Instead of hunting through the bargain bin, Tom Fitzgerald should see what he has first with this Devils roster before making additional moves
I think that if you asked anyone who follows the New Jersey Devils regularly about the team heading into the 2024-25 season, they’d agree that they made improvements at several key areas this offseason. But if there was one area where they’d like to see them add one more player, it would probably be another forward somewhere in the middle six.
It’s not that the Devils hadn’t already made additions in that area. They added Stefan Noesen on the first day of free agency, and they reunited with Tomas Tatar after the initial wave of free agency passed. But I do think those two players are viewed as third line wingers, and that there are some people who have reservations about whether the Devils forwards are good enough once you get past the top-heavy portion of the roster.
Part of that is Ondrej Palat simply being…..fine, I guess….through the first two years of his five-year contract. Part of that is the Devils admitting defeat on the Alexander Holtz draft pick and shipping him off to Vegas for Paul Cotter, who is more of a bottom six forward than someone you ideally want playing higher up in the lineup.
The Devils paid Palat to be a Top Six forward. They drafted Holtz to be a Top Six forward. Neither has been, and one of them is now no longer here. As much as I like Palat as a player, I would concede that he hasn’t been worth his $6M AAV to this point through the first two years of that deal. We can argue all day whether or not the Devils gave Holtz a fair shot, but the player shares responsibility for not earning the trust of the coaching staff and management. Either way, the Devils blew a prime asset in a 7th overall pick on a player who is no longer in their organization four years later, which is far from ideal when picking that high in the draft in the first place.
Chris wrote last week about whether the Devils should or shouldn’t be in the mix for PTOs for certain veteran free agent forwards. I took a look at whether the Devils should add another forward as well shortly after the free agency dust settled. The reality is that there’s just not much out there, and while I respect the careers of veterans like Max Pacioretty and James van Riemsdyk, I don’t really see what they’re bringing to the table at this point.
I’m not trying to dismiss Chris’s thought process for suggesting the Devils consider going the PTO route and continue tinkering with the roster. Far from it, as I would guess that these are indeed conversations that the Devils have had internally at some point with these players available. The NHL general manager’s job is never done, even when its mostly done. I’m just saying that the Lee Stempniak PTO success stories are rare when PTOs actually do work out. There are exceptions of course….there’s always exceptions, but generally speaking, most PTOs don’t work out. And most players who are signing PTOs are doing so as a last resort to stay in the league. On one hand, that’s great as you don’t have to question the effort of someone trying to hang on to his spot in the league. On the other hand, we’re talking about players who are just about at the end of the line, at least in terms of being a quality NHL quality player.
The players that are still available on the open market are all there for one reason or another. Maybe they’re poor skaters. Maybe they’re too one-dimensional where they’re “offense-first, offense-only” scoring wingers. Maybe its the opposite where they haven’t shown the ability to consistently score at the NHL level. Maybe they’re too old or too injured or they’re not “good in the room” or they’re simply just not NHL-caliber players anymore.
I don’t think the Devils need anymore poor skaters, or “offense-first, offense-only” types. If they did, they probably would’ve kept Alexander Holtz and not traded him. The fact that the Devils gave him up with a year remaining on his ELC when they’re a team brushing up against the cap ceiling for a third consecutive season should tell you all you need to know whether or not they want or need those types of players going forward when the goal is to win hockey games right now. I’m not trying to bury Holtz, but giving up on him only to turn around and sign someone like Filip Zadina or Kevin Labanc or Mike Hoffman to a PTO doesn’t make a ton of sense on the surface. These players aren’t good enough to play for the worst team in the league in San Jose anymore, but I’m supposed to believe they’re the missing piece the Devils need?
The Devils are at a point in their timeline where the time for experimenting and kicking the tires on guys should be over. Instead of projects and maybes if x, y, and z all go right, they need players who can play specific roles and do them well. If you’re a scoring winger, you need to be able to score. If you’re a grinding, energy, pain in the neck to play against bottom six type, you need to be able to do that effectively. If you’re a big body, you need to play like a big body and not shrink in the corners. They don’t need players with glaring, obvious flaws in their games like a lack of a skating ability, a bad 200 foot game, a diminished scoring touch, or a lack of willingness to engage physically. And the UFA market is littered with those types of players at this stage of the offseason.
Obviously, a lot of what I’m about to write is dependant on a variety of factors, but if the Devils want to add further to this group, it would make the most sense to see what the team is through 50, 55, 60 games, evaluate the roster at that point, see if injuries force their hand, and then make any additions at the trade deadline.
