New Jersey Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald signed another free agent Defensemen Dmitry Kulikov. The deal is for only one season and is worth $1.15 million. Another small move, but a solid one that can help the team in the short term.
Kulikov was a positive possession player with the Winnipeg Jets last season. His CorsiFor% was 51% last season. Though the Jets were a better team than the Devils by far one can not take anything away from Kulikov as he was better than any Devils defender last season.
He was also given harder matchups than most players, which likely went a long way in the decision for the Devils to sign him. The Devils can and will be tossing him at the better players in the opposition lineup night after night to protect players like Will Butcher and Ty Smith. While probably a #5-6 defender on a strong defense core Kulikov could be in the Devils top four. New coach Lindy Ruff now has the options to piece together a line up on the left side with Murray-Kulikov-Butcher to pair with Severson-Subban-Smith.
Compared to the end of last season, this is a huge step in the right direction and will give the Devils younger players time. The other big part of this move is moving Connor Carrick to the #7 spot. While Carrick is a serviceable defender, injuries always happen so the Devils have some breathing room without having to bring up career AHL players.
Having traded away Andy Greene and Sami Vatanen at the trade deadline the team’s defense was severely lacking and it is questionable if it is as good as when those two were here, but the assets gathered made it worth it moving forwards. With all that being said the future of this team’s defense relies on players like Smith, Walsh, Bahl, and Mukhamadulin. This season however things look more positive than the day before and it is a low-risk signing that should make a small but noticeable impact on the back end.