This team is atrocious and has little to no hope of making the playoffs

You're just making wild ass statements with no factual evidence. Oh, there are lots of other young players that would come here and do more with no PP time. Horseshit. You know why? You don't see other teams take their elite young, top offensive forwards and use them as role players and not give them a ton of pp time. That's why. That's why you don't have any facts to back it up.

 

I think you're being a bit harsh on NYR as far as the ice times for Kakko and Lafreniere compared to Hughes/Hischier, especially in their first few NHL seasons and their development. Rangers are/were in a window to win, where as the Devils had very little expectations to even compete for the playoffs. It's a real luxury to not have to care about the season from a developmental process. I mean NJ pretty much threw all the kids out there because they could and really didnt have any vets who warranted guaranteed PP ice time. Rangers have Panarin, Krieder, Zab, Trochek (5ppg) ahead of them, proven scorers, whose minutes are you going to cut? And Hischier, Hughes, Bratt, they benefitted greatly not having to look over their shoulders (like Kakko getting benched in Game 6) while being afforded the ability to learn by trial and error. Throw in shitty goaltending and injuries and the season quickly becomes a very long, very intense training camp for young players to get alot of chances and real time experience with alot of organizational patience. It's what player development and rebuilding should look like. NJ gets alot more leeway than NYR in that department. Getting a #1 draft pick while you are competing for the playoffs is a weird coincidence. Throw in a few COVID seasons and disruptions and expectations should be a bit lower.

Devils could afford to throw H and H right into the NHL with top 6 minutes early on. Throwing the two of them right into the NHL was a gamble, Kakko, for sure. LaFreniere seems to have more of an NHL ready game. LaFreniere had a nice little season, 19 goals (all at ES no less) last year avging 14mpg, he's averaging almost 16mpg now, Kakko too. He probably didnt play as much because the Devils are a fast team. Kakko? Reminds me of Adam Larsson a little. The Nordic prospect "Plays in the Men's league" qualifier sounds nice, but I dont think it means a whole lot. Larsson was good, but not great and not alot of impact, meh. I'd send Kakko down to Hartford for a month, play the hell out of him and see what he does.

 

Both players need to work with a skating coach as well.

 

They already had a high payroll so they needed to draft them to also keep the cap cost down. Adding the types of talent you would've gotten for #1/2 picks would've put them way over the cap.

 

Can you imagine the haul NYR would have received trading those picks? And really, since Leetch, the single digit first rounders have been unkind to NYR.

 

You can say that for pretty much every team that got the #1 pick...they got the pick because they had lack of talent and were shit...but hey..we should have not played proven players who btw had the 4th best power play in the league so that thumbsucking #2 and #1 can somehow become better players because they learned how to score with one less player on the ice.

 

It's a good thing you doom and gloomers aren't pilots - first bit of turbulence and you'd be donning parachutes and leaping from a perfectly good plane. A quarter of the way through the season and now not only are playoffs out of the question but all chances of development have ben lost on the kids. There is a lot of hockey left.