The New Jersey Devils went into July with some high expectations for how it would go. It has been quite the month for the team as a whole.
Nobody can deny that the New Jersey Devils had one of the best offseasons in the National Hockey League. In June they selected Jack Hughes with the number one overall pick and then traded for superstar defenseman P.K. Subban the very next day. It was a hard month to live up to but July was another successful month for this team’s offseason.
On July 1st, the didn’t get the likes of Artemi Panarin or Matt Duchene but they still may have improved their team during the free-agent frenzy. They signed Wayne Simmonds to a one year deal worth five million dollars. It is a low-risk high reward move for the Devils due to the fact that it is only one year. It is the definition of a prove-it contract for Simmonds because he hasn’t had a Wayne Simmonds type season in a few years.
The signing got mixed reviews, but there are a lot of playmakers and good skaters on this team that Simmonds might be able to use his skill set more effectively than in his last few seasons. If he can play some solid middle-six minutes and contribute 15-20 goals it would be a win for the Devils who are already deep at the wing position.
They also got some lower-tier contracts done when they extended Connor Carrick and Mirco Mueller. These guys aren’t going to play every game for the Devils. It looks like they are going to carry eight defensemen and they are not one of the four locks to play when healthy. Injuries and performance issues happen, so the more depth at the position is a great thing.
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Then, the Devils capped off the month on July 29th when they traded two draft picks to the Vegas Golden Knights in exchange for Nikita Gusev. Gusev is a KHL superstar that is widely considered the best non-NHL player in the world. He led the league in scoring by a large margin and won back to back KHL MVPs. He has great hockey IQ, vision, and a wicked shot that many projects will all translate to the NHL. He dominated the World Championships against some of his future NHL competition so it is apparent that he should be able to be a very productive player.
He was an RFA and the Golden Knights are a cap restricted team so it made it hard to keep him despite believing that he is a very good player. Ray Shero pulled the trigger and got him signed to a two-year deal worth 4.5 million against the cap. If he comes in and is as good as advertised, it will be a steal of a contract for the Devils.
He often gets compared to Panarin, but that could just be because he was a KHL superstar that came over late, just like him. His game does resemble Panarin sometimes, but you can also see a little bit of Kovalchuk in him when he dangles through the neutral zone but an underrated comparable to me is Claude Giroux. Giroux can dangle, shoot, and can worry about making plays from the wing. I see a little bit of that in Gusev, and we can only hope that he can be close to as good as any of the guys mentioned.
Overall, July has been a solid month for the New Jersey Devils. They are a better team than they were going into the month, and it continued a very successful offseason. August is likely going to be dry as it usually is for all 31 teams, but there are some more arbitration cases and college free agents to look forward to. There are also some high profile RFAs left unsigned that are in danger of getting really late into the offseason without extensions. The Devils, however, are in a good spot headed into August.