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

3. John Quenneville

The New Jersey Devils finally gave up on their John Quenneville experiment when they traded him to the Chicago Blackhawks for John Hayden. As bad as Hayden was at times this season, it still feels like a win for New Jersey. Hayden was at least on the NHL roster for most of the year while Quenneville played just nine games in the majors.

The Devils took Quenneville with their gifted 1st-round pick that the league originally took for the albatross Ilya Kovalchuk contract circumvention. When Kovalchuk left for Russia, they were given the 30th-overall pick in the 2014 draft, which they used to draft John Quenneville. The teenager with the very familiar name (Joel Quenneville is his first cousin, once removed) was coming to a Devils team in desperate need for a youth movement. The Devils 2014-15 roster included Mike Cammalleri (32 years old), Patrik Elias (38), Marek Zidlicky (37), Dainius Zubrus (36), Scott Gomez (34), and of course Jaromir Jagr (42). They were the oldest team in the league by far.

Quenneville wouldn’t take long to start making waves on his way to the Devils. On his draft+2 season with the Brandon Wheat Kings, he jumped up to 73 points before making the jump to the AHL. His first season in Binghamton was by far his best. He had 14 goals and 32 assists in 58 games, while adding another 12 NHL games to his resume.

We thought Quenneville was going to be an NHL player that next season (2017-18). A disastrous season would follow, and Quenneville was never the same. His points dropped dramatically thanks in part to an injury, and he only spent two games in the NHL. The next season, with things falling apart across the Devils organization, he was given a 19-game shot, and only put one point on the board.