Danny McDonough and Adam Armbrecht discuss the latest games and news around YOUR New Jersey Devils! As the team gears up for a deep playoff run - Jack Hughes, Timo Meier, Dawson Mercer and the entire Devils team will have the Devil's Puck Luck hosts locked in to every bounce of the puck. Adam Armbrecht is a sports broadcaster who in addition to the New Jersey Devils also covers the NFL and NBA as host on the One Giant Podcast and Locked On Nets Podcast. Danny McDonough is a 20-year season ticket holder with the New Jersey Devils and a die-hard fan of the Devils, with in depth knowledge of NHL at large. Join them two times a week all season long as they ride every high, navigate every low and keep their focus on the puck, looking for a bit of Devils luck!
Glad you're back too! Great game #1! Love the contributions from the new guys already! What a game by Markstrom and a candidate for save of the year! Felt like a new team. LFGD 💥
It came out that Stamkos and marchessault spoke to each other before signing with the Preds and agreed to both sign. Devils didn’t have a chance on either.
Good to see all the negative nelly's are here chiming in, thank goodness for that. Go kick rocks you big time "fans". If you arent excited to watch the devils next year than go pick another team. bye bye
The same guys complaining about fitz not overpaying to get marchessaut and stamkos are the same that endlessly complain about palats contract. Holding firm to what you can offer ufas to not make keeping longer term pieces is good work not a fumble
Line 1 Tatar Nico Mercer ( 2nd best line in 2022-2023) Line 2 Timo Hughes Bratt We don’t need another top 6 guy we got to save some money for Luke and Nemec for the future and we can always get someone at the deadline if needed
Nope. Not nearly enough. This notion that Fitz is killing it is laughable. He signed a couple slightly above average defensemen. Top 15 goalie. Bunch of bottom 6 forwards. Not a star in the bunch. This is big game hunting? I'm not excited about any of it. People are celebrating the return of 9 goals in 70 games Tatar. Fitz gave him a raise! After the abysmal season he had.
He improved goaltending, defense & added better bottom 6. I agree there is a need for a top 6 forward but can’t force moves if they aren’t there. We have to see how things unfold. Make the trade when it’s available. More so if we are a team that needs a forward at the deadline then he absolutely needs to get one
Totally agree. This offseason is a disaster. Over the hill washed up goalies, potato-can nobody forwards ( NJ overpaid for) and a bunch of veteran stiffs for defenseman. Just a disaster. Fitz gave away the two best forward prospects in the entire system for nobody AHLer and a garbage man goon 4th liner. Fitz should have been fired year ago.
You guys are saying all of this but the bottom line is Stanley Cup Finals teams are not engineered fully in the offseason. Would it have been great to get a top 6 winger? Sure. Does the team look much better in the big picture of the entire team now vs. last season. No debating that.
This is not big game hunting, Preds just done a big game hunting. There 0 reason to be excited here. This team has 0 balls other than Mcdermid. You need nasty aggressive guys like Brady Tkachuk or Nikita Zadorow, Zadarov being the more realistic deal with characteristics that we do not have on the team.
How exciting. When does the parade start? The 4th line doesn't matter when you have holes in the other lines. This team is equipped with only 1 complete scoring line. Since Fitz failed to address it we have to rely on bums like Mercer & Palat again. They'll be abysmal again just like last season.
Nice episode. Anyone who thinks the devils got fleeced in trade is an idiot who never played hockey. Holtz was a nightmare as I tried to tell you and your co host all last season (you need to come watch him practice or up at his off season camp, he is lazy)
They got fleeced. Nobody cares about a 4th line center who was a healthy scratch in the playoffs. There is still upside with Holtz. He scored 16 in limited mins with 4th line players. The Devils fans defending this didn't even know who Cotter was until the trade was announced.
Fitzgerald failed as usual. Needed a legit top 6 forward because Palat & Mercer are both garbage. I'm not throwing a parade over Pesce & Dillon. These guys don't move the needle. Not impressed at all about this offseason. He got some tall guys + an old top 15ish goalie. How exciting!
