The Devils have so many needs that general manager Tom Fitzgerald, fresh off his interim tag removal this summer, couldn’t afford any blips with his three first-round picks – all of which were in the top 20 – in Tuesday night’s NHL Draft.
Fitzgerald almost couldn’t go wrong with the seventh overall selection, though it would have been preferable if one of the top two defensemen, Jake Sanderson (Ottawa, 5th overall) or Jamie Drysdale (Anaheim, 6th), had fallen into his lap, but he certainly scored with Swedish winger Alexander Holtz, perhaps the premier sniper in the Draft.
Unfortunately, Fitzgerald lowered his grade with his latter two picks, forward Dawson Mercer at 18 and defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin at 20.
In the last two seasons, the Devils have ranked 24th and 25th in the league in goals per game, so taking Holtz and his heavy shot with lightning-quick hands will come in, well, handy. Still just 18, Holtz is in his second season playing against men in the Swedish Elite Hockey League, which in theory should shorten his turnaround time to NHL-readiness (Fitzgerald said he doesn’t expect any of his three picks to attend Devils training camp, whenever it opens in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic).
Kyle Palmieri, the Devils’ leading goal scorer in four of the last five seasons, will be an unrestricted free agent after the next season, and you never know with this organization what will transpire at the next trade deadline – so Holtz fits well in the team’s timeline as the projected running mate for 2019 No. 1 overall pick Jack Hughes.
Likewise, long-time center Travis Zajac may be facing his last hurrah as a Devil this season. No doubt, Fitzgerald envisioned Mercer, a solid though unspectacular two-way player, as a potential heir apparent. Watching Mercer’s highlights, I thought it was old Zajac footage, right down to Mercer’s number 19 jersey for Chicoutimi in the Quebec Junior League.
The problem, however, was that New Jersey should have been desperate for a defenseman, and a pretty good one in Braden Schneider was sitting right there for the picking. Maybe Fitzgerald thought he could still pick up Schneider at 20 while filling another hole, but that plan was torpedoed when the Rangers, of all teams, swooped in with a trade with Calgary to snatch Schneider at 19.
Possibly panicking – though he later denied in a press conference that the Rangers’ maneuver had any impact – Fitzgerald then shocked the hockey world by selecting Mukhamadullin, whom few projected as a first-round talent and was ranked 17th among just international skaters by the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau. Unfortunately, the Devils dealt their second round pick as part of the package to acquire defenseman P.K. Subban at last year’s Draft, so even if you assume Fitzgerald made unsuccessful efforts to trade down on Tuesday, this was definitely a reach.
If you’re going to defend the Mercer selection a with the standard “best player available” claim, then there’s no way you can make the same argument for Mukhamadullin, who looks like a poor man’s Vladimir Malakhov on film with his booming shot, lean frame, and curious on-ice decisions.
Like Holtz, Mukhamadullin is playing against older competition in Russia’s KHL as an 18-year old, so his development story has plenty of chapters yet to be written. Still, it will be years before they will even be read in New Jersey, as it is with many prospects under KHL contracts.
Instead of a single, Fitzgerald whiffed on a home run opportunity, one where could have chosen Holtz, Schneider, and one of a host of offensively-gifted available forwards such as Hendrix Lapierre (despite his alarming injury history), Jacob Perrault, or Connor Zary.
The legacy left behind by prior GM Ray Shero, Fitzgerald’s mentor dating back to their time together in Pittsburgh, was a healthy stable of young players that had modest upsides but lacked in high-level talent – outside of Hughes and 2017 first-overall pick Nico Hischier, of course. I think Holtz can add to that latter bucket, but with three picks, I was hoping for more.
Instead, my initial reaction after the night was done was that at this rate, the Devils might be able to ice a competitive team by 2025.
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