New Jersey Devils Should Be Thankful Lou Lamoriello Isn’t Negotiating With Taylor Hall

The New Jersey Devils are set to play their inaugural 2019-20 matchup this Friday and are coming off a momentous preseason. While the team is expected to have a significantly better year compared to 2018-19, there are some looming questions with still-uncertain outcomes that remain, the most pressing being Taylor Hall’s future with the organization.

Devils fans appear split on whether or not Hall stays in New Jersey and are becoming increasingly uneasy about the superstar’s contract situation with each passing day. This is totally understandable however, considering the organization’s extensive history of losing core players in free agency.

Bob McKenzie reported on TSN 1050 earlier this week that Hall gave his agent the “green light” to continue contract talks with General Manager Ray Shero. He also mentioned Hall was happy with the team’s fruitful offseason. This news was obviously welcomed by New Jersey Devils fans, many of whom are emphatically satisfied with Shero’s summer transactions that should be instrumental in Hall’s to re-sign in New Jersey.

While the offseason moves helped majorly and the aforementioned news from Bob McKenzie is highly encouraging, perhaps the biggest reason to confidently believe Hall won’t make it to free agency is because the New Jersey Devils have Ray Shero doing the negotiations. This is a factor many Devils fans aren’t taking into consideration and should be eternally grateful for having Shero.

Let’s be real—optimism about Hall re-signing long-term wouldn’t be nearly as high if Lou Lamoriello was still general manager and responsible for trying to re-sign Hall.

As most of us still remember, Lamoriello had an infuriatingly frustrating policy of primarily starting contract negotiations after the Devil’s season ended. The only two exceptions that come to mind where Lamoriello broke this golden rule of his were when he inked Martin Brodeur to a six-year extension about midway through the 2005-2006 season and signing Travis Zajac to his current eight-year contract at the start of the 2012-2013 season.

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Aside from Patrik Elias (seven years, 2006) and of course Ilya Kovalchuk (15 years, 2010), Lamoriello’s tenure as New Jersey Devils general manager was littered with instances of cornerstone talents leaving the organization as unrestricted free agents. Just going back to 2001, under Lamoriello’s reign, New Jersey lost UFAs Alexander Mogilny (2001), Bobby Holik (2002), Scott Niedermayer (2005), Scott Gomez and Brian Rafalski (2007), Brian Gionta and John Madden (2009), Paul Martin (2010), Zach Parise (2012).

Yes, the circumstances more or less differed as to why each player left and the Devils did largely remain a perennial playoff contender through most of these years, but Lamoriello rarely made moves to indemnify or improve over the losses they endured in free agency. Even though New Jersey maintained a high degree of competition through the early, mid and late-00s, all of those teams had notable shortcomings, from shallow scoring depth to below-subpar defense corps that were being reciprocated by Martin Brodeur’s unparalleled goaltending.

When the New Jersey Devils announced their hiring of Ray Shero, the first thought that came to mind was his impeccable track record of securing his team’s key players long-term while he presided over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Over his eight seasons as General Manager in Pittsburgh, Shero re-signed his team’s most important players to long-term deals—Sidney Crosby (12 years, 2012), Evgeni Malkin (8 years, 2013), Kris Letang (8 years, 2013), Marc-Andre Fleury (7 years, 2008).

With this foundation to build around that already had a Stanley Cup championship and additional finals appearance under their belts, the Penguins would go on to win back-to-back championships in 2016 and 2017 and managed to play in every postseason since 2007. You could argue Shero also had some notable UFA departures while in Pittsburgh like Marian Hossa (2008) and Jarome Iginla (2013), but both were trade deadline rentals brought in as supplementary pieces in preparation for the year’s playoff run and (unlike many of New Jersey’s crippling UFA departures) not longtime cornerstone assets to the team’s core.

It is worth noting Shero did inherit what would become one of the league’s winningest and most marketable franchises of the salary cap era, which definitely factored into being able to secure his top players to long-term deals while in Pittsburgh. Over the last four years in New Jersey, Shero has assembled—from scratch no-less—what is shaping up to be a formidably competitive team that still has plenty of room to grow. He’s drafted and acquired some genuine talents that will remain in New Jersey beyond this season. This current New Jersey Devils team is unique to any situation Hall has ever been part of in his entire career—especially during the years he spent with the Edmonton Oilers.

Ray Shero isn’t unfamiliar with negotiating contracts for his team’s high-profile players. He has a tremendous and highly encouraging track record in these situations that should ultimately put New Jersey Devils fans at ease and provide more peace of mind when pondering Taylor Hall’s future with the organization beyond this season.