Rumored Simon Nemec-to-Montreal Canadiens trade proposal is abjectly insane

The New Jersey Devils made the move many expected on Thursday night, demoting Simon Nemec to the AHL. He will joined a Utica Comets defense that includes other high-quality prospects like Seamus Casey and Topias Vilen. The Comets are in a transition as former head coach Kevin Dineen was fired and Ryan Parent has taken over. 

The move to send Nemec to the Comets makes sense. Currently, he’s the seventh defenseman on the Devils, but the other six are playing too well to come out of the lineup. Johnathan Kovacevic was expected to be the seventh defender, but the former Montreal Canadiens defender has more than earned his spot. 

To be fair to the Devils, Nemec has been pretty terrible this year. At 5v5, only Seamus Casey had a worse Corsi for vs. Corsi against, and Nemec had the worst high-danger chances for vs. against on the team, forward or defenseman (not including Daniil Misyul). He’s been on the ice for 15 high-danger chances but 30 high-danger chances against according Natural Stat Trick. Seeing twice as many high-danger chances as you’re getting on the other side is a major problem. 

While it makes sense that Nemec went down, it makes no sense to even consider Simon Nemec in a trade. And there’s a terrible trade offer out there, and you will never guess who is at the forefront. (We’re just kidding, you can totally guess.) 

The trade is based around former fifth-overall pick David Reinbacher. We understand that the premise could make sense to Canadiens fans. Nemec is a countrymate of future Canadiens star Juraj Slafkovsky. They went 1-2 in the 2022 NHL Draft. There’s clearly a friendship there.

But how does that make any sense for the Devils? So they would go after another top-five defenseman who is the same exact age as Nemec, but he hasn’t shown an ability to play at the NHL level. He’s also recovering from a major knee injury and will be out for another five months. We have no idea how Reinbacher will look after the injury. Will this severely impact his development? It absolutely could.

Nemec is dealing with his own injury, clearly playing worse since he injured his shoulder at Olympic qualifiers for Slovakia. However, that’s so much different than knee surgery for a defenseman.

The original proposal included “another piece,” but that really doesn’t help the Devils now. It’s probably something like a second-round pick. The Devils could probably use that pick to flip to another team for forward help, but they already have three second-round picks in 2025 (although one has a slim possibility of going to the Canadiens already in the Jake Allen trade). 

The Devils would only trade Nemec if it meant it was a huge trade that helped them immensely right now. Maybe some would worry about letting an asset grow and fail, similar to what happened with Alexander Holtz. However, it’s different when we’re talking about a former second-overall defenseman. Nemec is going to the AHL because it’s best for his development AND for no other reason.