Ranking Ray Shero’s New Jersey Devils Trade Deadline Deals As A Seller

The New Jersey Devils are once again sellers as the NHL Trade Deadline is just hours away. How did Ray Shero fair in previous years as he tried to get the best for his assets?

New Jersey Devils GM Ray Shero is killing it so far on the trade market. He traded fourth liner Brian Boyle to the Nashville Predators for a second-round pick, then turned the services of Ben Lovejoy into a third-round pick and Connor Carrick. It’s quite the haul for two players expected to get general returns this season.

It hasn’t always been great for Shero and co. Since coming to the Devils, he’s had two trade deadline as a seller, and one as a buyer. Prior to this season, none of them went extremely well, but one clearly went better than the other two. Obviously, the power is totally different in the two situations, as it seems Shero holds all the cards as he came into this deadline as one of the few selling teams and holding a legit top-six forward (Marcus Johansson), a big-bodied center who wins faceoffs and can stand in front of the net (Brian Boyle) and an elite penalty-killing defenseman who was good enough to start on the bottom pair (Ben Lovejoy). There are a finite number of players who fit that bill this season, and with the lack of sellers it’s hard to find them.

Let’s ignore Shero’s masterful job this season, and let’s instead focus on his moves of deadlines past. Some of those moves shaped the roster the Devils have now, and others are entirely regrettable.

So, when did Shero hit the nail on the head, and when did the hammer break his thumb? To be clear, the Boyle and Lovejoy trade are not ranked here. These are trades from 2016 and 2017 ranked.

7. February 18, 2017: Toronto Maple Leafs trade Viktor Loov for
Sergey Kalinin

This trade fell quite flat at the time and still looks bad now. Not that Sergey Kalinin was a superstar player, but he did spend two seasons on the Devils NHL club, and they got a player who never made the team, followed by two players who are no longer in the system.

Viktor Loov recorded zero points for the rest of the season after he was traded. He traveled from Albany to Binghamton with the Devils when they changed affiliates. He played better, scoring five goals with 12 assists, looking alright through the first 36 games.

Then, he was traded to the Iowa Wild for Christoph Bertschy and Mario Lucia. Lucia played 23 games with Binghamton before he went back to Norway this season. Bertschy is now playing in Switzerland. So, two years after this trade went down as a seller, Shero has zero assets to show for it.