Coming Out Of The Olympic Break Means One Thing For Floundering Devils: The Countdown To Trade Deadline Sale Has Begun
Due to COVID-19 outbreaks and a league schedule that called for time off for NHL All-Star weekend as well as the Olympics, the Devils so far have had breaks between games of nine days, five days, five days, and now eight days.
The cumulative effect of all the stops and starts has been the dragging out of yet another frustrating season in New Jersey. With their march through their final 32 games starting up on Thursday with a trip to Pittsburgh, the Devils (17-28-5), who sport the league’s fourth-worst points percentage, have a virtually 0% chance of engineering a turnaround to vault into the playoff picture, according to models, which would mark the ninth time in the last ten seasons that they have failed to qualify for a berth.
Smack in the middle of the Devils’ annual Running Out The String comes the NHL trade deadline, where it is assumed that General Manager Tom Fitzgerald will once again sell off pieces to acquire future assets.
Who are in this season’s Devils’ catalog of items to go? Here are the best bets to be wearing new sweaters by March 21:
1) P.K. Subban
It would be GM malpractice if Subban finished out the season in New Jersey. The defenseman is a pending unrestricted free agent who can be replaced by a much cheaper version. If the Devils have to eat part of Subban’s $9 million AAV to improve their compensation in a trade, so what? The team is already projected to be about $7.3 million below the salary cap and, A) it’s not like they’re going to be adding anyone of consequence before year end, and B) You can’t take it with you into next season. Subban was already paid his $6 million signing bonus, so the only cash a new team would be on the hook for would be the prorated portion of his $2 million salary. Ergo, this is only an accounting problem, not something that should torpedo a fair trade for an experienced rental defenseman.
Subban, 32, has done so much for the area off the ice through his philanthropy and community service, but he has not been good at his main job, which is to help the Devils win games. No one expected him to match his production from his younger days as a Norris Trophy finalist, but his mere 15 goals and 39 assists in 159 games as a Devil haven’t come close to offsetting all his misdeeds in the defensive zone in his two-plus seasons.
Better that the Devils allow a younger player (NOT Christian Jaros) to take those minutes down the stretch. Let’s see what Reilly Walsh, who is a similarly offensive-minded right-handed defenseman, has learned in his two professional seasons.
2) Pavel Zacha
I remember former Devils GM Ray Shero asking the media for patience with his No. 6 overall selection from the 2015 Draft. He tried to compare Zacha with Philadelphia’s Sean Couturier, who didn’t blossom into a bonafide star until his seventh season. Well, this is technically Zacha’s seventh season (he played one game as an 18-year old, a year earlier than Couturier’s debut) and, if anything, he has stumbled instead of taking a leap forward.
Zacha started out fine, with 12 points in his first 17 games. Since November 25, however, he has limped along with just 4 goals and 7 assists over his next 30 games.
Devils coach Lindy Ruff has given Zacha every opportunity to get going, playing him on top lines and on the power play (only three forwards have received more ice time with the man advantage than Zacha during this slump) yet Ruff has gotten very little in return for his largesse.
Oh, and let’s not compare the value of what Couturier, who has been receiving Selke Trophy votes since his rookie season and won the award in 2019-20, does defensively with Zacha, who isn’t even getting shifts on the penalty kill or taking a bunch of defensive zone faceoffs any more.
Apparently, other teams have been investigating potential trades for Zacha, with Vancouver being the most prominent suitor among the reports. Zacha will be a restricted free agent after the season, so an acquiring team won’t have to worry too much that this would purely be a rental situation. If the Canucks really want to exchange their own problem-child pending restricted free agent Brock Boeser for Zacha, I say get it done, Fitz.
3) Jimmy Vesey
As the Devils’ only other pending unrestricted free agent expected to suit up on Thursday, Vesey may be the subject of a few calls to Fitzgerald. He’s cheap, having been signed in training camp to a PTO, and he has 12 games of playoff experience from a season with the Rangers. He’s also adjusted his approach to the game, becoming more of a defensive plugger instead of the elite goal scorer he was as the nation’s Hobey Baker winner while at Harvard.
Though he hasn’t been all that effective in New Jersey, with just seven goals in 46 games, Ruff seems to like him—among Devils forwards, only Michael McLeod has received more penalty kill ice time, and that’s because McLeod takes almost every draw, and is third in blocked shots—and he wouldn’t fetch much in an auction for his services. So it wouldn’t be shocking to see him hang around until the bitter end. (Put an emphasis on “bitter.”)