New Jersey Devils: Miles Wood Is Becoming A Desirable Offseason Piece

The New Jersey Devils have been tied to a lot of the offseason rumors already. There haven’t been a ton of moves yet with the Stanley Cup Final still going on as of Monday night, but with the NHL Draft, Seattle Kraken Expansion Draft, and NHL Free Agency in quick succession, there isn’t a lot of time to think before the moves start flying. The Devils are expected to be one of the busiest teams this offseason. They have a ton of cap space and a desire to get better. There are a lot of young pieces that are NHL ready. Now, it’s time to build around them.

To make a trade, another player has to go the other way. We’ve talked before about the CapFriendly Armchair GM, and a quick glance at it shows Miles Wood is a very popular player for other teams fans to target. It’s not a secret why.

Wood is extremely fast with a lot of really good attributes. He plays an old-school style of hockey while having modern skills. His speed is almost untouchable. This past season, he finally put a lot of his skills together into a considerably better hockey player. He led the Devils in goals with 17. Outside of the month where the entire Devils team was dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak, Wood’s scoring stayed consistent throughout the year.

Wood is going into the final year of a four-year deal he signed after his breakout 2017-18 season. Most Devils fans couldn’t wait for the time where they could get out of the deal, but now Wood is back to being a fan favorite. All the credit goes to Wood. He worked on his game and really embraced Lindy Ruff’s scheme. It led to more ice time and a bigger role. The Devils “fourth” line of Wood, Michael McLeod, and Nathan Bastian quickly turned into the change-of-pace line the Devils needed.

Now, other teams are hoping to get Wood for a good price. Here’s the problem. The Devils have no motivation to move Wood unless he’s part of a superstar trade. Letting Wood go for a prospect or draft pick takes $2.75 million off the salary cap. That means the Devils have to replace that cap hit dollar for dollar because they are way under the cap floor. If the Seattle Kraken end up taking a player like P.K. Subban in the expansion draft, then the Devils are forced to go on a spending spree. It’s never good when a team is in a position where they have to spend money.

Wood isn’t going anywhere unless another team massively overpays or the Devils find a deal for the future. The Devils never really traded a player with a year left on his contract until the season already started. They see value at the trade deadline, although that backfired pretty spectacularly last season.

Someone like Wood holds more value than Nikita Gusev does. He’d have to fall to injury to completely lose his value because he won’t lose his speed or his toughness. There will always be hockey GMs looking for those attributes. That value is why Fitzgerald is going to hold onto Wood for the time being.