something, instead of putting all the chips on a player like Reid Boucher.
Now, with another very important NHL Draft just over a week away, we want to take a look back at the drafts by Shero so far, and see what they look like years later. We will look at the grade the Devils were given immediately after the draft, then give them an updated draft grade from today.
2015 NHL Draft
Devils fans continue to argue whether this was a Lou Lamoriello draft or a Ray Shero draft. Ray was on the Devils staff for about a month at this time, but he was no doubt tracking the draft prospects thinking at some point a team would come calling.
For the sake of this exercise, we will count this among our drafts. It’s a very, very controversial draft because of who the Devils took with their first pick and who was available. The Devils had the chance to draft Matthew Barzal, Mikko Rantanen, Zach Werenski, Brock Boeser, Timo Meier, and Kyle Connor. Instead, they ended up with Pavel Zacha.
Zacha will end up being a decent player, but one you’d like to get with a 3rd-round pick, not with the sixth-overall pick. The pick isn’t a total bust, but it wasn’t a good one.
Their 2nd-round pick looked like a bust up until this season, but now it looks like the best pick of the draft for the New Jersey Devils. Mackenzie Blackwood looks like he could be the Devils goalie for the next decade. After years of wondering who might be able to take over for a rapidly declining Cory Schneider, Blackwood answered that question emphatically.
Blake Speers looked like a steal with the 67th pick, but he’s left much to be desired at this point. It doesn’t seem clear whether he’s an NHL player or not, and teams would hope to know that four years later.
Brett Seney looks like he could be an NHL regular in the future, and was given a shot this season with 51 games in the NHL. He seemed overwhelmed, but there were times where he provided something. He’s definitely given more than we expect from most 6th-round picks.
Colton White still needs time. He made his NHL debut this season, but he’s likely two years away if he ever finds it.
Either way, every player drafted in 2015 made their NHL debut already. It still isn’t a good draft, but when looking at it as a whole it’s definitely not a bad draft. It’s average. It’s honestly better than most of the drafts the decade before it.
2015 Grade: C
2019 Grade: C+
2016 NHL Draft
The 2016 NHL Draft was all Ray Shero. Lou Lamoriello had moved on to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and for the first time in more than 25 years, he wasn’t in New Jersey.
The Devils went in with nine picks, including the 12th pick overall. They used that pick to take Michael McLeod out of the Mississauga Steelheads. He’s got some work to do before he’s a true NHL player. After that first season where he dominated the OHL, he’s left much to be desired.
His teammate and 2nd-round pick Nathan Bastian has taken major strides actually. He looked like he was originally a product of McLeod, but now we know with his interesting combination of size and skill, if he can stay healthy he could be a major contributor in the Brian Boyle mold. They both made their NHL debut with an injury-depleted roster. They are generally blank canvases, so it’s hard to grade them, but for 1st- and 2nd-round picks, it could be worse.
The big miss is the Devils had a chance to take Charlie McAvoy here. He went 14th overall to the Boston Bruins. The Devils would be a completely different team right now with McAvoy on it.
With their two 3rd-round picks, the Devils took Joey Anderson and Brandon Gignac. Anderson looks like he could one day be a crucial cog on the team after winning the NCAA title, captaining the USA team at World Juniors, and showed a leadership quality that players twice his age don’t have. Gignac, however, could be better. He’s not terrible, but it’s still unclear if he’ll ever be an NHL contributor.
The Devils 4th- and 5th-round picks are in various levels of growth. Mikhail Maltsev just signed his entry-level deal with the Devils after spending the start of his career in Russia. He’ll likely start the year in the AHL. Evan Cormier left the Devils organization entirely, and he was about to be done with professional hockey. Then, the Binghamton Devils needed a goalie desperately, and the team’s other 4th-round pick stepped up. He was great for a stretch there to the point the Devils signed him to a contract of his own. Now, we can see what he has in a full season under Shero’s watch.
Yegor Rykov was traded to the New York Rangers in the Michael Grabner trade and we hope the worst for him in his future endeavors.
Jesper Bratt may be the Devils best pick of the Ray Shero era. He took him 162nd overall, and he made the NHL a year later. Not only did he make it to the NHL, but he proved he deserved to stay there. In 125 NHL games he has 68 points. From a 6th-round pick, this is amazing production.
