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New Jersey Devils general manager Ray Shero is well-known within the hockey world for employing a no-nonsense system to win hockey games.
“If I have a bad game, I don’t put anybody on ice who deserves to play,” Shero said during an interview with NJ Advance Media in February. “I let the team play their game. That’s our game now. In some years it was the other way, and we won every night. But now we’re the Devils and we’re going to play the way we should.”
With that in mind, Shero decided he would break some NHL rules with a rare offer to an unlikely player. As the deadline approached and the Stanley Cup Playoffs got underway, Shero made one of the most unusual offers in hockey: a full-season offer to Ryan Carter, a healthy scratch from the New Jersey Devils.
He made it clear to Carter, however, he wasn’t about to play him.
“He’s not a bad player, he’s good, but it’s over,” Shero said. “It’s over.”
Carter was a healthy scratch for all 13 games of the second round. The Devils won just three times, scoring just four goals in the process.
“It was a pretty unusual offer, a little over the top, I guess you’d say, for an NHL defenseman. He’s not a bad player. It’s just that it’s time for him to move on and do other things, including, of course, winning games for us. That’s it.”
Shero continued to explain the deal to ESPN and gave his explanation for giving Carter the opportunity:
This is not an unprecedented offer to a player that was healthy on a playoff team. The NHL has been making similar offers for years to injured defensive-defenseman. Last season, there were only three healthy scratches on playoff teams: Ryan Suter of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Jason Garrison of the St. Louis Blues, and Deryk Engelland of the Anaheim Ducks. Only two of those three
