New Jersey Devils: Weaponize the cap by signing Mike Hoffman

Mike Hoffman is a weirdly perfect fit with the New Jersey Devils in 2021.

When the New Jersey Devils announced that they’d traded franchise cornerstone Taylor Hall to the Arizona Coyotes for Kevin Bahl, Nick Merkley, Nate Schnarr, a conditional first-round pick in 2020, and a conditional third-round pick in 2021, it marked a significant readjustment to the team’s timetable.

Sure, the team still had some fun veteran players who kept them entertaining to watch, specifically local product Kyle Palmieri and 2019 acquisition Nikita Gusev, but after trying to keep things competitive in the wake of their 2012 Stanley Cup Finals loss, the Devils were finally going full-in on a youth rebuild around former first overall picks Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes. While the team’s new championship window is still a ways away – especially if Hughes continues to underwhelm versus his draft expectations – it’s clear the Devils aren’t a team looking to load up on short-term talent to try to hotshot their way to an eight seed in the 2021 NHL playoffs.

Then again, playing prospects like Hischier and Hughes alongside bottom-six guys with borderline NHL-ability isn’t going to help them get all that much better either. To really push them to the limits of their potential, New Jersey at least needs to load up their roster with enough veteran talents to keep their fans engaged and their players pushing the puck down the ice.

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Enter, Mike Hoffman.

Now, if you’ve somehow missed out on Hoffman’s free agency, allow me to give you a short summary. Since really coming into his own as a member of the Ottawa Senators in 2014, Hoffman has developed into one of the most slap-happy shooters in the NHL. Whether tasked with playing on the left-wing or in the center of a middle-six line, Hoffman has quietly become one of the better under-the-radar offensive forwards in the league – averaging 28 goals and 30 assists in each of the last six seasons. Though Hoffman was eventually traded to the Florida Panthers – thanks to a truly bizarre situation you can read about here – he continued to show out on his new team – recording at least 29 goals and 30 assists in each of his two seasons as a Panthers.

Factor in the knowledge that Hoffman has maintained this level of performance under five different head coaches, and it’s pretty hard not to like the idea of adding the now-31-year-old to any NHL team looking for a true-blue shooter to bolster their offensive attack.

But there’s a reason Hoffman remains unsigned; a singular, very 2020 reason to be exact: The stagnant salary cap.

Yes, with the salary cap set to remain at $81.5 million until 2021-22 and internal revenues expected to remain underwhelming due to a lack of in-person game attendance, teams have been unwilling to hand out the sort of long-term contracts a player like Hoffman typically commands. To make matters worse for the first-time free agent, roughly half of the teams in the NHL right now have less than $1.5 million in available cap space to further bolster their rosters with top-end talent, making it a near-impossibility for Hoffman to land a deal in the $5.5-6.5 million range he was reportedly looking for when the market opened up.

Could Hoffman accept a bargain bin deal to sign with a contender, bolster his value in a deep playoff run, and sign a massive deal next year? I guess anything is possible, but for that to happen, Hoffman needs to play and show out in a similar role to his focal point position with the Panthers.

Why do that as a member of the Boston Bruins – his pursued destination by pretty much everyone – when he could fill the exact same role, maybe even a bigger one, on the Devils while making roughly four times as much money?

Again, with Hall gone, the Devils really don’t have a top-tier shooter, especially on the left side. While it’s totally possible, maybe even likely, that Hischier could see some time playing on the wing next to Hughes, that seems more like a change of pace look than the key to unlocking his NHL potential. Hoffman would give New Jersey a legitimate sniper to take advantage of a well-placed outlet pass from either Hischier or Hughes and provide a solid model for youngsters like Jesper Bratt, Jesper Boqvist, and potentially even 2020 trade deadline acquisition Nolan Foote to learn from.

While the Devils’ $17.19 million in available cap space is kind of a fools gold number, as the team has still to sign their remaining RFAs and commit a non-insignificant sum of money to non-roster players like Boqvist, Nick Merkley, Janne Kuokkanen, and Ty Smith, that doesn’t explicitly mean the team is unequivocally out of the Hoffman race. They just can’t commit long-term financial assets for the short-term windfall of a prolific shooter.

Between you and me, I doubt the Devils would even want to sign Hoffman to a long-term deal anyway. No, the premium, premier, numero uno reason the Devils should be all-in on acquiring Hoffman is to use him as a massive trade chip the team can cash in a few months down the line.

If you’re a Devils fan, you’ve surely heard the term ‘weaponize cap space’ in the last nine months. The concept is an easy one; take on players like Andreas Johnsson from a cap-strapped team like the Toronto Mape Leafs to help them ease their financial burden in exchange for an asset well under market value. Well, my friends, what better way to extract maximum value from a contender than to not only take back a contract they’d like prematurely out of but hand them Mike Flippin’ Hoffman to make the money work? That could be the difference between landing Ryan Murray for an outbound fifth-round pick, and landing said player and a second-round pick without so much as a conditional seventh-rounder leaving the Devils’ war chest.

Is that a calloused way of team building? Eh, maybe so, but it seemed like Hischier and Hughes both had solid connections with both Hall and Blake Coleman, and the team’s previous front office had no problem shipping either player out of town for a small army of under-25-year-old prospects.

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When you’re a rebuilding team in the NHL – or any sports league really – there’s a fine line between fielding a competitive team that allows young players to flourish and remaining bad enough to acquire even more of the league’s most elusive resource. While the New Jersey Devils would surely love to add a few more players like Hirschier, Hughes, and 2020 first-round pick Alexander Holtz to further fortify their future, it would be incredibly unwise to surround such players with borderline players and risk stifling their ceilings as a result. By signing a player like Mike Hoffman – even if it’s just to ship him out a few months later – the Devils sort of get to have their cake and eat it too – which is quite possibly the best possible way to ‘weaponize cap space’ I could imagine. And hey, if Hoffman somehow becomes the next Taylor Hall and unlocks Lindy Ruff’s offense’s upside, the Devils could always extend him to a long-term contract.

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