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Originally Posted by Birdman  IMO, Lou made a mistake by not "Reloading". By letting a lot of his core players leave via FA instead of dealing them for something (Gomez, Neids, Rafalski).
I understand the reasoning by locking up Elias long term, but he's not the guy I would have paired with Brodeur to build this team around. Yes, Neids and Rafalski may not have wanted to stay, but Lou had to have known that long before they hit FA. |
Not much could be done about Niedermayer. The Devils were defending the Cup in 03-04 and Niedermayer was on his way to the Norris. Lou tried to sign him long term prior to the lockout. Even then, I doubt there would have been a blockbuster trade for Niedermayer since the lockout seemed inevitable. Post-lockout, Niedermayer was UFA and signed with Anaheim. About the only thing Lou could have done differently was trade for Rob Niedermayer. But the supposed asking price was Scott Gomez (off the top of my head, Anaheim's GM was Al Coates at this point).
Dana beat me to the punch regarding Gomez/Rafalski. Devils were planning on going deep in the playoffs and teams weren't exactly giving up established players for impending UFAs.
Look at what Edmonton got for Ryan Smyth (Robert Nilsson, Ryan O'Marra, 1st rounder). Are they really any better off today? Or can the Edmonton fanboys flaunt that they have a bunch of former 1st round prospects in their system while their NHL team is floundering?
The Devils are more or less hurting right now because they drafted poorly between 1996-2003. They were drafting two (sometimes three) NHL caliber players per draft in the early 90s which created a great pipeline of talent. The Devils lost talent to free agency back then too (Gilmour/Andreychuk/Thomas/Holik) but there were guys (Elias/Sykora/Morrison/Gomez) ready to step in.