Going into the 2014 NHL Draft, the New Jersey Devils were desperate for help in their prospect pipeline. Up and down, the Devils were lackluster at all positions. They were ranked in the lower tier of pipelines in the entire league. Their top prospects at the time were the likes of Damon Severson, Steve Santini, and Stefan Matteau.
Now, in hindsight, Severson is still playing in the NHL over a decade later and will surely surpass 1,000 games played. Other prospects included Reece Scarlett, Joshua Jacobs, and a plethora of prospects that you would be forgiven for never hearing about. A majority of the players in the 2014 pipeline going into the draft never saw time in the NHL and never produced for the Devils.
The 2014 draft for the Devils was a key one for the franchise. They were given their first-round pick back after having one taken away during the Ilya Kovalchuk contract controversy. What would they do? Would Lou Lamoriello and David Conte, known for their drafting in the late 1990s, replenish the prospect ranks of the franchise?
Spoiler alert: the 2014 New Jersey Devils draft class turned out to be the worst in franchise history and possibly the worst league wide of the 21st century.
Who did they take? What made the class so bad? Are there any players the Devils drafted still playing hockey?
Round 6
The Devils did not have a seventh-round pick in 2014. The Devils actually traded their seventh-round pick to the Arizona Coyotes for Steve Sullivan. That trade sums up Lamoriello's tenure in the later years of his run in New Jersey. Giving up assets for old players who used to play here. While it is only a seventh-round pick, it was still an asset. The re-acquisition of players rarely worked for Lamoriello. The best one would be Petr Sykora in 2012, a year they went to the Stanley Cup Final.
The Devils had two selections in the sixth round. With the 152nd overall pick, the Devils picked forward Joey Dudek and then forward Brandon Baddock with the 161st overall pick.
Dudek is most famous for being involved in the trade that brought Patrick Maroon to the Devils during the 2017-18 playoff run. Dudek has never played in an NHL game. He has bounced around since the 2014 draft, mostly playing in England. He is currently playing for the Manchester Storm of the EIHL.
Baddock is currently playing for the Toronto Marlies of the AHL. Out of the later picks the Devils had in this draft, Baddock has carved out an okay career for himself. A designated tough guy, Baddock has bounced around the AHL level, even playing in a single NHL game for the Montreal Canadiens in the 2021-22 season. On his fifth AHL team, Baddock seems like the journeyman goon who will play for a few more years.
Players the Devils could have picked after Dudek and Baddock? Kevin Labanc and Sammy Blais.
Players the Devils could have picked in the seventh round instead of 9 games of Steve Sullivan? Ondrej Kase, Jacob Middleton, and Jake Evans. Middleton and Evans are currently in the playoffs with the Wild and Canadiens, the teams that drafted them.
Rounds 4 and 5:
A picture of Alexei Ponikarovsky? Ponikarovsky was drafted in 1998 by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Why is he the picture instead of a player the Devils picked in rounds four or five?
The Devils' fourth-round pick went to the Winnipeg Jets for Ponikarovsky's second stint with the Devils. The first one went as well, as the Devils acquired Ponikarovsky during the 2011-12 Stanley Cup Final run. The first time the Devils gave up a draft pick for Ponikarovsky, that pick became Jaccob Slavin. What did the draft pick become in 2014?
Nelson Nogier was drafted by the Winnipeg Jets in 2014 using the Devils' draft pick. The Jets did not get as lucky as the Hurricanes did with Slavin in 2012. Nogier is currently playing in the DEL.
Players taken after Nogier? Devon Toews, Viktor Arvidsson, Danton Heinen, Michael Bunting, and some guy named Igor Shesterkin.
The Devils' 2014 draft class might be the worst of all time
With the 131st overall pick in the fifth round, the Devils selected defenseman Ryan Rehill from the Kamloops Blazers. Rehill was a puzzling selection even at the time. Most scouts had him as an even later draft pick or not selected at all. The comparables used for Rehill were Douglas Murray. Late career Douglas Murray. Slow, can hit hard, but that is about it.
Rehill himself even said he liked to play like Murray. His professional career? One game with the Albany Devils. He then went to the University of Alberta and retired from hockey after 2020. He is currently a coach for the Alberni Valley Bulldogs of the BCHL. No one taken after Rehill in the fifth round really made an impact at the NHL level.
