5 Forwards New Jersery Devils Should Avoid In Free Agency
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils have a ton of cap space and needs in to the top six. Despite this, there are some free agents that just aren’t a good fit for this franchise.
Unrestricted free agency could be the move that puts a team over the top. It could be something one team looks back at three years later as the moment the franchise changed forever. It can also be the point a team makes its biggest regrets. Sometimes those regrets last a season, and sometimes they can last half a decade. New Jersey Devils fans understand those regrets.
Under the Ray Shero regime, the Devils avoided a free agency disaster. Some re-signs didn’t work out great, like Devante Smith-Pelley or Reid Boucher, but the team never went all in on a free agent that blew up in their face.
We’ve seen that happen under Lou Lamoriello. Mike Cammalleri signed for five years and $25 million, but really only gave one year of decent production. Ryane Clowe is an unfortunate story with his concussion issues, but it’s no doubt that was a bad signing from the start.
The Devils need to avoid that now. Shero has spent two seasons near the bottom of the league in salary, saving his cap space to take advantage later. Well, most fans wouldn’t be happy if the Devils saved all this space just to get a bottom-six forward and that’s it.
This season is absolutely stacked with top-line production in unrestricted free agency. This is rare. There’s very rarely a free agency that has players like Artemi Panarin in them, let alone him, Matt Duchene, Jeff Skinner, Joe Pavelski and then the middle six players beyond them.
Ray Shero should absolutely spend in free agency this offseason. He just needs to spend wisely. These five players just don’t move the needle, and will end up being a waste of money.
As we always do, we will use Evolving Wild’s contract predictor for this exercise.