The New Jersey Devils are coming to what fans hope is the end of the rebuild and they have a lot of bright spots. There are some areas that obviously need to be filled. One of which is goaltending and that will be discussed later, likely to death. Today we are going to focus more on the big names of free agency.
Johnny Gaudreau is an absolute stud and has been for a long time. Last season, he had a career year with 40 goals and 115 points and was a whopping +64. He can score, control the play, and plays better defense than he is given credit for. None of this is likely a secret to most Devils fans who have likely followed him from a far thanks to him being from Jersey. He is an incredible player and will be for a while still but the Devils should not be in on him.
When this season begins, he will be 29 years old and in the back half of his prime. This is where it becomes a problem. This team is just getting into fighting shape for the playoffs and probably won’t be actually competitive in the postseason for another 3 seasons. By then, Johnny Hockey will be well into his 30s.
This is why they need to be aiming for players around 25 years old unless they are willing to go for a deal with less years on it. Whoever signs him will be looking at 9+million for 7-8 seasons depending if he stays in Calgary or not. While he is absolutely worth that right now, it is very questionable at 37 if he will be the same player despite his surprising durability thus far in his career.
The other player this team is linked to heavily is J.T. Miller, another fantastic player but one who is about to get extremely overpaid. Like Gaudreau, he will start the season at 29 which means his contract will expire when he is over 35. Even though he is a great two-way player and plays the hard nose game we all like this is something that will likely lead to him wearing down faster as he ages.
With 99 points this season, he would have broke the Devils franchise record this was a big step up from his previous years and he averages well under a point a game in his career. This should be a massive red flag to teams and while he should be great for another two years signing a guy who is about to hit 30 that had a career year after eight seasons in the league will bite someone down the line. It happens every year.
Both of these guys are great players but neither fit the teams timeline and Miller is a big risk to be an albatross of a deal mid way through the contract so the Devils need to hold off since they missed out on Kevin Fiala who would have fit far better thanks to being 24. There are a lot of names this free agency the Devils should pursue however so it will be a big off season either way.
Lets go Devils.