New Jersey Devils: 3 Trade Proposals For Kevin Fiala
The New Jersey Devils have been linked to Minnesota Wild star Kevin Fiala. What would it take to actually make a deal happen?
While many New Jersey Devils fans had dreams that the team would be in on Minnesota Wild forward Kevin Fiala, many assumed a team would come in and wow the Wild with a different deal. However, Jeff Marek with Sportsnet officially named the New Jersey Devils on the 32 Thoughts segment as a team that would be willing to make a big play for Fiala.
The Wild are likely in a bad place when it comes to re-signing their star winger. He had his best year ever, scoring 85 points in the regular season. He had seven game-winning goals, had a +23 +/-, and he started pounding the assists putting up 52 this season. He was once a player who was pretty equal in goals and assists, but now he’s started to become a points machine.
Is this a player hitting his ceiling when he turns 25 years old, or is this a major risk where a player just happens to have the best season of their career the year they need to get paid? Either way, the Wild can’t afford to take the risk. Even with the salary cap going up by $1 million next season, the Wild will have $3.5 million in cap space next season. They have to find a way to sign two forwards and a backup goalie with that price, and that’s if they don’t sign Kevin Fiala.
How much do the New Jersey Devils have to pay for Kevin Fiala?
The Wild’s salary cap situation comes from buying out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter last offseason. The dead cap hit is north of $12 million next season, and then it jumps to $14 million after that. The Wild were going all in on winning it all this season, As of this writing, they have a 2-1 lead on the St. Louis Blues in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It could be worth it, but if they don’t make a run, it’s really going to cost them.
This one is a huge haul for the Minnesota Wild. They get a likely top-five pick while also getting an NHL-ready bottom-six player in Fabian Zetterlund. The Wild need cheap talent, and Zetterlund and this first-round pick are both going to be NHL ready in the window the Wild need them to be. The first-round pick is especially important because it gives the Wild a massive talent at a time when they have no money to spend. Paying $14 million for two players who aren’t even on the team when Kirill Kaprizov is in his prime is not an ideal situation.
The Devils can really get the Wild out of a precarious situation. Fiala has a lot of value in the league, but none of the teams ahead of the Devils would be willing to give up a pick this high for a player like Fiala. He’s a finishing piece, but it’s hard to give him the distinction that he can carry a team on his own.
It’s always hard to pay a first-round pick for a player with risk, but when the pick is in the top five in an NHL Draft like this one, it’s especially hard to make that move. Still, this really helps the Devils become competitive next season. Obviously, it doesn’t help their goalie situation, which is their biggest weakness. It doesn’t automatically put them into contention, but it does put them in a place where they can succeed in the long run. It’s the next step towards contention.
The Devils need to decide where they really think they are. Can they afford to trade their top-five pick for a player of Fiala’s caliber? Who else could they get with this pick? It’s a hard decision, but it might be the right one in the long run.
This would be a deal that really helps the Minnesota Wild fill their roster with significant pieces while they transition from one era to the other. Alexander Holtz is obviously the most significant piece going the other way, and the Wild also get an NHL-caliber player in Jesper Boqvist who is getting better every year. Boqvist is only 23 years old, so he could get even better than he was this season. He locked down the third-line center position, and he could do the same thing for the Wild next season.
Holtz is where this hurts the Devils. He’s someone most people expect to make the NHL roster next season, and he’s expected to be a 30-goal scorer sooner rather than later. He hasn’t been great on the NHL level. In fact, he was pretty bad. He played eight games in the NHL this past season.
Holtz had the worst CorsiFor percentage on the team out of all players who played at least 50 minutes at 5v5. In fact, his 37.65% is sixth-worst in the entire league. It’s clear the NHL game is much faster than the AHL game, because Holtz was dominating the minor leagues. He had 51 points in 50 games for the Utica Comets. His team is preparing for the playoffs this week. If he does something great on a run for the Comets, it would be hard to trade him, but it might be the smarter move over losing the team’s first-round pick.
Reilly Walsh and the 2nd-round pick just add to the package here. Walsh made his NHL debut after he had himself a great season in the NHL. Walsh is also right handed, which increases his value immensely. The Devils don’t have a lot of right-handed defensemen in their prospect pool, so losing Walsh on top of Holtz would hurt.
There’s also the deal that restructures the Wild roster while giving them a bevy of draft picks. The Devils in this deal would give the Wild their second, third, and fifth-round pick this season, while also adding the second-round pick in 2023. It’s a ton of pieces for the Minnesota Wild to get in one deal, and it’s basically looking to overwhelm the Wild with pieces.
It seems like this is an easy win for the Devils, but look at the deal as close as you can. While Pavel Zacha and Ty Smith are two players the Devils fanbase would love to get rid of, they still hold value across the league. They are both former first-round picks who made the league at a young age and still have upside. As we said previously, the Devils know the value of Boqvist at this point.
The Devils would take on the contract of Dmitry Kulikov, who was a healthy scratch in Game 3 of the playoffs. While Kulikov has had his successes this season, this shows how the Wild feel about him in the long term. This would take a $2.25 million contract off their books next season. It would help them by giving them just a little more cap space to add talent to this team. Kulikov was great for the Devils last season, and they’d likely accept him back with open arms.
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It’s the most unlikely of deals for the Devils since there’s nothing in this deal besides the sheer volume of draft picks that make them squeamish. However, this is the one with the most pieces, and therefore it might be where the Devils stick their guns. We hear every year that a team is willing to dangle their first-round picks for the right player, but it rarely happens.