5 Recent New Jersey Devils Prospects Who Never Lived Up To The Hype

New Jersey Devils prospects have been disappointing us for years.

The New Jersey Devils are in a place where they are relying on their prospects to build faith in the franchise. They haven’t been great on the ice for the big league team, but thanks to a stellar NHL Trade Deadline and some draft picks developing, the team’s prospect pool is deep for the first time in what feels like forever.

We look at Ty Smith and see a future number-one defenseman. When Jesper Boqvist hits the ice, we’re dreaming of 30-goal seasons. Nolan Foote is taking a monster shot with him to the NHL, and we have thoughts of the best place he’d fit in the top six. Janne Kuokkanen was dominant in the AHL, and now we feel he’s ready to contribute at the NHL level. Even Michael McLeod comes with hope because, despite his struggles in the NHL, we’ve seen him dominate at the junior level and know he has that in his bones somewhere.

That’s the thing about prospects. It’s all a dream. There’s some tangible information that we’ve seen on their junior team and in the minor leagues or possibly even overseas, yet until they do it in the NHL it’s impossible to truly predict how well they will transition. Some of the greatest prospects in history just didn’t make it or became much smaller contributors that we expected.

Claude Gauthier, Andre Veilleux, and Rick Pagnutti were all selected with the number-one overall pick, and they never played a game (although all of them were taken in the 60s when the draft was still a relatively new concept). We give a lot of love to Ken Daneyko for being a Devil from day one, but Rocky Trottier was the team’s first-ever draft pick. He ended up playing just 38 NHL games.

These dreams can become nightmares because the teams will give them chance after chance when they know the talent the prospect brings to the table. For this exercise, we have a lot to choose from. We’re looking at prospects drafted from 2008 to 2018. There are opportunities to look at other drafts later in the summer, but with so many busts breaking our heart recently, reliving that seemed like the way to go. So, Adrian Foster, you’re catching a break for now.

First, some of my personal favorites:

Myles Bell– This one might have been just me, but I thought this kid was going to dominate. When the Devils got him as a 6th-round pick, it seemed like they got the biggest steal in a decade for this franchise. He was coming off a tragedy where he made the ultimate mistake by going over 100 MPH and crashing, killing his teenage girlfriend. However, his hockey skills were second to none. He last played for the Lacombe Generals of the ACHW back in 2018.

Alexander Urbom: When the Devils lost Alexander Urbom to the Washington Capitals when they took him off waivers, I was personally devastated. Thought we were about to lose a real defensive defenseman that could anchor the back end. I was wrong.

Graham Black: Graham Black scored 97 points for the Swift Current Broncos in 2013-14 and immediately went to the Albany River Rats. Hooray! A big scorer is coming out of nowhere! Well, he never ended up scoring more than 14 AHL points and played exactly zero NHL games before he was shipped off in a cap dump deal for Marc Savard.

Mattias Tedenby: One could argue a list without him on it doesn’t really represent our hope, but this is just a personal preference. The hope behind Mattias Tedenby was never there for me. He was always a tweener player, and never really had a full season in the NHL before going back to Europe. Bye Felicia.