NHL Draft: 3 Options For New Jersey Devils To Trade Back Into 1st Round

The New Jersey Devils are focusing mostly on the second-overall pick in the NHL Draft, but they should be looking at the entire first round to see who might fall to them. If the right player falls, they should jump at a trade.

The New Jersey Devils have a lot of decent to good prospects in their system. They actually have some really good prospects at the top in Luke Hughes and Alexander Holtz, and they will likely add another one with the second-overall pick, but after them, there are literally 20 prospects who could all one day make the NHL. The Devils have a deep prospect pool, and that can end with some players looking to make a jump with nowhere to go.

That’s the issue with the Devils right now. They have only so many NHL and AHL spots remaining. They have a lot of players that are developing at a decent pace. Next week, they plan to add nine new prospects in the NHL Draft. That gives them so many prospects to deal with and a limited amount of space to place them. They hope to get a superstar with the second-overall pick, but they can get a superstar elsewhere, too.

That leads us to our next point. The Devils should really focus on who they should trade up for on Thursday. The Devils have had multiple first-round picks in the past two drafts, and they should do what they can to make it happen again. It likely happens with a trade-up scenario where the Devils add multiple picks to trade back into the first round. There are a few players who could fall into the 20s, and the Devils should jump at the chance to draft them.

1. Brad Lambert

Brad Lambert is the most disputed prospect in this year’s draft. He was considered up there with Shane Wright as the best player in the draft just last year, but this year his season was a disaster, and so was the coverage around it. There are questions about effort level, questions that Lambert obviously won’t like. Some teams reportedly took him off their draft boards entirely. The Devils should not be one of those teams.

If Lambert drops to 20, the Devils should send a bounty of picks short of future first rounders to the Pittsburgh Penguins to move up. The Pens, who are picking 21st, need to get more prospects in that system. The Devils need high-quality prospects only.

Lambert could easily become one of the best players in the draft, or he could completely flame out. However, his attitude and the lesson he is learning with this process seem like it will end with him destroying the competition. We even think there’s an outside chance he could work so hard he makes the NHL next season. He has NHL talent, he just doesn’t know how to use it.

We don’t want to put that kind of pressure on him just yet. Let him develop for a year or two, and see what happens. It’s possible the counter-arguments with Lambert might have had an opposite effect, and he could go earlier. He might even jump into the top ten, but if he doesn’t the Devils need to be all over that.