The New Jersey Devils were somewhat active this year at the 2020 NHL trade deadline and it taught us a few things about them.
The New Jersey Devils are having a bad season. They are not going to the playoffs in a year that had aspirations of doing so. After a summer of hype, they failed expectations from the first game of the season on. That led to them being sellers all season long. They didn’t even necessarily wait for the deadline to start selling off parts. They have been making moves to improve this team’s future while acknowledging a lost season for months.
It started back in December when they traded Taylor Hall to the Arizona Coyotes for picks and prospects. Then in the week leading up to the deadline, they traded Blake Coleman to the Tampa Bay Lightning and Andy Green to the New York Islanders within hours of each other. It has been tough to watch some fan-favorite players go out the door but sometimes it needs to be done.
Then, on the trade deadline day itself, they made three moves to try to better their future. The first move made was when they sent Wayne Simmonds to the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for a fifth-round pick in the 2021 NHL Draft. Then, they traded Sami Vatanen to the Carolina Hurricanes for picks and prospects. They closed out their day by sending Louis Domingue to the Vancouver Canucks for Zane McIntire.
Those moves were somewhat expected, but the return was a little different from what we expected. They might not have gotten the return for Simmonds or Vatanen that they thought they were going to. They also showed that they are committed to the future, no matter how you look at it. These are the three things we learned from the trade deadline: