The New Jersey Devils have been an interesting team to watch for the last few offseasons. With Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier in place as franchise cornerstones up the middle, it has been obvious that the front office wants to put a rebuild behind them and start competing in the Metropolitan Division.
In 2021, the team went hard after one of the top free agents available and signed Dougie Hamilton to a seven-year, $63M contract to be patrolling their blueline, potentially for the rest of his career. That deal hasn’t worked out exactly as planned, with Hamilton playing just 62 games in his first season, but it hasn’t deterred them from chasing more big fish.
The team was in the running for Johnny Gaudreau when free agency rolled around this year, and now Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic reports that New Jersey general manager Tom Fitzgerald also tried to acquire Matthew Tkachuk from the Calgary Flames before he was ultimately traded to the Florida Panthers.
Tkachuk, who was unwilling to sign a long-term deal in Calgary, had given the team a short list of places where an extension was possible, thus giving them the best return. Florida was on that list, along with Colorado, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Vegas, and St. Louis, but New Jersey was not.
Still, the fact that they were going after big-ticket free agents and top trade names shows exactly how serious the Devils are about competing in the short term. The team is entering this season with just a tiny bit of cap space (they ended up pivoting from Gaudreau to Ondrej Palat while acquiring other names like John Marino and Vitek Vanecek), but that could be drastically different next year.
Jonathan Bernier, Damon Severson, Ryan Graves, Tomas Tatar, Andreas Johnsson, Miles Wood, and Erik Haula are all unrestricted free agents after this season, opening up a huge amount of cap space for the Devils to work with. They went after Hamilton last offseason, Gaudreau and Tkachuk this year, and will have plenty of flexibility to land a big fish a year from now.
While a player like Nathan MacKinnon likely isn’t going to get anywhere close to the open market, there are several outstanding players still unsigned for 2023-24. Free agency looks a lot different now than it will in June, but you have to believe that the Devils are already putting together a list of potential targets. Patrick Kane, Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko, David Pastrnak, Dylan Larkin, Matt Dumba, Bo Horvat, Joe Pavelski, and plenty of others are currently scheduled for unrestricted free agency, though some are more likely than others to go unsigned throughout the year.
It will be interesting to see how this year’s performance impacts how the Devils operate next summer. With second-overall pick Simon Nemec waiting in the wings, youngsters like Dawson Mercer already showing huge upside, and a goaltender in Vanecek brought in to stabilize the crease, the Devils might already be substantially better. If the past is any indication, they’re going to try hard to land another marquee player to join that group at some point.
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