New Jersey Devils: 3 Trade Deadline Deals With St. Louis Blues
The New Jersey Devils are looking to make a deal at the trade deadline. After the New York Rangers made a move for Vladimir Tarasenko, the rivals could pursue the same team.
It’s all hands on deck for Timo Meier, right? The San Jose Sharks and New Jersey Devils seem like they are on a collision course. However, four or five teams are still in on Meier. So, if the Devils miss out on the biggest piece of the trade market, there are other options.
The New York Rangers already went after that other option. The Devils rivals spent a first-round pick and a few other pieces to acquire Vladimir Tarasenko. We liked Tarasenko in the past, but he seemed like the wrong move for the Devils now. He’s having a bad season in the underlying numbers, and the Devils wanted to go after a player who was less of a rental.
The Blues aren’t done with trade options. Ryan O’Reilly says he doesn’t want to get traded, but he might not have a choice. What would it cost to bring the former Conn Smythe winner to the Devils?
Ryan O’Reilly is not the player he was when the Blues acquired him. Back then, the Blues traded Tage Thompson, Patrik Berglund, Vladimir Sobotka, plus a first and second-round pick in different NHL Drafts. Thompson is now a superstar with the Buffalo Sabres (although it took a while). As you can see, this isn’t nearly that return.
The Devils have a plethora of defensive prospects, and they have a decision to make with Reilly Walsh. He’s at the end of his entry-level contract and doesn’t really have a path to the NHL. Trading him for a rental makes sense. Other prospects, not so much. Walsh is the outlier for Tom Fitzgerald.
O’Reilly doesn’t have the speed he once had, but he can still do a lot right. He’s one of the smartest hockey players out there. He can win faceoffs and then get in a scoring position for Jack Hughes. He could be the third-line center the Devils have been searching for to play in between Dawson Mercer and Tomas Tatar.
The Devils are still trying to keep players within the age range of its stars, and Fitzgerald said he wanted to find players who had control. Pavel Buchnevich hits a lot of those boxes. Buchnevich was a steal of a trade when the Blues got him from the Rangers. However, finding the right price for Buchnevich is hard.
He has two more years after this one at $5.8 million per season. Right now, Buchnevich has 41 points in 39 games. He could fit on any line with the Devils. He’s currently playing with Brandon Saad and O’Reilly. The Devils have a similar line in Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt. A Bratt-Hischier-Buchnevich line could be really good for a really long time. On top of that, it would be much easier to fit Buchnevich’s salary into the future than it would for Meier, who will command $8-9 million per season.
The price is hefty, but it might not be enough. The Devils send the Blues Graeme Clarke, the 21-year-old scorer who became the Utica Comets’ best player, prospect Topas Vilen, cap dump Andreas Johnsson, and two draft picks.
Clarke is a good prospect, and Vilen is having a good season, and that’s two draft picks in this year’s draft, but it feels like it might need to be a little more. Would replacing Vilen with Shakir Mukhamadullin work? It all depends on who the Blues value, but the Devils would have the picks and prospects to make this deal work.
This one is incredibly complicated. Brandon Saad is over 30 and has three more years left on a contract that pays him $4.5 million per season. The contract is just fine, especially since he signed it in unrestricted free agency.
A trade for Saad would catch Devils fans off guard. He doesn’t really fit the bill like Buchnevich does, but he comes at a much lower price. The Devils could get Saad for something like Nolan Foote and a fourth-round pick. The Blues are looking for a little bit of a reset. Most teams aren’t looking to take on Saad’s contract.
He only has 22 points in 45 games this season. He’s at just about a half-point per game. Saad needs something to click somewhere else. He has 15 goals, so something is going right. He should be able to keep scoring 20 goals throughout the contract.
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However, the contract pigeonholes the Devils for a while. They might not be able to get superstars like Meier in the offseason because they committed $4.5 million to a player like Saad. The Devils need help on the wing, and there are players out there that won’t cost a lot in acquisition. On the other hand, it would cost them in the future in salary structure. The Devils are a salary-cap team, and that comes with challenges. Making this move has to be something Fitzgerald thinks really makes them better in 2023.