Trotz over paid for stammer but that’s ok. The Marchessault Contract i was hoping Fitz beat that offer with a year less. Have to move on. Duclair is out there, Stephenson etc
Danny loved the episode but hope you’re wrong about MacDermid. Team absolutely needs guys like him and need to keep him moving forward. I want him and others brought in to protect all the tiny softer guys. I want teams to fear the boys again and knock the crap out of anyone bumping them during games
I don’t want to trade Bratt at all. Point being on this if we were to get a player like Brady TKachuck we would have to trade one of our big pieces. (This most likely wouldn’t happen)
I was talking with another Devils fan who predicted that Matt Rempe would duck and run away scared from Kurtis MacDermid. Refs should have let MacDermid go at him. Rempe is dirty goon and a coward. I am happy and proud that Devils are not backing down from the Canes or the Rangers. We are right there in these games if we had a real Power Play and if Fitzgerald would have fixed this glaring problems. The Devils crappy Power Play is beyond missing Dougie Hamilton. This fault is on Fitzgerald. They also have to get Luke and Jack off of the same line. And the coaches have to have the balls to make Luke Hughes a healthy scratch and replace him with Santeri Hattaka for at least a while.
Fitz was worst GM in the league this year. I said the Sharangovich trade was awful when everyone else was thrilled about it. I didn’t understand with our style of play, why we would send out a penalty killing, fast skater, sniper in our preferred age range for a slow, streaky, non defensive winger with 1 year and wrong side of 30… BONEHEAD move and I’m so upset that I was right. Sharangovich is going to be a great player in this league for a long time and be on very good deals. He’s the perfect Swiss Army Knife player. Once that move was made, it was the beginning of the end. In November it was obvious we needed a new goalie and a new coach. Somehow it took until March…?!?!? What the f*** was Fitz doing all season?!?!?
I was at the game today in Section 21. I was hoping to somehow meet you guys at AW or inside Prudential Center. That bogus first penalty killed the Devils. The Canes clobbered Daws in the crease and the refs did nothing. These refs seem to have it out for the Devils. It is killing the Devils to give up the first goal. Jack had quite a few shots hit the post. Fitzgerald waited too long to fix the Devils problems this season. It is tragic and frustrating. I would like to see Green bench Hughes and/or Nemec for a while and have Santeri Hattaka on the roster. My worry is that Fitzgerald will trade Holtz and/or Mercer in a deal...for what...a useless subpar goalie? Holtz seems to be the whipping boy this season. The Holtz thing this year is strange. What is their issue with Holtz? Is Holtz puck management poor? I also fear that as we get into the spring and summer that Fitzgerald will claim "we tested the market for a 1A goalie, but there was nothing available or we could not work out a deal, etc." And then we go into next season with the same mess. I will not trust anything Fitz says until he takes concrete action on the defense/goalie situation. I understand it will cost the Devils. I am on the side of skeptical about Markstrom given his age. How do you guys feel about Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman ?
This isn’t just Toffoli, for a 2nd, and a 3rd. This is Toffoli, AND Sharangovich for a 2nd, and a 3rd. How does this trade sound now? Our most pressing need, in goal and the *best* you can do, are two guys *slightly* better than what we have now. I’ve been saying, that Fitzgerald has had the benefit of having top-tier talent from the draft. He had a large number of high-end picks, and it bolstered his image as a GM. The deals that *truly* matter, have been fumbled - BADLY. If I was uncomfortable with the Vanacek/Schmid pairing, going into the season, how was TF SO confident? We had an amazing season, but did I believe that either goaltender would carry us through the playoffs? NOPE. You bring in a *reliable* and *proven* goaltender, JUST IN CASE. He failed to do that, and we were sunk. He has been/is doing long-term damage to this team. The interview with Amanda Stein yesterday, was flat-out infuriating to me, and I’m sure most everyone else. He stated “I think we got a little bit too comfort with a 112 point season..” Once again, laying blame on the players, when he can point to the actual CATALYST for failure: Tom Fitzgerald. There’s a very good argument to be made, that Lindy Ruff was a *victim* of Fitzgerald’s “patience.” We have Ray Shero 2.0….
