So you tell me: is it too early to give up on this team yet? Can the Devils come back from this disastrous first half of the season? Sorry, ladies and gents, but I don't buy it.
It's not as simple as making one trade for a puck-moving defenseman, and getting Parise back, and then it'll be all sunshine and rainbows. With everybody healthy, the Devils are still not even under the salary cap-and next year's financial situation looks way worse. There is no way in hell that a trade is going to happen and fix this season. Or probably next season either.
Because even if the salary cap goes up by the projected $3 million next year, and even if the Devils put Brian Rolston on re-entry waivers and he gets claimed and they clear another $2.5 million in cap space (and that, at this point, is a big if), the Devils aren't going to have enough cap space to make a big splurge in the free agent market short of re-signing Zach Parise. Who knows if that even happens at this point?
Right now, I want to talk about the future. And everyone wants to paint a really pretty picture and say everything will be fine in a few years because Parise will be re-signed and the bad contracts will be up. And
the former is what I would like to talk about in this post. Part 2 will probably be up later this weekend.
1. Zach Parise. Maybe, just maybe, he watched the Kovalchuk Show since day one of the trade. Maybe he saw Lamoriello personally fly Kovalchuk from Atlanta up to Newark in a private jet plane. Maybe he saw Kovalchuk completely NOT fit with anybody on the team. Maybe he saw Kovalchuk refuse to negotiate with the Devils at all before July 1st, and then saw the Devils go on hand and knee to bring Kovy back here. We know for a fact that Parise saw him at the press conference to "introduce" the re-signing of Ilya Kovalchuk. And maybe he wondered to himself if the Devils would even consider doing something of that sort for him, if he re-signs.
And maybe Parise is watching Kovalchuk, up in that private suite at the Rock reserved for injured players, and he's seeing him on pace for 19 goals and 47 points. He's seeing this team incapable of playing consistently, and they haven't played consistently for a full calendar year, even when Zach was playing. He's seeing the fact that besides Andy Greene, maybe, they have no two-way defenseman. Besides rookies Mattias Tedenby, Matt Taormina, and maybe Jacob Josefson, there is no short-term hope for the Devils. And even if they completely blow this season away, they will only have one shot in the draft to make up for it, because they no longer have possession of their second and third round picks.
Maybe Parise knows that this team is probably going nowhere fast. It's getting late pretty early out there and it's not like the Devils have an abundance of cap space to give Parise exactly what he wants, or what the arbitrator (possibly) rules he should get for one year, or to match any and all offer sheets Parise might get.
It's pretty uncomfortable on the backburner. And it's pretty tough trying to figure out where exactly the Devils are headed. You can mark my words: If Zach Parise is not signed to be a Devil long-term, it will certainly be the short-term downfall of this franchise. And I am confident that it will screw the Devils over for way longer than just the next few years.
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