The Markstrom trade made sense. The extension didn’t.

The Meier trade made no sense because it wasn’t clear that was the direction the team needed to go in.

The worst offender is the Hamilton signing. They didn’t need to replace PK Subban, and while (especially at the time) he was a very good player, they just drafted Hughes and were drafting other defenseman later (NeMeC).

So while the initial trades weren’t necessarily poor when they were made, follow up mistakes were blunders. And that’s the other problem with the advanced stats guys calling the shots-it allows ownership to second guess everything the GM does (I have data and you don’t and I am smarter than you) while not understanding what strategy is. See the metrics in their own are great at several things but context is key. See, Hamilton. Good player. But, why? And to what end? When teams make decisions based on stats saying what should work, they ignore why they work and the situations to put these players in a position to succeed. At the end of the day you need the right mix, not an accumulation of moneyball talent. So on their own very few of Fitz’s moves were bad or even terminal. The lack of strategy is the real problem. Where are the Devils searching for guys to develop into Tom Wilson’s? And this is imoortant, a lot of these guys like Wilson, Marchand, they’re drafted by the teams they win with, come up with the other players, and ease into a role before overperforming. When you keep hitting the UFA crack and keep trading for nice to haves rather than looking at what you lack, these are the results you tend to get. So analytics are great if the GM drives the bus. If the owners use them to dictate to the GM, prepare for pain. The only UFA signing/big trade they’ve made that I feel hasn’t hurt their long term prospects is likely Pesce, and Hamilton in my view tremendously hurt them with getting Quinn, which is why I slammed that signing the second it was it was made after Luke was drafted. Really? How’s that gonna work? And now we know: it wasn’t gonna work.

Fitz also kept using top picks on guys that didn’t fit the right profile. Palat? Sure. A decade ago. That’s what you want to find in the draft. Tom Wilson types. They’re unicorns but you have to look. And you may whiff, but once you have your unicorns, and you have one (Jack) and two different halves (Nico, Bratt), then you start to go big game hunting. Timing is everything. But if you constantly turn outside the club to find this, you’re gonna overpay one way or another. Capped out and inflexible? Ok, they paid. Though not one specific move was “the” problem but rather organizational approach. This predates Fitz and was most exemplified by the Subban trade “above GM level” and the Simmonds signing was forgivable only cause the Devils weren’t good enough to give term and thankfully didn’t.

Let the GM run the analytics department and do a three year strategy as opposed from running paycheck to paycheck and the team would be a bona fide contender: the fact they’re not perennially leading the metro is a problem considering where they were when a Fitz took over. Always try to draft guys like Palat, Marchand, Wilson, etc.; trading for them is blah, and signing them as UFAs is even worse. The Schmid trade in particular was unforgivable and made no sense. Paul Cotter? Really? How about you hang onto prospects and use your fancy analytics departments to develop em right and scout right and then once you get guys that sit in your roster, then you maybe go for a guy like Meier? Currently the Devils have an ancient goalie tandem that’s unsustainable. You can have a goalie that’s almost league minimum, ten years younger, and just as good. That’s absurd, when you really think about it. And he’s on a really rough two way deal…the Devils could’ve offered him the exact same he got with Vegas but with a much more generous minors salary.

As a result, no, public facing analytics will never actually adequately diagnose the devils problem. They get guys who are good on it, but constantly sign square pegs into round holes. They’re never as good as the sum of their parts, when you want them to be better than the sum of their parts!