Towards the end of his tenure, then-New Jersey Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald started to go out of his way to add grit and toughness to the lineup. Sometimes, the moves were fine as they also added skill and veteran leadership. Other times, that grit was nothing more than a punching bag to start fights against Matt Rempe.
Enter Kurtis MacDermid. The veteran forward was acquired by the Devils in March 2024 for two seventh-round picks, one that was selected already and one that was not. The one that hadn’t been used went to the Colorado Avalanche and was acquired after Fitzgerald gave his 2023 seventh-round pick to his former mentor David Poile.
Fitzgerald did not get the Predators’ GM job after Barry Trotz stepped down, and it was moves like this that’s why.
With that seventh-rounder, the Avalanche took Christian Humphreys, who just scored nine goals in 18 playoff games on the way to a championship with the Kitchener Rangers. We would have loved to have a player like that in the Devils prospect pool, but the late-round picks rarely worked out under Fitzgerald, especially compared to his predecessor Ray Shero.
However, seventh-rounders are rare to even make the AHL most of the time. Relying on one to make it to the NHL would be insane.
And yet, the “other” seventh-round pick they traded did just that. The Devils should have known what they had in Zakhar Bardakov. He was a center prospect in the KHL. The Devils took him 203rd overall in the 2021 NHL Draft. When they traded him, he was in the middle of a 12-point season with SKA St. Petersburg. Nobody is cheering for that, but right after the trade, he went crazy.
In 2024-25, Bardakov scored 17 goals and added 18 assists in 53 KHL games. Right after that, he jumped into the NHL. A little over one year after the Devils traded his rights to the Avalanche, he was in the NHL.
Many thought he might need a year in the AHL, but he spent 60 games with the Avs this season, watching as they put together a historic regular season.
However, the results weren’t exactly desirable. Bardakov had just one goal and 10 total points this season. We’ll let you go ahead and guess who he scored that goal on…
You know it was the Devils.
Zakhar Bardakov says goodbye to the NHL, saving another terrible Tom Fitzgerald move
At least the Devils are seeing a bailout from the largely defensive forward. Reports say that Bardakov is heading back to the KHL next season. After one year in the big league, he’s heading back to his home country.
It’s an interesting decision for a player who played above his head this past season. He was decent defensively, but he chose to play in the lesser league where he could provide more offense. Depending on contract status, the Avalanche should retain Bardakov’s rights should he decide to return to the NHL.
Meanwhile, the Devils traded MacDermid prior to last season for Zack MacEwen. It looked like that was a slam dunk trade, but MacEwen kept getting injured, and now he’s an unrestricted free agent.
This was still a bad trade by Fitzgerald, but he has a little leeway to say he survived from severe bust status now that Bardakov is no longer an NHL player.
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