The New Jersey Devils are tied to a few players as we head into the NHL Trade Deadline. They are reportedly in on Jake Evans of the Montreal Canadiens, Trent Frederic of the Boston Bruins, and Kyle Palmieri of the New York Islanders. There even might be some wild cards they’d be pushing for.
This year is different than other years. Previously, the Devils were only looking for stars with term. They were willing to pay for an extended price to get after someone like Timo Meier, a player who has control beyond this season. Just in the past year, they traded for Paul Cotter, Jacob Markstrom, and Jake Allen.
This season, it might not be the right move to go after a player with term. The Devils, even with the rising salary cap, should be careful with how they spend their money. This offseason, the Devils are scheduled to have $17 million in cap space this offseason. However, more than half of that could go to Luke Hughes, who will be a restricted free agent. Even though he hasn’t shown to be a superstar yet, his projections is what the Devils are paying for.
That gives the Devils around $8 million to get an upgrade at top-six forward (possibly two), an entire fourth line, replacing or re-signing Johnathan Kovacevic, adding their prospects to new deals, and a backup goalie. That’s a lot to buy when the Devils are dealing with a cap crunch.
Tom Fitzgerald could make a big move this season, and it’s warranted with the Eastern Conference being relatively weak, but the Devils have to make sure they think of the future and the present.
This will come up for a player like Ryan O’Reilly. The Devils would love to have O’Reilly, who would fit multiple problems at once. He would help the Devils with their center problem and with their offensive problem. The issue with O’Reilly, besides the price the Predators would demand, is he has two more seasons left on his deal after this one. His $4.5 million cap hit is very reasonable, but it puts the Devils in a precarious position. They would need to move players out this offseason to afford all of the players they want, or they would have to bridge Luke Hughes (which they definitely don’t want to do).
The New Jersey Devils must be careful when thinking of their NHL Trade Deadline priorities.
The same goes for many other options, like Oliver Bjorkstrand, Dylan Cozens, and Rickard Rakell. They would be lovely players to have on the roster, but it would put the Devils in a precarious spot.
That’s especially true understanding who could be available this offseason. The Devils would love to have Brady Tkachuk on the roster. They’d be excited to trade for Clayton Keller. They could even sign a player like Brock Boeser. However, if they trade for a player with term, they’d have to sacrifice those possibilities.
Tom Fitzgerald needs to be smart over the next two weeks, and a rental might be the most logical option. If they can trade for a player that will be out of here in a few weeks or sign to a reasonable extension. We’d love the Devils to push in on this season, but we haven’t seen anything out of this Devils team to say they are capable of doing more than just making the playoffs.
All contract information was obtained from Puck Pedia.