The New Jersey Devils may or may not find help in free agency today.
The New Jersey Devils are currently one of six teams (according to CapFriendly) that are below the NHL salary cap floor. They need to fill out more of their roster to fill their salary cap space, and they might look to free agency to help. Of course, some of that might be on players they already have on contract extensions, but there is no doubt they can go shopping if they want to. With a young core, they might want to add some help to get them going.
There are plenty of interesting names out there that will be signing new contracts with new teams once free agency starts later today. There are some great players like Taylor Hall, Alex Pietrangelo, Torey Krug, and Corey Crawford looking for new homes. All of those guys have hopes of going to a good team that will give them a chance to win.
The Devils might not be that in year one, but they might be down the line. This is a very young organization that is looking to take the next step. If they can add a veteran like Mike Hoffman or Evgenii Dadonov, they would really be able to help their roster improve.
Good young players need good veterans around to help them. This could be a situation where they do something like that if they can find some willing candidates. The only hope is that they don’t overspend on someone who isn’t going to be very good for very long.
As fun as free-agency is, it can really hurt some teams. You never want to give out too much term on contracts to guys who aren’t worth it. The Devils probably don’t want to give out a seven-year deal to anyone north of 30 but a shorter 3-4 year deal might be worth it for some of them. This team has a lot of holes in the roster right now so it will be interesting to see what they can do. Hopefully, whatever decision is made, the team can use that decision to their advantage and improve.