We don’t know what Dawson Mercer’s next deal is going to look like, but it will have a direct impact on how much cap space is leftover to work with and how much cap space the Devils are going to be able to accrue throughout the course of the 2024-25 season. It’s a little complicated to explain how cap accrual works, but the easiest way to look at it is this. The more cap space the Devils have entering the season, the more cap space the accrue throughout the course of the season. The more cap space they accrue gives them more cap space at the trade deadline to go out and make potential additions at the deadline. As long as the Devils aren’t utilizing LTIR to go over the cap, they should be accruing space so long as they remain under the cap. There are ways to manipulate things to accrue even more cap space, such as paper transactions to send eligible players down to the AHL on off days (or whatever the Rangers did two years ago to clear enough space for Patrick Kane), but as long as they’re literally not spending every last dollar available to them right up to the cap ceiling, there should be room to go out and make a modest addition at the deadline. Perhaps a couple modest additions if they want to get creative (having other teams retain salary, trading away anyone deemed expendable, etc).
It’s probably too early to look at which players are pending UFAs and who might be available at the deadline, but I think we have a pretty good idea of what teams will be good and what teams will not. Which means that we have a pretty good idea of what players are likely going to be available via trade.
Obviously, the Devils have to do their part and play well enough to be in the race and warrant trade deadline reinforcements. But this group has shown they can do that before because they did it two years ago. That Devils team had a couple veteran wingers who people were iffy on in Tomas Tatar and Andreas Johnsson in their middle six, along with unproven younger players like Jesper Boqvist, Fabian Zetterlund, and Alex Holtz in the mix. What ultimately happened? Johnsson was more or less banished to Utica when he failed to make the team out of training camp and stayed there until he was traded along with Zetterlund in the Timo Meier deal. And even though the BMW line was still very much a thing that existed, for better or worse, that didn’t stop Fitzgerald from going out and adding Curtis Lazar.
We don’t know exactly what this Devils team is going to need because we haven’t seen the 2024-25 iteration play a game yet. That said, we do have an idea of what they might need. If they need a middle six scoring winger, perhaps that guy could be Frank Vatrano (although I’d prefer a bigger body and a heavier style of play to go along with scoring). If they need a center because the Curtis Lazar experiment isn’t working or perhaps they want to move Erik Haula to wing again, perhaps that guy is Nick Bjugstad. If the idea is that they need one more compete, energy, size, can-wear-a-lot-of-different hats player, there’s no shortage of those types of guys as rental options from Brandon Tanev to Yanni Gourde to Jordan Greenway. That’s just naming a few potential options, but they’re all better options than what is currently available on the open market a few weeks out from training camp. And if Tom Fitzgerald sticks to his history of preferring to target players with some control via trade, which is something he did with previous trades for Timo Meier, Curtis Lazar, Jake Allen, Jacob Markstrom, and others…..it widens the pool of candidates.
I don’t anticipate Fitzgerald making a deal for another potential core piece like he did two seasons ago with the Meier deal. That was an opportunity to add a perennial All-Star caliber Top Six scoring winger with size in his mid 20s that the Devils sorely lacked, and I doubt Fitzgerald has any regrets over that one. The Devils Top Six is mostly set now though, and they used the flexibility that they had this summer to add experience to the back end. The Devils might be done with splash moves, but that doesn’t mean they’re done making moves. I do expect this team to be in the playoff race and I do expect them to make any additions at that point once it becomes clear what they need.
I can appreciate the sentiment that an NHL general manager’s work is never done and that they should always be looking to improve. I can also understand the argument that there’s little to no harm in bringing in somebody on a PTO. You don’t HAVE to actually sign the player, after all. And even if you do and things don’t work out, we’re talking about a one-year deal for what is likely a league minimum salary that probably winds up getting traded for a bag of pucks or buried if its not working out 30 games into the season.
If there was anyone on the open market worth signing, they likely would’ve signed weeks ago. I don’t think the Devils need to be in the business of seeing if a 35-year old Max Pacioretty has anything left in the tank when they’ve already made one of those types of signings already this summer bringing Tomas Tatar back. While there is little harm in extending a PTO, its unlikely any of this year’s candidates moves the needle enough in a positive manner, and there’s a reasonable chance they’d do more harm than good when its all said and done. The Devils would be better off trusting that they did enough this summer to get the team back on track. Then, if they need to make any tweaks, doing so with the knowledge of what this team is after a fairly significant sample size of games and with a better player pool available to select from. The Devils need to do their part and make sure that its worth it for Fitzgerald to buy at the deadline, and I suspect that they indeed will.