Elliotte Friedman, as he has done on multiple occasions, broke the hockey world with an article drop on Friday evening. This time, it was perhaps the biggest bombshell he's dropped to date.
Friedman broke the news that NHL superstar and reigning MVP Nikita Kucherov had notified the Tampa Bay Lightning and Julien BriseBois that he was no longer interested in extending with the Lightning and that he wanted to be traded out of the organization. This news comes amid a seemingly fierce negotiation between the two sides -- a pattern that we have seen the Lightning execute on multiple occasions -- so we can deduce that those negotiations are the source of Kucherov's frustrations with the club.
Most, if not all, hockey fans instantly started conjuring up hypothetical trades for the 33-year-old who makes $9.5 million this season. This held true for many (if not all) Devils fans, who flocked to trade proposals of their own.
This might be one star the New Jersey Devils can't make work
The thing is, a trade for the best winger in the league is not in the cards for New Jersey, and there are a couple of reasons why.
Firstly, Tampa will almost certainly be looking for players who will contribute to the Stanley Cup aspirations they have for this season and the immediate future beyond. For the Devils, this means one of Jesper Bratt, Timo Meier, or Nico Hischier, all of whom have either no-movement clauses (Hischier and Meier) or full no-trade clauses. Sunny Mehta has apparently told all of the players he will respect their respective clauses, so there's absolutely no reason to speculate about any player doing so.
Even if one of those players were willing to waive their clause to hypothetically play in Tampa, we have to look at the on-ice value of the players relative to their respective cap hits. Kucherov makes $9.5 million this year, and his value in a vacuum for 2026-27 and 2026-27 alone far surpasses that of any Devil not named Jack Hughes, but what is he going to be looking for when his contract expires after this season? Surely Kucherov is one of the few in the league actually deserving of a max-AAV contract.
Given their respective age curves, it seems likely that a front office that thinks as they do will certainly believe that Bratt at $7.85 million or Hischier at $11.7 million is greater relative value than Kucherov at $20-million-plus. Perhaps the only argument that works in the Devils' favor there is Meier and his $8.8 million cap hit, but that too has plenty of surplus value in this cap environment.
Now, if the Devils could somehow swing Kucherov as a rental and for the price of a rental, without needing one of those three included in the deal, then that's a slam-dunk win (unless Arseny Gritsyuk is included, just because the on-ice value he brings relative to his cap hit is astronomical).
The problem with that? It'll probably never happen.
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