Fitzgerald Would Have Served The Devils Better By Doing Nothing At The Trade Deadline

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Devils General Manager Tom Fitzgerald could have approached Friday’s NHL Trade Deadline in two ways.

Though slumping badly and in mourning from the season-ending injury to superstar center Jack Hughes, New Jersey is still in a playoff position, so Fitzgerald had the opportunity, with Hughes’ $8 million AAV on long-term injured reserve to free up extra salary cap space for trades, to show his belief in the group by obtaining a center who could boost the lagging production. This is not as young a team as many make them out to be, so if you have a chance to make the tournament by mortgaging the future a bit, don’t pass it up. Fitzgerald could have felt he owed this hard-working club that much.

Or, Fitzgerald could have gone in the opposite direction, putting his pending free agents up for bids to add to his asset inventory for bigger trade opportunities in the offseason. This team, which had gone 9-12-3 heading into Friday’s home tilt versus NHL-leading Winnipeg when the player who had been on the ice for a ridiculous percentage of its goals was in the lineup, isn’t going anywhere this season. The deadline was a major seller’s market, with depth pieces going for first-rounders. I’d bet Johnathan Kovacevic, though a rental, could have garnered a pretty high pick, maybe even a 2, as a cheap and steady right-handed defenseman. Selling is in Fitzgerald’s wheelhouse anyway.

There were also cons for each case, so…Fitzgerald decided to go way off the reservation.

New Jersey announced a handful of trades on Friday, with the main acquisitions being stay-at-home defenseman Brian Dumoulin from Anaheim and bottom-six center Cody Glass from Pittsburgh. Together, they have produced six goals in 112 NHL games. The cost: A 2025 second-round pick plus a middling prospect (2024 third-round pick Herman Traff) for Dumoulin; and a 2027 third-round pick plus Chase Stillman, a former Fitzgerald first-round bust playing in AHL Utica, and the rights to junior player Max Graham for Glass and 24-year old minor leaguer Jonathan Gruden (no, not that one). As the clock ticked down on the deadline, Fitzgerald also brought over forward Daniel Sprong, who was sent down by Seattle in late December, for a seventh-round pick.

Holy hell. What are we doing here? I get that with Jonas Siegenthaler also out for the season, the blue line was shy a lefty. But surrendering a 2 for Dumoulin’s expiring contract so he can play 19 games is beyond illogical. The Devils already have Brendan Dillon and Siegenthaler locked up to the play the left side for the next two and three seasons, respectively, and Luke Hughes, a special young talent, is heading into his first restricted free agency offseason. Dumoulin is a nice player, but they can’t pay him too.

And what makes Glass, whose career high is 14 goals and 35 points in 2022-23, so special that he’s even worth a 3? In Friday’s press conference, Fitzgerald raved about Glass’s size and speed. Hmm, he said the same thing about Paul Cotter in the preseason and look how that turned out. Glass’s piddling production screams a bigger and younger version of Justin Dowling.

The reality is that none of the acquisitions are difference makers, which makes Fitzgerald’s expenditures of Draft capital a serious case of mismanagement, something a GM who worries he could be on the way out might do to report his proactiveness to ownership. “See, I tried to get them the help they needed,”

As for Kovacevic, Fitzgerald extended him for five years at a $4 million AAV, thereby blocking the path for high 2022 Draft picks Simon Nemec (No. 2 overall) and Seamus Casey (No. 46) to make the big club barring an injury. Like the left side, the righties are stacked with Dougie Hamilton ($9 million AAV through 2027-28), Brett Pesce ($5.5 million through 2029-30), and now Kovacevic.

Fitzgerald gave a, “It’s good to have options” reply when asked about this situation, but it probably didn’t feel good to Nemec, who proceeded to have perhaps the worst period a defenseman could deliver in the final eight minutes of Winnipeg’s 6-1 thrashing on Friday night. Stepping up for the injured Hamilton, Nemec was directly responsible for three goals against via the full gamut of defensemen’s gaffes in the portfolio—an awful giveaway, getting beat to the outside, and a failure to tie up a stick at the goal mouth—as the Jets piled it on Devils goalie Jacob Markstrom.

Nemec, 21, went on the record to a reporter from his native Slovenia earlier in the season about his unhappiness with his minor league assignment. We don’t know his thoughts on Friday’s events because no one bothered to ask.

While it’s up to the player, not Fitzgerald, to earn his NHL lineup spot, what is Nemec supposed to think about the team’s commitment to him now? We don’t know if Nemec was included in Fitzgerald’s offers for better players—he claimed the Devils “came in second” for his top trade target—but if Nemec was but didn’t warrant attraction before, his value surely just went down another notch or three.

So where are the Devils today as compared to yesterday? No different, which means Fitzgerald would have served his team better if he just did nothing at the deadline.