3. Trading Markstrom, Nemec
Mehta made an immediate splash with the trading of two marquee names on the roster. The first being defenseman Simon Nemec to Calgary (along with Maxim Tsyplakov) in exchange for two first-round picks (conditional), a second-round pick and prospect defenseman Etienne Morin.
Nemec was entering restricted free agency and the two sides came to a crossroads.
“I met with Nemo a few weeks ago, and he's a great, young man,” Mehta said. “It was tough because I do think he was an important - was a draft pick for us, and he's a good player and a good guy, good kid. I just think that when I talked to him, I know there was a lot of stuff reported about him, like asking for a trade and stuff like that. That was not true. I had a really candid conversation with him, and I think that when I heard him, to a large extent, I really kind of understood his position, which is just that he just wants a path. He wants a path to develop and a path to sort of grow into the role that he foresees for himself. And I think he would've been fine having that here or elsewhere.
“Ultimately, in the end, I just felt like the return that we got from Calgary was just kind of too good to pass up. For getting the two first (round picks), plus the second, I just thought that they obviously showed a lot. They kind of stepped up with their offer to get him, and I just thought it was ultimately the right thing for the organization to move on.”
On June 30, Mehta traded the team’s starting goaltender, Markstrom, to Florida (his former employer) along with forward Angus Crookshank in exchange for forwards Evan Rodrigues, Jesper Boqvist and Ben Steeves.
Markstrom had a limited movement clause and a two-year $6 million AAV contract that was set to kick in on July 1. Mehta would have had limited options in that scenario. But the real key piece to the trade for Mehta was acquiring Rodrigues, a two-time Stanley Cup champion in Florida.
“The decision wasn't easy to move Markstrom,” Mehta said. “We felt like it was the right thing for where this franchise is right now. The opportunity to get Evan Rodriguez back was just so huge.”
Rodrigues, 32, will help bolster the team’s bottom-6 depth – an issue for the previous few seasons – and add another leadership voice in the locker room.
“It was huge,” Mehta said of getting Rodrigues. “Key piece of that trade for me, was a target in my mind when we first got him in Florida, and was absolutely a target in this trade, too. Evan's one of those guys who, to some extent, has kind of been ‘underrated’ his entire career. Guy who can kind of slide in all over the lineup, plays hard, really kind of sneaky, good defensive player. Good offense, too, sneaky good offense as well, really good hockey sense. He's got a good one-timer. He can play against good players. He can play lower down in the lineup. He can play center. He can play wing.”
Beyond the on-ice contributions, Mehta is looking for Rodrigues to make even more of an impact off the ice.
“And I was talking about this with Evan when I spoke to him. I think that for him, in a lot of ways, this is sort of the next logical step in his career,” Mehta said, “where he's been an important cog in this machine down in Florida, and now he's going to come here as one of our leaders. He's going to come in here, and he's coming in as a veteran guy now who's won two Stanley Cups, who's experienced a lot of different things. He's been through a lot in his career, ups, downs, everything. And, I told him this myself, I said, ‘The team needs you. I need you to help us,’ because I think that sort of character, it's exactly what we need right now. So, I can't say enough good things about Evan, and I'm really excited to have him here in Jersey.”
4. ‘Making Bets on Guys’
Mehta has added quite a number of players in the last few days. Aside from the aforementioned Rodrigues, Boqvist, Steeves and Morin, the Devils also made moves acquire forwards Amadeus Lombardi and Ryan Tufte and defensemen Declan Chisholm and Vladislav Kolyachonok.
Adding these players will certainly improve the depth of the organization. And while many of those players have been playing mostly in the AHL level or in fill in roles for the NHL, Mehta believes there is more potential within them.
“Depth is twofold,” Mehta said. “One, I think depth is something that was very much a priority and a goal for us. But then there's also the aspect of kind of making bets on guys.
“Again, I think back to with the Panthers, whether it was a (Carter) Verhaeghe or a (Gustav) Forsling. There's a certain point in time, and I think that the Devils are in this spot right now, where we need to take some chances on guys. We need to find players. We need to find upside. We need to find hidden gems, so to speak. And, I'm not saying that that's easy. There's a lot of luck involved. Even we got lucky in Florida, too. It's not like we knew all those players were going to achieve those ceilings, but we thought they were smart bets, and that's what we're trying to do here.”
