IT’S business as usual with the Devils, this team that should be doing something better than offering the same old product that breaks down early each spring.
They should be building some hope, the sort that might be based in reality instead of Manhattan’s no-choice pipe dreams. But instead of bringing in the scorer they need, adding the missing ingredient, the Devils are again playing hardball with their future, and then they wonder why Petr Sykora sits out the start of training camp.
A few times each season, especially when there are thousands of empty seats at the Meadowlands, those who remember Arnie Brown, Gene Carr and the days when the Garden was the NHL’s lone outpost around here, reflect with gratitude and surprise that there is hockey in New Jersey.
That feeling is now being tempered by the existence of teams in San Jose, Phoenix, Raleigh, Tampa and next year, even Columbus. That feeling is being replaced by one that demands more than just a Devils team that is competitive, or even the best in the metropolitan arena. It has turned into one that insists the Devils repair their one major flaw, the stumbling block that has left three straight excellent seasons in shambles for lack of a true goal-scorer.
The GM promised before the draft that he would bring in offensive help. So far, Lou Lamoriello has only bid adieu to Dave Andreychuk, whose age and injuries left him unable to fill the bill.
And while he twiddles his thumbs, Lou Lamoriello alienates the young players he hopes will become his scorers. Last year’s breakthrough forward, 23-year-old Petr Sykora, is sitting out training camp after leading the Devils in scoring. He reluctantly signed a three-year deal last September that would pay him $625,000 this season, and is unhappy now, as Lamoriello uses that contract as a comparable to low-ball Patrik Elias and Brendan Morrison, both locked out of camp as restricted free agents.
While Lamoriello tries to turn one low contract into three cheapies, he is turning one relatively unconcerned star into three riled-up young men.
Expect Morrison to find a spot with an independent IHL team in the next few days. Elias will probably go the same route. In any case, the Devils are again making no friends with their players, or with their fans, who need to see something more promising than the same old platitudes of “fiscal restraint first” and depth that doesn’t get it done.
Right now, a unique opportunity exists for the Devils to restore themselves to the ranks of the contenders, a stature from which they have fallen by virtue of winning one playoff round in four years.
There should be a wild and wooly bidding war being waged between the trans-Hudson rival Rangers and Devils for the scoring services of Dmitri Khristich, who gave ample evidence of his strength around the net and ability to sink tap-ins while he was in Washington.
Instead, in what seems to be a very, very suspicious coincidence, there has been virtually no interest, even from the Rangers, in signing the 30-year-old unrestricted free agent who has scored 25 goals six times, and twice topped the 30-goal mark, something no Devil has accomplished since 1993-94.
The league-wide disinterest raises questions that Khristich’s continued availability may be more than just coincidence. He is really the first major player granted unrestricted free agency because his team chose to walk away from an arbitrator’s evaluation of his contractual worth.
Khristich will be an unrestricted free agent again after his next contract, so a one-year deal is a bad bet. Two years would mean a outlay of at least $5 million, probably $7 million, and that’s big money for the Devils.
But he’s the best scorer out there, and his rights alone are worth $1 million. Anyone else will cost the Devils the youth they so strive to protect, and similar big bucks, too. They should be going after him, this team that must give its fans and players reason to believe that this year will be different. It won’t be any different unless things are done differently.