The failure that was the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline is continuing to get even worse for the New Jersey Devils, and it isn't because of anything new they've done.
On Sunday, the Anaheim Ducks announced that they signed forward prospect Herman Traff to a three-year, entry-level contract beginning in the 2026-27 season, with the news coming just over a year after the Devils traded him.
You might recall that the Devils traded Traff, 20, along with a 2025 second-round pick (Lasse Boelius) to the Ducks for veteran defenseman Brian Dumoulin with 50% salary retention. Dumoulin, of course, left the Devils as a free agent in the summer, and the Devils never needed the salary retention with Jack Hughes landing on LTIR at the time.
All in all, that was Traff, a 2024 third-round pick, and a second-round pick for about six weeks of Dumoulin, who was 33 at the time of the trade and never had a real future with the Devils.
Herman Traff would have been a top New Jersey Devils prospect, but they traded him for a few months of Brian Dumoulin in a lost season
For those unfamiliar with Traff, he's a 6-foot-3, 200-pound winger prospect with SHL experience dating back to the 2022-23 season. In 25 games in the SHL with HV71 last season, Traff managed a very respectable three goals, four assists, and seven points.
This year, the former No. 91 overall pick spent the entire season in HockeyAllsvenskan, Sweden's second-tier hockey league, exploding for 23 goals, 18 assists, and 41 points in 51 games. Traff led all draft year +2 skaters in scoring by a country mile, too; the next closest D+2 skater was undrafted defenseman Leo Sundqvist, who had 19 points in 51 games for Ostersunds IK.
With Stefan Noesen having one year remaining on his contract and ending this season on LTIR, the Devils probably would have liked to have another like-sized, burly winger waiting to make the jump to the NHL in the coming seasons.
Instead, the Devils will need to hope Kasper Pikkarainen or Shane Lachance can fill that power forward role in the very near future.