Redrafting Every New Jersey Devils Draft Of 2010s
By Nick Villano
2011 Draft: Pick 4
New Jersey Devils Pick: D Adam Larsson
Redraft Pick: G John Gibson
This is huge for a New Jersey Devils team that was forced to look ahead. Martin Brodeur, the greatest goalie of all time, had just turned 39 years old. He was coming off the worst season of his career, and it wasn’t particularly close. The entire New Jersey Devils team was a hot mess. However, posting a .903 save percentage was downright ugly. It is time to at least prepare for what’s next.
In this redraft, the Edmonton Oilers took Nikita Kucherov first overall. Then, Mark Scheifele and Johnny Gaudreau come off the board. That leaves a ton of very interesting options for the Devils. Brandon Saad and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are both very talented players that will be good for more than a decade. Dougie Hamilton helps the Devils with their defensive struggles. There’s also Mika Zibanejad, which would just be sweet taking the New York Rangers poster boy.
The move here is John Gibson. The current Anaheim Ducks goalie is one of the best in the league, and will be for a long time. It took him until 2016-17 until he was a full-time NHL goalie. A lot of that was because the Ducks had Freddie Anderson for the longest time.
Even if he was given a shot quicker than the Ducks did, he’d be waiting behind Brodeur in the beginning. It is the long looking pick. The Devils thought 2010-11 was a flash in the pan, and they would get back to their winning ways the next season. That was somewhat true, since they made the Stanley Cup Finals the very next season.
Gibson first appeared in 2013-14, playing three games. That was the last year we saw Martin Brodeur. Now, in this world, that next year is when the Devils hand the keys to the net to Gibson. Unfortunately, we can’t fix that St. Louis Blues situation of 2014.