New Jersey Devils Should Absolutely Not Trade P.K. Subban

The New Jersey Devils season is a tire fire. As bad as P.K. Subban has been so far, quitting on him now would be a huge mistake.

The New Jersey Devils were the talk of the offseason. A lot of that was self inflicted. They rolled out the red carpet for new defenseman P.K. Subban, who was all over social media playing up his new team and his new life outside New York City with his future wife Lindsey Vonn. The Devils were becoming a celebrity team overnight.

Then, the season started.

The Devils are currently embroiled in their worst season ever. We will get into that at a different time and place, but based on the hype and the results, this is the worst season in history. Part of that hype was bringing in Subban to finally solidify this defense. The problem from the beginning was finding him a partner.

All the Devils best defensemen are right handed. Subban is right handed. Sami Vatanen is right handed. Damon Severson is right handed. On the left side, the Devils have Will Butcher, Andy Greene, and Mirco Mueller. That’s it. Even Connor Carrick and Matt Tennyson are right-handed defensemen.

Butcher has shown some promise, but is nowhere near consistent enough to be on the top line right now. He’s a fine player in his role, but for much of the season he has disappeared.

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Basically, without dumping on every Devils defenseman, there just hasn’t been the right fit. That’s not Subban’s fault. The Devils should try again when they have the right piece to pair alongside of him.

All season long, we’ve seen Subban being the only play back on 2-on-1s. We’ve seen him try to carry a bad defensive unit. That’s leading him to make mistakes. because he’s not playing his game. It made a lot of sense when he was on the Nashville Predators. Their defensive unit was stacked, and they had the right players to work with him.

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Here in New Jersey, they don’t have those players yet. So, maybe they should look into trading him to a place that does, right?

That is the exact opposite of what the Devils should do. The Devils made it seem like the biggest celebrity in hockey was coming to the Garden State. Subban was unlike anything that has been here in a long time. The Lou Lamoriello era would not allow such pomp and circumstance. In the few years that Ray Shero has run the team, there hasn’t been a player with close to the personality as Subban.

To build up a player that high just to trade him a few months later would send the worst possible message to the league. The only thing the Devils have going for them is players seem to like being here and the locker room gets along really well. Brian Boyle hated being traded last season. Players re-sign to contracts here (outside of Taylor Hall). Yet, those types of things will change if the Devils start making shroud moves like trading a player who’s been here for mere months when you acted like he was the changing of the guard.

Things didn’t work out from October to December. You cannot give up on a star defenseman because two and a half months didn’t go swimmingly. Think it’s hard to sign a free agent now? It will be near impossible to bring anyone on this team after making a move like that.

Nobody is going to give up anything great for Subban right now, and the Devils would have to take on salary. Is it worth to hurt their standing more than it already is by making this move? No, just try to make this work until at least the offseason. These things take time, and clearly there are so many more things wrong with the Devils than just Subban.

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