New Jersey Devils: Five Worst Lou Lamoriello Re-Acquisitions

1: Vladimir Malakhov

Vladimir Malakhov was a trade deadline acquisition by Lamoriello during the 2000 season. Malakhov. He would play all 23 games with the Devils in the 2000 playoffs, tallying only one goal. However, his contribution was key to the team’s success.

At that point in time, Malakov was an NHL regular. He would move on to sign with the New York Rangers and then be traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in 2004. Then, the lockout hit. The Devils lost Scott Stevens, Scott Niedermayer, and Ken Daneyko. They had trouble replacing them. They decided to go with the replace-by-committee approach. They brought in Malakhov, Richard Matvichuk, and Dan McGillis as free agents to replace two Hall of Famers and an all-time Devil.

Malakhov would only play 29 games and then leave the team. In a weird circumstance, he just stopped playing for the Devils. There were reports that he had retired, while some had said he was too injured to play the game anymore. Even though he was away from the team, his contract still counted against the cap for the Devils. The salary cap was brand new, and Lou Lamoriello was about to learn what it was all about the hard way.

Lamoriello would trade Malakhov’s contract along with a 2007 first-round pick to the San Jose Sharks for Alexander Korolyuk and Jim Fahey. Korolyuk would never play for the Devils and remain in Malakhov’s home of Russia. Fahey would play a handful of games but nothing to write home about in just one season. That first-round pick would become David Perron, who is still playing in the NHL with 1,055 games under his belt. David Perron is certainly a player the Devils could have used throughout the salary cap era.