3 Cap Teams the New Jersey Devils Can Take Advantage Of

Thanks to the snow we’re facing in the northern New Jersey the New Jersey Devils are a day short of what would be their hypothetical second bye week of the season. It’ll be four days since their last game against the Arizona Coyotes, where they lost their 10th straight game.

It’s tough times for the New Jersey Devils and their fans as they look toward the offseason. The big question that’s been brought up for the Devils is with their cap flexibility and the upcoming expansion draft is will they be able to take advantage of some teams that have cap constraints?

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Also if you combine that with the fact that they have 10 draft picks, (five in the first three rounds) in the upcoming NHL draft then they have tons of ammo to pry a talented forward away from some of these teams.

The list goes even further when you consider the Devils will have to give up like a Devante Smith-Pelly, or Beau Bennett, Jacob Josefson, one of those kinds of players to Vegas to the expansion draft.

The Devils don’t need to worry about that in the slightest when other teams are going to lose some great players for nothing, which is why this is the best opportunity for Devils GM Ray Shero do something big so other teams get compensation for their players.

This list is also going to include so more of the outside the box teams. We all know the Chicago’s, the Washington’s, and the Pittsburgh’s are going to have trouble, but there are plenty of other teams having issues as well.

Anaheim Ducks

According to capfriendly.com, which is where I’m getting all of my cap and draft picks information from, the Ducks are in a bad spot. They only have four relevant expiring contracts, but it’s none of their big guns so they’re going to lose someone pretty decent to Vegas.

Here’s where the Devils should be stepping in to offer let’s say a prospect and a 2nd-3rd round pick, which they have extras of in the draft. Depending on who the Ducks can protect, maybe the Devils go after a Cam Fowler, Rickard Rakell, Jacob Silfverberg, or a high-end prospect like Shea Theodore.

The Ducks probably wouldn’t give up Rakell, but they have too much depth on the blue line to where they can’t keep everyone. Maybe the Devils could grab one for cheap, as they need more depth on their own backend.

Detroit Red Wings

Now you wouldn’t think the Red Wings because they’ve been just as bad as the Devils have been this year, but their cap situation is much worse. They’re losing almost no one of value over the offseason so their cap problems won’t get any better unless the maybe Devils jump in and give them a little relief.

A couple of guys could be perhaps Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist, who he specifically is having a very down season and could be cheap on the trade market. Darren Helm, Riley Sheahan, and Xavier Ouellet round out potential players and prospects the Devils could be interested in.

Minnesota Wild

The Wild are such an interesting team because they’ve gone all-in to try to win a championship that they know they’ll be kinda screwed during the offseason especially if they don’t win.

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The Wild have so many players they need to protect that they can’t protect all of them, so a couple of guys I could see the Devils going after are players like Charlie Coyle, Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter, Jason Zucker, Erik Haula, Jonas Brodin, Matt Dumba, like the list goes on and on its insane.

A lot of this depends on how they do in the playoffs, which players shine, which makes the Wild want to keep one player over another. There are so many moving parts here that makes predicting what players the Devils could go after pretty tough, but if there’s one guy I really like is Brodin, who’s a steady defenseman for them.