New Jersey Devils Getting Nikita Gusev Is A Major Win
By Tyler Kelley
We’ve done it folks. After thirty long days the New Jersey Devils have officially acquired Nikita Gusev from the Vegas Golden Knights and gave up very little in the process.
A 2nd and 3rd round pick for the consensus #1 non NHL player last year is an absolute steal. Of course he hasn’t played a single minute in the NHL yet but players like Artemi Panarin and Evgeny Dadonov have come over and had phenomenal success. Add on a 2 year contract with a $4.5m AAV and this deal is a massive win. Consider it the bow on top of a perfect offseason.
Gusev is a dynamic player who should slide right along side Jack Hughes next year. This should allow the Devils to reunited the Hall-Hischier-Bratt line and push Palmieri, a pure goal scorer, down to the 2nd line where all he has to do is wait for one of Gusev of Hughes to feed him the puck and let it rip.
Gusev put up 82 points in 62 KHL games and 16 points in 10 games at the World Championships playing alongside Nikita Kucherov.
While there’s no guarantee those exact numbers translate to the NHL using Manny’s NHL prospect numbers Gusev projects as a 1.18 WAR/82 player who should put up a point total somewhere in the 65-75 ball park.
That’s certainly worth it for a 2nd and 3rd round pick.
More importantly this should help improve the Devils depth. Rather than a poor 5v5 performer like Wayne Simmonds being forced into a top six role the Devils can roll out a lineup that looks something like this:
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Hall-Hischier-Bratt
Gusev-Hughes-Palmieri
Zacha-Zajac-Coleman
Wood-Hayden-Simmonds
I doubt they’ll actually bury Boqvist in the bottom six but they still have the option of letting him spend the year in Sweden if he can’t make the roster out of camp.
This is a huge boost for the Devils and when Josh Harris said Ray Shero was big game hunting he clearly wasn’t kidding, and he came home with a Goose.