Finding those hidden gems comes down to a process that Mehta has put in place within the hockey operations staff.
“The combination of our scouting department as well as our analytics department,” he said. “When we kind of cross-reference the two and meld them two in a sensible way, and we kind of look at like, ‘Well, when we do this, who would be some of the prime targets?’
One of those prime targets, for example, was Lombardi, whom the team acquired from Detroit in exchange for a fourth-round pick. The 5-foot-11, 185-pound center had 42 points (16g-26a) in 4 games with Grand Rapids of the AHL.
“There's other guys that we might target, but they're not available. This one, he was available because of his first-time waiver status,” Mehta said of Lombardi. “And also, the depth that happens to be in Detroit, so he was the ‘odd man out.’ So, we were able to get him.
“And then there's the fact that you look at his age, 23 years old. Kind of a bet on the aging curve, like this is the time when we feel like players like him can develop if they're going to develop. And then you kind of talked about it. Yes, he was dynamic in the AHL So, a lot of those things combined, those are the kinds of bets that we want to make on some of these players.”
Another such piece was Chisholm, acquired for Washington for a fourth-round pick. The 26-year-old has spent most of his pro career in the AHL, but did see 26 games of NHL last season with the Capitals.
“We're happy with our D. Getting Declan Chisholm was really, really nice,” Mehta said. “Declan's a player that I've actually long been a fan of. We kind of tried to get him a couple different times in Florida. I've kind of talked throughout my short tenure here about this idea of the decision-making process, where we combine different things between scouting and data, and he's always been a guy who, back from his time in Manitoba, we kind of always had an eye on where we think there's something there. His skating's unbelievable. There's a lot of things to like there, and we think there's upside there. So, he was a guy that we kind of specifically targeted, so I'm pretty excited about him.”
5. Prioritizing the Farm
Speaking of the AHL, one area of the organization that Mehta wants to strengthen is the team in Utica.
“When I got here and talked through, even with ownership, David Blitzer and I talked about what are some of the things we really want to focus on,” Mehta said. He himself brought up Utica also. That needs to be something that we make more of a priority, that we think more about in terms of both not just the success of that organization in terms of wins and losses, but just also in terms of player development.”
Mehta hired assistant general manager Braden Birch to oversee the Comets as well as aiding Mehta and the Devils staff in scouting, contract management, roster and salary cap strategy.
“So, as much as we used this sort of decision-making process that I talk about to focus intently on our decisions at the NHL, we really have done the same thing at the AHL,” Mehta said. “On the screen, when we put up our NHL roster, we've got the AHL roster right next to it, and we're thinking that all as one big thing, where we're trying to use that same roster strategy in Utica.”
6. Winning is Culture, Culture is Winning
At the end of the day, the meritocracy of sports comes down to one thing: winning.
Mehta brings with him a multi-championship pedigree. But the reality is, you can’t build a championship culture, until you win a championship. But you can put certain pieces in place.
“There's a lot of positive here, a lot of cultural things to build on, and we have a lot of good culture pieces already,” Mehta said. “Again, kind of talking through bringing in somebody like (Rodrigues), there's more things we're adding, and the other thing that I think needs to be said is that I think sometimes maybe people underestimate how much winning affects that sort of thing. It's a little bit of a chicken or the egg thing, does culture breed winning or does winning breed culture? I think it's a little bit of both, but from what I see with the culture, this to me seems like whatever issues that were brought up and whatever, it's a complete non-issue for me.”
Mehta had conversations with all the Devils players at some point and the atmosphere within the team was obviously one of the major points of discussion.
“It's like a family, right? Nothing's ever perfect,” Mehta said. “From what I see, it's absolutely nothing that concerns me whatsoever in terms of, I think there's a lot here positive. The thing that I get, even from the conversations with players who maybe bring up things that are critical, in the end, they still always circle around to things, it always ends in a positive note. So, I think there's a lot of care between the players in the locker room. I think there's a lot of respect there. And of all the things that you can take over when you're a new general manager going to a new organization and things like that, this is great.
“I think this is a team that cares about each other, and I think this is the kind of thing where they're just really, frankly, they're just annoyed about not winning,” he said. “They're tired of not winning, and I think that if we get on a roll and we start winning, we're going to have an unbelievable culture.”