Then, in the 7th round, the Devils took defenseman Jeremy Davies. He became one of their very best prospects, and signed with the Devils a few weeks ago. He’s a gem, and might be the best Devils 7th-round draft pick since Kevin Todd.
2016 Grade: B+
2019 Grade: B
2017 NHL Draft
Of course, this was the Nico Hischier draft. Ray Shero knocked it out of the park by picking Nico over Nolan Patrick. The debate has moved on to Nico versus Elias Petterson, and the jury’s still out on that one (since there’s three total seasons between them). Either way, the Devils hit on their 1st-round pick without a shadow of a doubt for the first time since Travis Zajac.
Jesper Boqvist looks stellar in the Swedish league, and days ago he signed on to join the Devils. He could immediately make an impact in the top nine, and if you re-drafted the 2017 draft, Boqvist would be a 1st-round pick. He broke the top ten European skaters, and still fell to the 2nd round.
Fabian Zetterlund has a ton of upside, and he just signed on to the Devils within the past few weeks. He’s 19 years old, and still has some growing to do, but do far we’ve seen an extremely talented hockey player at all levels.
Reilly Walsh is set to be Harvard’s top defenseman now that Adam Fox is gone. He could grow into an amazing defender in just a years time. The biggest worry with him is getting him to sign before he graduates, but hopefully the Devils are a competitive team by next offseason.
Nikita Popugaev has had a mostly down start to his career, but the Devils have brought him to Binghamton to control his development. The same goes for Gilles Senn, who had some issues in net but shows some really good flashes of brilliance overseas.
Marian Studenic has some games where he dominates. As a 5th-round pick, it looks like he could one day be a good player in the NHL. It was another great pick by Shero.
Aarne Talvitie is currently injured, but before then the Finnish forward looked like he could leave Penn State and sign with the Devils this season. He was that good before his season ended at the World Juniors Championship.
The Devils had three 7th-round picks that year. Jocktan Chainey looked the best, but the Devils did not sign him in time and now he will go back into the 2019 NHL Draft pool. Matthew Hellickson has played really well at times for Notre Dame, but he’s still to early to tell. Yegor Zaitsev is already playing in the KHL, so that shows he’s doing something well.
Shero literally couldn’t have done better in this draft. He got three guys with top-line upside, and three other players who look like they’re well on their way to the NHL. This was the stuff of legend.
2017 Grade: A
2019 Grade: A+
2018 NHL Draft
It is really, really hard to redraft a draft that happened a year ago. None of the players had any NHL time, but we are going to make the attempt anyway.
The Devils only had five picks thanks to trades that brought Sami Vatanen and Michael Grabner on the team midseason. None of these picks matter terribly at this point except the first one.
The Devils took Ty Smith with the 17th overall pick in the draft. It’s already looking like an absolute steal before Smith even takes the NHL ice. He looked outstanding in training camp last season, and some could argue he should have made the team. However, the Devils had a logjam on the blue line that should fix itself this season.
Smith won awards for how well he played for Spokane this season. He was the WHL Defenseman of the Year. It is insane how good this pick was. Most middle-of-the-round picks are still up in the air in the 1st round, but not this one. He looks like a slam dunk already.
The Devils had to wait close to 100 picks to choose again. They took Xavier Bernard, another defenseman, with the 110th pick. He was traded in the middle of his QMJHL season, which usually hurts players that young to uproot them like that. He was not as good after the trade. Hopefully that changes this season.
With the 136th pick, they took goalie Akira Schmid. He has shown the talent level to one day be an NHL goalie. He’s still incredibly young, so anything can happen, but this looks like a good pick one year later.
Yegor Sharangovich went straight to Binghamton as an over-age pick. He needs some work, but Bingo was in shambles this season so it’s hard to judge anyone. He played with Belarus in the World Championships and scored one goal. He’s fine.
Next. Devils: 5 Possible 4th-Round Picks. dark
Mitchell Hoelscher came out of nowhere to be one of the best playoff performers in the OHL this season. He was really good for the Ottawa 67s, and could be another 6th-round gem by Shero.
Again, this season is too early to judge, but one year later it looks like Shero did the best he could with what he was given.