The New Jersey Devils broke the ice last week, sending the first offer sheet of the offseason. They sent a one-year deal to Utah Mammoth center Barrett Hayton, and he signed it. If the Mammoth decided to keep Hayton, there are some restrictions. They won't be able to trade him for a full year, and they can't re-sign him to a longer-term contract until 2027.
If they let the Devils have him, they could always just wait until next July 1st and sign him, taking the second-round pick in the meantime. The contract takes Hayton to unrestricted free agency. Sunny Mehta likely knows what Hayton wants on a long-term deal, but anything can happen in one season.
Depending on who you ask, analysts are split over what the right decision is for the Mammoth. Some say it's easy to just match it and figure the rest out later. Others say that the offer is a poison pill, and the Devils put the pressure on Utah to make a decision.
Luckily for Utah, they've been able to make this decision mostly in anonymity. After the Philadelphia Flyers sent an offer sheet to make Cutter Gautier the highest-paid player in the league, the Anaheim Ducks now have the pressure.
And while it seems more likely as each day goes by that Hayton will become a member of the Devils, there’s still a good chance he remains in Utah. We’d say it’s about 50-50 as of this writing. There’s really no indication either way, despite this being the most prominent rumor season on the calendar.Â
If the Devils do lose out on Hayton, there’s a perfectly good backup plan that might work out better in the long run.Â
On Elliotte Friedman’s 32 Thoughts blog this weekend, he went into detail about how the Seattle Kraken’s relationship with Shane Wright is coming to an end. The Devils had a chance before to acquire Wright, but they chose to draft Simon Nemec second overall in the 2022 NHL Draft. The Devils cut their losses on Nemec a few weeks ago, trading him to the Calgary Flames for three draft picks and a low-level prospect.Â
Now, they have pieces to make a Wright trade work. Ironically, the pieces from the second-overall pick could help the Devils get the fourth-overall pick.
Wright fell to four to the Kraken, and his development hasn’t been linear. After scoring 94 points ahead of his draft year, Wright was forced to go back to the OHL for a shortened season in 2022-23, putting up 37 points in 20 games. He ended up playing 24 playoff games that season for the Coachella Valley Firebirds. That is three times as many games as he played in the regular season.
Wright spent most of the 23-24 season in the AHL, putting up 47 points in 59 games. For a guy who many expected to easily be the number-one overall pick, he wasn’t playing above his head. Sometimes, that can be a good thing. Here, it feels like a negative.
The reasons why Hayton makes sense for the Devils are the same reasons why Wright makes sense. Both Hayton and Wright were highly-touted prospects who haven’t lived up to their expectations. Both have been great defensively, and the Devils could move either in the third-line center spot today.Â
This changes the expectations for each player. Instead of the player Utah used their fifth-overall pick or Seattle used their fourth-overall pick, now it’s a player who was traded to fit into a role. Wright is a better option because he’s younger, under an entry-level contract for one more season, and he has a higher offensive ceiling. However, if the Devils get Hayton, the move would largely be too similar to do both.
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