Devils Accede To Reality With Deadline Sales
Goalie Jumble Fixed Nothing
You could tell Tom Fitzgerald was torn.
On one hand, the Devils General Manager had the wherewithal to initiate moves prior to Friday’s NHL trade deadline to improve his team for its final 19 games this season. However, after watching it lose six of its last nine contests to fall into 11th place in the Eastern Conference, six points behind Tampa Bay in the race for the final Wild Card seed, was that the most prudent plan for the moment?
In the end, I believe Fitzgerald made the right call, dealing pending unrestricted free agents Tyler Toffoli and Colin Miller to Winnipeg in separate trades for draft pick compensation. Instead of throwing good money after bad by paying the alleged ransom to upgrade the team’s lousy goalkeeping, Fitzgerald punted everything to the future (though his goalie gymnastics in the deadline’s waning hours seemed puzzling—see below).
Fitzgerald claimed in his post deadline press conference that he could have gone the other way had the fact pattern been different. He was reportedly in on Calgary goalie Jacob Markstrom—at a certain price point that never emerged. Fitzgerald also said he entered into negotiations that would have extended Toffoli, but reached an impasse over term before it got serious.
Once those developments occurred, Fitzgerald really had no choice but to seek out the best bid for his leading goal scorer. While some might call the consideration of a 2025 second round pick and a 2024 third round pick for Toffoli underwhelming, especially with New Jersey retaining 50% of his salary, it’s tough to prove when no 1s were moved all day for a rental. It was probably unreasonable to expect the Devils to get back the equivalent of the 2023 third rounder plus rising wing Yegor Sharangovich that brought Toffoli to New Jersey last June.
Fitzgerald did sell higher with Miller, a defenseman the Devils obtained from Dallas in the offseason in exchange for a 2025 fifth round pick. He returned a 2026 fourth round pick from the Jets. Too bad Fitzgerald couldn’t add Brendan Smith to the package—gratis.
The moves open up opportunities for a few of New Jersey’s younger players. I would hope interim Head Coach Travis Green will, for example, give underperforming 2020 No. 7 overall pick Alexander Holtz a run in the top six, including more power play time, and call up defenseman Santeri Hatakka, who performed capably in an earlier stint this season, from AHL Utica.
At this stage, the Devils seemed to realize they have nothing more to lose this season. Maybe if they hadn’t waited so long, they could have been a position for Fitzgerald to choose the alternative path.
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Sone Devils fans’ heads might have exploded with the flurry of goalie trades Fitzgerald executed as the deadline clock wound down.
Everyone knows that New Jersey’s weakness in net this season has weighed down the team’s position in the standings. Only two teams have registered a lower save percentage this season. Akira Schmid, Nico Daws, and Vitek Vanecek rank 44th, 55th, and 62nd, respectively, in NaturalStatTrick.com’s goals saved above average at all strengths metric among the 68 NHL goalies who have played at least 10 games this season.
Other clubs knew how desperate the Devils were and reportedly adjusted the market accordingly.
So what did Fitzgerald end up doing? He expended a conditional 2025 third-round pick (that could be upgraded to a second rounder) for Montreal’s Jake Allen. Then, Fitzgerald sent Vanecek plus a 2025 seventh round pick to hockey hell San Jose to acquire Kaapo Kahkonen. Allen and Kahkonen are ranked 56th and 58th, respectively, in GSAA.
Um, what? Fitzgerald can spin this all he wants but he really only accomplished two things with these maneuvers: He saved just under $1.5 million against next season’s salary cap, hardly enough to make the “big splash” he alluded to on Friday, by swapping Vanecek for Allen. And Kahkonen will occupy a roster slot for the remainder of this season so that Schmid and Daws can be stopped from playing too many games such that it would make them subject to waivers before being demoted to Utica.
So the Devils started the day with bad goalies and finished the day with two different bad goalies. Kahkonen was so putrid in allowing seven goals over the final two periods in San Jose’s loss to New Jersey on February 27 that I thought he might be the Sharks‘ emergency goalie. He was flopping around like a fish out of water—and was just about as effective as one in stopping pucks.
To be fair, Kahkonen was probably in shell shock after all the barrages he had faced all season and he has posted a .832 high danger save percentage, good for 15th place this season.
Allen, meanwhile, has come a long way down from his days with the 2019 Stanley Cup champion Blues. His goals against average and save percentage have decreased every season since.
Allen may be regaled as a locker room leader, but you don’t want him playing 40 games for the Devils next season, and not just because that plus the team qualifying for the playoffs are the conditions upon which New Jersey must fork over their 2 in 2025 as opposed to a 3.
In other words, Fitzgerald will be back at the goaltender drawing board come summer. Hopefully with better outcomes.