Every NHL team, including the New Jersey Devils, should want surging Florida Panthers standout Sam Bennett on their roster.
Such a move comes at a price. If and when that price is met by a team other than Florida, it will instantaneously reveal which team was the most desperate. Let Ondrej Palat and the Devils serve as an example of what happens when teams grasp at the straws of individual playoff success as a means to try and push the whole roster over the hump.
For starters, there have been rumblings that teams are willing to pay Bennett $10 million annually on the open market when free agency opens on July 1. Simply put, the Devils cannot afford to do that, even if players like Palat, Erik Haula, and Dawson Mercer are jettisoned. That creates more holes for Tom Fitzgerald to try to plug in a single offseason, which, as we now know, failed miserably last summer.
Bennett is a good player, but things happen around the NHL for a reason. He was once a No. 4 pick, then the Calgary Flames gave up on him. Now, he thrives on a Florida Panthers team that has been to three Stanley Cup Finals in a row.
Would Bennett thrive the same way on the Devils? Are the Devils built for success like the Panthers? The answer, to both, is no. The same way Palat has not thrived on a Devils team that is not built like the old Tampa Bay Lightning.
Ondrej Palat's contract must be a lesson for the New Jersey Devils when it comes to Sam Bennett
Palat, in three seasons with the Devils, has reached 30 points once. The 34-year-old, at his age, has not, and probably will not, reach 20 goals or 40 points in a season in a Devils sweater.
When Palat signed his five-year, $30 million contract on July 13, 2022. He was coming off a 49-point season that was his most productive since 2016-17. In the 2022 playoffs, Palat had 11 goals and 10 assists for 21 points, while scoring at an absurd 22.4% clip.
Bennett, at the time of this writing, has 13 goals in 19 playoff games for the Panthers, scoring at a 22.4% clip.
And where has this Palat been for the Devils since? Nowhere to be found, as the former Lightning hero has just three goals, six assists, and nine points in 17 playoff games in New Jersey.
This is no slight against Palat, either. Fitzgerald and the Devils should have expected as much when they signed a 31-year-old fresh off his last hurrah as a productive top-six winger.
Ironically, Fitzgerald himself knows that unrestricted free agents are signed based on what they've done, and restricted free agents and young players are signed based on what they will do.
Fitzgerald and the Devils signed Palat for his playoff success and experience and have, literally, paid dearly for it. If New Jersey and the NHL clubs were wise, they would reverse the above free agency logic and exercise extreme caution when it comes to Sam Bennett. A shining example in Palat is staring them in the face ahead of July 1.