An Analysis of Lou Lamoriello's Actions Since the Lockout Part 1

Since the season began many individuals have been blaming Lou Lamoriello for all of the teams problems. About a week ago many ILWT users even began saying that he was over the hill and had lost his ability to manage a team. The main complaint that people have been making is that Lou has never adjusted to working with a salary cap and he is one of the worst GMs in the NHL in regards to dealing with it. I am going to present all(or in this case as many as I could find) transactions and signings(including resignings) that Lou has been a part of since the end of the 2005-2006 season in articles for each year. I want to point out that I may miss something. particularly draft day deal (ie trading up or down) and if anyone notices anything, please feel free to point it out. Also I want to point out that I have not included the draft picks from each as this was covered in several posts by John and Tom. After each year I'll provide my own analysis/thoughts about it.

2006-2007:

Salary Cap: 44 Million

Free Agents Signed:

Mike Rupp

Jim Dowd

Dan LaCouture (For these three, I could not find the salaries or length, I appoligize for that)

Free Agents Resigned:

Patrik Elias (7 Years for 42 million(cap hit of 6 million) with a NMC)

Jamie Langenbrunner (5 Years for 14 million(cap hit of 2.8 million) with a NT)

Colin White (6 Years for 18 million(cap hit of 3 million) with a NT)

Brian Gionta (3 Years for 12 million(cap hit of 4 million))

Scott Gomez (1 Year for 5 million(awarded through arbitration and accepted by Lou)

Free Agents Lost:

Ken Klee

Viktor Kozloc

Brad Ference

Transactions:

02/27/2007 Traded David Hale and a 5th round pick

Received Calgary's third round pick.

Analysis: Overall I feel Lou did a pretty good job here. He was able to retain the core of the team, while not giving up much, and replecing anybody that was lost. Accepting the arbitrators award for Scott Gomez was important because the Devils didnt really have any other top centermen at the time. Many have recently begun to criticize the Elias contract, but i feel this is misguided. Patrik had just turned 30, and was one of the top free agents on the market. He generated a considerable amount of interest from the Rangers, who hoped he would play on the left side of Jaromir Jagr. Patrik was rumored to be seeking the maximum salary at the time, which was about 8.8 million. The structure of the contract paid him 7.5 million over the first two seasons. Many now feel that he has not lived up to the expectations of the deal. There could be arguments made for both. His had one of the better seasons of his career in 2008-2009 when he set a career high in powerplay goals (12) and had 78 points in 77 games. He also had only 55 points n 74 games in 2007-2008, but the devils team as a whole was low-scoring that season, so its hard to say that he had a bad year relative to the talent on that team. Also, I would like to point out that in 2003 when the Devils won the cup, he only had 57 points and led the team in scoring, so you cannot base his value just on point production. Jamie was an integral part of the offense as well, so resigning him was key. Brian Gionta was coming off of a career year in which he had 48 goals. He had also shown good chemistry with elias and gionta in the 03-04 season, so bringing him back was importatn for the offense. Colin White was their top stay at home guy, so retaining his services was key was well. Nobody could have predicted the eye injury in 2007 that many say have affected his play. I would say hes still a pretty decent stay at home defender. One problem the devils would have over the course of the 2006-2007 campaign was issues regarding the salary cap, but it was more in relation to they coudlnt make a trade for someone else when they had injuries because they were close to the ceiling, not because they were over it. Im not sure about the trade, i guess Lou wanted to get rid of Hale and get a better draft pick. I couldnt really find anything about it. Thats my recep for July 2006 to June of 2007. Ill post the next year in the next couple of days. Let me know what you guys think and please tell me of anything I missed.

This is a link to the elias article:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=2507226

Everything else i got from capgeek or wikipedia.