I don't know that I should be entirely surprised by this news, but I am...and pleasantly at that. Perhaps I let the short-term pessimism that typically accompanies playing out of a meaningless stretch creep into my long-term optimism, but I was certainly skeptical that a 7th round pick turned Hobey Baker candidate was going to come easy at the end of a humbling season during which hardly anything has come easy. This decision seems to signal the end of the 6 month long sentencing the Devils have endured under Murphy's Law. After all, Jeremy Davies forgoing both his senior season at Northeastern, and the free agency that would inevitably come along with it, by signing on the dotted line slightly brightens the future and continues to help clear New Jersey's 2016 draft class of quite the McLeod. Now, in retrospect, this makes a whole lot of sense. There was no obvious reason a young, developing, offensive-minded defenseman wouldn't take note of what Will Butcher was able to do as rookie and try his hand at playing within spitting distance of a metropolis for an up-and-coming organization that has a hard-on for American players and a whole bunch of holes to fill on their blue line. Still, as the last few seasons have shown, you never quite know if college players will be able to turn down the allure of autonomy. Fortunately for a franchise who needs all the promising prospects they can get on their back-end, Jeremy Davies did just that in making the Devils' scouting department look like geniuses for striking gold on Jesper Bratt in the 6th round and then digging a little deeper to find yet another diamond in an even rougher part of the draft. I'd imagine he'll be rounding out his game in Binghamton next year, as it tough to envision Ty Smith being anything other than a lock for the roster. Regardless, keeping Jeremy Davies' talent and creativity in a system that needs them desperately is a huge win for the franchise that was luckily enough to foresee the makings of them in the first place. I think I speak for all Devils' fans in saying there haven't been enough of those this season.
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