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New Jersey Devils fire GM Ray Shero the month before trade deadline

January 13, 2020, 10:12 AM ET [49 Comments]
Todd Cordell
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The New Jersey Devils made another franchise altering decision on Sunday, moving on from GM Ray Shero in favor of a new voice and direction.

While I was caught off guard by the move – most people were – the firing in a vacuum was not shocking.

I think some of Shero’s early work was especially fantastic. Over the first few years of the rebuild/retool he made some shrewd moves – like Adam Larsson for Taylor Hall – and was able to extract great value from almost every veteran depth piece he sold off to teams at deadlines (Lee Stempniak, Brian Boyle, Ben Lovejoy).

His overall record was far from flawless though. Some of the drafts have turned out very underwhelming, or at the very least appear to be heading that way.

Shero did a fantastic job tearing the team apart and replenishing assets. He’s had a much tougher time building it back up.

I expected a lot more from P.K. Subban – seemingly everyone did – but he’s on pace for 18 points and carries a $9 million cap hit. That trade has not panned out.

Neither has the Wayne Simmonds signing. I was very skeptical of the move at the time but a) it was one-year and; b) everyone hammered home how big of a factor injuries were in his down years of late. Well, he’s healthy now and on pace for seven goals.

The decision to stand pat in goal also proved quite costly. Cory Schneider, despite several years of poor play, still entered the season as the starter. He is playing regular hockey in the minors.

Mackenzie Blackwood has certainly made a name for himself. He struggled mightily out of the gate, though, and if the Devils had a better alternative early on John Hynes and Shero would probably still have jobs.

So, again, the firing itself isn’t too shocking. An ownership sick of seeing poor results could easily justify a change.

What is shocking about the change is *when* it happened.

Ownership allowed Shero to fire the head coach just over a month ago. Ownership allowed Shero to trade the team’s best player just a few weeks ago.

You don’t give somebody the power to make such massive decisions unless you plan on having said person around for a long time. At least you don’t if you’re a well run organization.

Something changed. There’s no other explanation.

I don’t have concrete information on this. I reached out to a few people and was met with as many questions as I asked. Nobody really knows.

So let’s attempt to put two and two together here. Josh Harris made a few remarks about a lack of success, one playoff run in five years, and needing a different direction.

My guess is Shero wanted to rip another layer off this team and prolong the retool, if you will. Ownership is probably resistant of potentially throwing even one more season, and potential playoff revenues, down the drain.

Maybe I’m off with this assumption but I have a hard time believing, had Shero laid out a thorough plan on how to put the Devils in position to compete next season, ownership would meet him with a ‘no, we don’t want that’ and decide to move on.

Harris was mum on the real reasons behind the change. Luckily for us, how interim GM Tom Fitzgerald operates in the coming weeks and months will give us a better idea.

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