So far, three selections, and the best contribution this class has so far is the 17 games played by Patrick Maroon.
Rounds 2 and 3:
In the second round of the draft, the Devils selected defenseman Joshua Jacobs from Indiana Ice of the USHL. Known as a stay-at-home defenseman who would not produce that much offensively, Jacobs spent a decent amount of time in the Devils' system. After spending only one season at Michigan State, he went to the Sarnia Sting and then signed with the Devils.
He stayed with the Devils until the 2020-21 season, where he played over 240 games with the Devils' AHL affiliate. He has since bounced around to four different AHL teams in five seasons. He only played three games with the Devils. Jacobs did not register a point in his three NHL games and is another minor league journeyman, like Baddock.
In the third round, the Devils selected forward Connor Chatham with the 71st overall selection. Chatham, in his draft-eligible season, recorded only 13 goals in 54 games with the OHL's Plymouth Whalers. In what was another reach for Lamoriello and Conte, the Devils were going for "glue guys" rather than players who actually produced offense. Something that was plaguing the Devils for a few years at this point after the loss of Zach Parise, Ilya Kovalchuk, and even David Clarkson.
Chatham never played a game with the Devils. He never even played an AHL game. He spent three seasons with the Idaho Steelheads in the ECHL before taking a two-year break from hockey. He then played for the Evansville Thunderbolts of the SPHL in 2021-22. That was the last hockey game Chatham played on record.
That would be bad enough on its own. Then you look at the rest of the third round, and that is where we find Brayden Point. Point has become a top center in the NHL, a two-time Stanley Cup winner, and an Olympian. The pick before Point? Ilya Sorokin. The Devils passed up on two all-world players for a guy who never made it past the ECHL. We never said this list was going to be a positive one.
Round 1:
The pick the Devils were not supposed to make in the first place. With the 30th overall selection in the 2014 draft, the Devils selected forward John Quenneville of the Brandon Wheat Kings of the WHL. The Devils were originally stripped of this pick as punishment for violating the salary cap with Ilya Kovalchuk's rejected 17-year contract. Even though other NHL Teams had contracts that lowered the AAV, only the Devils were punished for it.
New ownership came in and protested that the rejected contract was submitted by past owners. Gary Bettman in his infinite wisdom, gave the Devils their first round pick back after the Devils not forfiting their pick two years in a row. The catch was that the first round pick would be locked at 30th overall and the Devils could not move the pick.
They took Quenneville, someone known for his shot and work ethic but not much else. He was projected as a middle second round pick, but Lamoriello and Conte loved his skill. Quenneville famously never solidified himself as an NHLer. He played only 33 games with the Devils in five years as a Devils prospect. The Devils then traded him for John Hayden, a tough guy that lasted one year with the team.
Quenneville was then selected by the Seattle Kraken, confusingly, in the expansion draft. Since then, he has bounced around Europe and last played for Tappara in the Finnish Liga in 2024-25. To be a first-round pick that is no longer in hockey, on top of the other players in this class out of hockey or journeyman AHLers, this was the cherry on top of the putrid 2014 class.
Between 30th overall and 41st where the Devils selected Jacobs, multiple NHLers were selected. Brandon Lemieux was selected with the next pick. Although he has never broken out, he has played over 300 NHL games, ten times as many as Quenneville. Most notably, Ivan Barbashev, Thatcher Demko, Vitek Vanecek, and Marcus Pettersson were all taken before the Devils were on the clock again.
To think that if the Devils had taken Barbashev, they would still have him contributing. Add Brayden Point to the current roster? They look a lot better. But hindsight is 20/20. With the new regime in Sunny Mehta here, hopefully, he and his scouting staff never have a draft class as bad as this one.
This would be the last class with Lamoriello's and Conte's fingerprints solely on it. Ray Shero would come in the next year. Shero got more games out of Brett Seney the next year than the Devils got out of the entire 2014 class.
With the Devils having the 12th overall selection this upcoming draft, here is to hoping Mehta and company can get productive NHLers for years to come.
Add us as a preferred source on Google