New Jersey Devils: 5 Players Who Could Surprisingly Get Traded

Michael McLeod

This is another Ray Shero 1st-round pick that’s not working out like we hoped. He looked like an absolutely dominant prospect in 2017 when he took the Mississauga Steelheads to the OHL Finals basically by himself. This is a franchise known for losing, that he tried carrying to the promised land. Then, the next season he returned to Juniors because he wasn’t ready for the NHL, but he wasn’t allowed to go to the NHL. He ended up getting hurt, his season kind of fell off the rails, he tried to make it happen in the playoffs (and try he did with almost two points per game) but it wasn’t enough to get them past the first round.

Now, McLeod is a typical tweener player again, except now it’s tweener between the NHL and AHL. There are times when he looks like he belongs in the big leagues, but he still has a problem with consistency. His advanced stats look terrible, and he’s largely on the bottom of the team, which is saying something since he’s on the Devils.

McLeod was taken with the 12th-overall pick in the 2016 NHL Draft. He doesn’t get talked about in the same vein as Zacha, but we’d expect him to be an NHL regular by now. He definitely has talent, and he’s been focusing more on the defensive sides of the game which is impacting his point total, but we still expected more than zero goals in 26 NHL games. Maybe another team thinks they can fix him, and then that team could trade the Devils a prospect or two that hasn’t worked out like they hoped.