I still dont understand why we took on some of Tanevs salary......Was Fitz bitten by a tick and develop lyme disease? He's making these bonehead moves. Also retaining everyone's salary is just offensive.
The kuhk trade was his only good one in my opinion. Salary dump. Allen may be marginal better but if he doesn't get a goalie over the summer...a REAL.GOALIE. I see him getting fired. Ullmark or Saros. I don't want Markstrom. Sorry but 35 year old over priced. If he's going to wait until summer, he better be buying our goalie of the future. Watching Miller go for a mid pick in 2026 was a joke too
I think fans are confused because they think these moves are supposed to cause an immediate 18-game winning streak and get us in the playoffs. When he says "flexibility" it means he's thinking about next year.
That isn't what fans think. We know the team sucks. Trading for 2 bad goalies (Jake Allen sucks!) makes nobody happy. Neither does the fact that Sharangovich was completely wasted for a worthless 2025 2nd round pick. That's what our brilliant GM turned him into.
@@nickadams6537Yeah, you still didn't actually process what I wrote. The team doesn't suck. We're not the Bluejackets and we're not the Senators. He's getting picks to flip them during the offseason, ... thus not "worthless." Did he have a lousy year? Yeah. He did. I'd say it's not the end of the world but for you, apparently, it is.
And cleared viteks contract. Kahkonen is an upgrade to vitek. So now theres cap space and extra assets to get a started in summer, with kahkonen or allen being the backup, allowing schmid and daws to play in utica and develop
The confusion is really in the big picture, as we said that won’t crystalize until the offseason. That’s ok, it happens in a season that fell short of expectation. But this will be a wait and see until the offseason reshapes this roster.
I am now officially a member of the conspiracy that posits the analytics department is actually in charge of player acquisitions and they have been saying we can win with a 3rd level goal tender. Devils are cornering the market in sub .900 save % goalies.
It's no secret that I dislike Ruff as a coach and I felt that a message needed to be sent that the team's performance lately was unacceptable. A big litmus test for how Green will coach is what he does with Holtz tonight. If Holtz remains on the 4th line....it is business as usual and the season is done for and we learned nothing from missing the playoffs. We shall see.
He’s on the 4th line…. lol more to talk about is how Fitz aired out that “he hasn’t had a good year” very strange approach when he’s been on the trading block.
Another really good talking point. Positional coaches need accountability as well. It is not like these net minders have never shown the ability to play at a high level. Excellent point 🤙
It looks like Fitzgerald adopted some of the worst aspects of Ray Shero. In my opinion, the current issues, were identifiable as far back as November, while some *might* say October. Again, in my opinion, you don’t “gamble” with an entire season. One other thing, that doesn’t get mentioned much, is a *distinct* lack of leadership. Nico Hischier - great player, but maybe not really Captain material. He said a lot of the right things, but it never seemed to move the needle from game-to-game.
Not out of the realm of possibilities a new coach changes things up along with the captain. I am a big Nico fan. I want to see his leadership more than ever these last 20 games of the year.
Yeah one aspect of the firing should be reflective all the way back to that point. But, it’s hard to argue with the success they had a year ago. Team somewhat cornered themselves into running it back this season.
I was on that bus with you and foresaw this whole scenerio playing out a year ago....just a completely wasted season... and we still have no goalie. UGH I wouldnt mind seeing Bruce Boudreau or giving Avs asst coach Nolan Pratt a shot.
You don't help yourself when you give up the first goal in so many games. It's got to feel like, "here we go again." I've seen worse Devils teams, but I can't remember a softer Devils team. And, how can you put a logo on a Devils jersey that has blue in it? You want a RWJ logo? Fine. At least make it black, red, and white. Don't put "Rangers" blue in it!
One area Adam would push back is horrendous goaltending leads to bad early goals not preparation. Preparation however, is a factor in how the team responds to those early goals - that lands on the coach.
