What Would It Take For New Jersey Devils To Get Cole Caufield?

Future New Jersey Devils prospect Jack Hughes put on a show for Team USA on Friday, but his linemate looked just as good. What would it cost for the Devils to draft both Jack Hughes and Cole Caufield?

New Jersey Devils fans are through the moon after winning the NHL Draft Lottery a little over a week ago. Jack Hughes is coming, and things couldn’t be better for the franchise. Watching him Friday just dominate Slovakia was a sight to see. He scored four goals and three assists in the 11-5 drubbing. However, he wasn’t the only player to look like a superstar.

Fellow American Cole Caufield looked like a star in this game. He matched Hughes four goals, and looks like the perfect linemate for Hughes. So, that got us thinking, what would it cost to draft Hughes and Caufield together?

Caufield has been rocketing up draft boards since he broke the American two-year scoring record held by Phil Kessel. Scoring back to back hat tricks in the U18 Worlds is only helping his draft stock. Current mock drafts have him going between nine and 24. We’re going to act like he’s going at the high end of that list for this exercise. It would be “easy” comparatively to get to the middle to late of the 1st round of the NHL Draft than it would to crack the top ten of such a stacked class.

Caufield may have trouble breaking past nine, but if he keeps this up it will be hard to keep him on the board. However, the top ten is so very good, the Devils could get lucky if they really want to move back into the 1st round. There’s Vasily Podkolzin, Bowen Byram, Dylan Cozens, Kirby Dach and Alex Turcotte that Caufield has almost no chance of passing in the draft.

That would leave him at position eight as the highest possible draft position. What would it take for the Devils to get to eight or nine in the draft?

Right now those picks are held by the Anaheim Ducks and Edmonton Oilers. It will be near impossible to get the Oilers to trade down on that pick all the way to the 2nd round, even with something added on. Honestly, it’s probably easier to get the Ducks to move. Or possibly getting the Canucks to move.

The Devils need to decide what’s worth it to move into the top ten again. The first thing teams are going to ask for are Ty Smith and the 34th overall pick. That’s a big no. If Ty Smith as currently constructed was available this season, he would easily go in the top ten, and could fight Byram for first defenseman drafted.

So, then, what is fair compensation to get to a point where Caufield could be drafted?

The Devils would undeniably have to give up a lot. Those three 2nd-round draft picks probably aren’t enough to move that high. It would probably cost something along the lines two picks and a very high prospect.

Right now, it feels like it could cost the Devils at least their 34th pick, one of their 3rd-round picks, and Jesper Boqvist. Now, we need to figure out what we want more as Devils fans, Boqvist in the lineup this year or next, or Caufield next to Jack Hughes.

This trade scares the pants off of me. Caufield is undersized, but he’s getting comparisons to Alex Debrincat. If he delivers on those comparisons, then of course it would be worth it, but at this point these are comparisons, and some people still have this player falling to the teens. Even with the ridiculous play in the U18 tournament, this is quite the price.

Ray Shero would do the right thing, and he knows what he has in Boqvist. If he thinks Caufield is the better prospect long term, then this is a deal he should make.