New Jersey Devils: Top-3 2021 NHL trade deadline assets
These three New Jersey Devils may not be long for the team in 2021.
There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the New Jersey Devils in 2021.
The team has heart, plenty of salary cap, and three incredibly fun young players primed to take a leap moving forward in Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes, and MacKenzie Blackwood. If a few things break their way, it’s entirely possible the team could shock the world, punch above their weight class, and maybe even vie for a bottom-four playoff position.
But if we’re being honest and objective here, it’s just as likely – probably more so – that the Devils are a bad, bad, not very good hockey team who are the opposite of buyers when the trade deadline rolls around – whenever that may be. If that happens, we may have to watch some of New Jersey’s older players say au revoir a la Blake Coleman and Taylor Hall last season.
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I know, I know, do you think I like being the bearer of bad news? I’m a Devils fan too, for goodness sake!
While I would like nothing more than to see Hischier score 40 goals, Hughes record 50 points, and P.K. Subban revert back to the player he was back in Nashville in 2017-18, writing it into existence won’t make it be.
But hey, don’t feel too bad about the presumed plight of the New Jersey Devils. They’ve amassed a ton of assets over the last year thanks to said trades and could further fill out their minor league ranks with a ton of future talents like 2020 first-round pick Alexander Holtz and ex-Tampa Bay Lightning prospect Nolan Foote.
With that in mind, in order to acquire premier young assets like Hall, Hischier, and Hughes, sometimes you have to say goodbye to new guys, big-time free agency additions, and fan-favorite lifers alike. Fortunately, with seven players currently set to hit free agency in one way or another in 2020, there are some obvious players to pick from.
Ryan Murray
What? Ryan Murray has been a member of the New Jersey Devils for all of two months, and he’s already on the trade block?
Well hey, they don’t call it the hockey business for nothin’.
The former second overall selection in the 2012 NHL Draft, Murray played all seven of his professional seasons as a member of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Though he’s never quite lived up to his initial draft pedigree, having failed to score five goals or 30 points in any of said seasons, Murray is a solid if not unspectacular left defenseman who should immediately slot in next to 2012 second-round pick Damon Severson on Lindy Ruff’s second line.
For the low-low price of a 2021 fifth-round pick, the Devils were able to land a perfectly fine player to supplement Will Butcher on the left side and a quality trade piece who could see his value rise considerably depending on what the NHL’s other 30 teams look like at the deadline.
With Murray set to hit the open market at the end of the season, if some playoff-bound team comes calling offering a four, a three, or even a pick-plus-player, you kind of have to take it, right?
With quality young players like Ty Smith and Kevin Bahl waiting patiently in the wings for an opportunity, an out of it Devils squad may opt to avoid paying an average defenseman making $4.6 million a year and flip him for an appreciating asset down the line.
Kyle Palmieri
Files this one under the ‘fan favorites’ category.
Since being acquired by the New Jersey Devils for a second and third-round pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, Kyle Palmieri has almost immediately ingratiated himself to the Garden State like he’s a native-born son.
Why? Well, because in a way, he sort of is.
Though he was technically born in Smithtown, New York, Palmieri grew up in Montvale, New Jersey, and actually played for the team’s minor league club in the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament in 2004. From there, Palmieri played a single season of college hockey at Notre Dame before being drafted 26th overall by the Anaheim Ducks in 2009 – where he played for the first five seasons of his NHL career.
Since returning to Jersey, Palmieri has been the model of consistency – scoring between 24-30 goals and 20-27 assists in each of his five campaigns with the red and black. Palmieri was even named to the 2019 All-Star game as an injury replacement for his then-teammate Taylor Hall, a fact that feels lifetimes ago when you consider everything that’s happened between then and now.
While it’d be nice to keep Palmieri with the Devils for the remainder of his career for selfish reasons alone, if the two parties can’t come to a contract extension that works for everyone – aka one that keeps him well paid while the team will be bad but gets him off the books when they’d like to use cap space on signing the next Taylor Hall-esque free agent – the soon-to-be-30-year-old may find himself shipped out midseason to a team in need of a reliable right-winger.
Fortunately, if Palmieri was to be made available at the deadline, there’d be about a half dozen teams banging down the Devils’ door looking to get him on their roster in time for the playoffs – most of whom wouldn’t be on his 8-team no-trade list. If the team can fetch a similar haul to the picks they gave up back in 2015 for Palmieri’s services, his next trip to New Jersey may be to visit family during the offseason.
Corey Crawford
I feel really conflicted about even including Corey Crawford in this list if for no other reason than that I’ll surely get a hard time in the comments section, but objectively speaking, it’s hard not to consider the ex-Chicago Blackhawks netminder the New Jersey Devils’ best move-able assets.
Yes, I know Crawford has a full-on no-trade clause and could veto a move to any team in the NHL, both good or bad, but when has that ever stopped a good player from being moved before? If the Devils are bad and Crawford is losing starts to MacKenzie Blackwood – the team’s goalie of the future – Crawford may be willing to remove some names from his list to give him a chance to compete for a third Stanley Cup.
Would it be a cruel blow to lose Crawford? Most definitely. He’s undoubtedly the team’s top offseason addition – no offense to Ryan Murry and Andreas Johnsson – and could be the difference between an eighth seed playoff berth and an early offseason for Lindy Ruff’s squad. But here’s the thing, Crawford is probably gone at the end of the season anyway, as he’ll all but surely be selected by the Seattle Kraken in the expansion draft a la Marc-Andre Fleury in 2017 thanks to his trade clause becoming modified.
If a really good team believes themselves a goalie away from being in the Finals come
February
whenever the league sets the 2021 trade deadline, Crawford may be willing to pick and choose a new team that could protect him heading into the expansion draft over becoming a Kraken without having a legitimate say in the matter.
Make no mistake about it, the Devils (probably) won’t be protecting one year of Crawford over one of their young forwards, so it’s not really about if he’ll be moving on from New Jersey but when and what the team gets back for his services.
Next. Florida Panthers fans are going to love Anthony DuClair. dark
While it’d be a tough blow to watch Corey Crawford – or any of these players for that matter – leave at the trade deadline, their collective jobs in 2020-21 are to model good behavior for the New Jersey Devils’ young players like Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes, Ty Smith, and MacKenzie Blackwood. If they can accomplish that feat and land the team future assets in the process, well that, my friends, is just Sunday Gravy.