Lou Lamoriello Leaves The New Jersey Devils. Will Be General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Lou Lamoriello leaving the Devils is the end of an era for hockey in New Jersey. As a Rangers fan who hates the Devils, even I have to tip my cap when it comes to Lou and acknowledge that he’s an icon of the sport and one of the finest General Managers that hockey has ever seen. The Devils since the 90’s were probably the 2nd most consistently good team in hockey for about two decades. Obviously the team hasn’t been as good in the past five years as the fanbase has come to expect with only one playoff appearance (where they made the Stanley Cup final, but still), but if you’re looking at the entire body of work of his career, there is absolutely no disputing the results he was able to produce.
No way around it, it’s going to be tough for Devils fans to stomach the loss of someone who seems to have been with their franchise since the beginning of time and has done so much for the team. Emotionally it sucks, and Lou going to the bright lights of Toronto of all places (saying that totally unironically, fourth biggest city in North America) has to make it feel so much worse and give it a whiff of “I’m taking my talents to South Beach”. I could totally get a New Jersey fan seeing this as a heel turn and going “fuck that guy”.
But if I were a Devils fan were to look at this from a detached, unemotional, rational point of view, I can see this move being good for them in a weird way. The Devils roster right now is old, and lacks any sort of meaningful identity. They don’t have any stars. Their most exciting players are probably Adam Henrique and Scott Goddamn Gomez, who I often forget exist. But there organizational structure is so good and stable, because of what Lou built, they still win just enough games to not totally bottom-out and get a top pick to take their next franchise player. So maybe this is a way to rid the old guard entirely, take a clean break from the past, and start over with the New Jersey Devils of the future. Brouder is gone, Lou is gone, and it’s time to move on and make a team that will consistently contend to win the Eastern Conference again.
As for the Maple Leafs, it’s clear that they are doing what the most valuable franchise in all of hockey should have been doing for the last quarter century: spending ungodly, Yankees-esque amounts to get the best management structure that money can buy, and see where the chips fall. As Chief from Chicago pointed out on twitter, could it go horribly wrong having the huge egos the highest-paid coach in NHL history (Babcock), one of the most respected GMs in hockey, and Brendan Shanahan all in the same organization, especially under the heat lamp pressure of Toronto? Fuck yeah that could go horribly wrong. But if it works, and somehow the Leafs work out a simpatico relationship between these three, at least the team will be competitive, which it has only been exactly once in the past decade, when they got their hearts ripped out by the Bruins in the most gruesome fashion I’ve ever seen any sports team lose. I say it’s worth a shot when your organization has more money than Christ and there’s no salary cap on how much you can pay the front office and coaching bench.
PS – If the NHL was smart like the NBA, they would have fixed the draft and sent Connor McDavid to Toronto instead of condemning him to banishment Edmonton.
Devils fans, let me hear your thoughts @CharlieWisco