For those Devils fans that were looking forward to the deadline for a big move, you may have been very disappointed. For a team that has been stuck near the bottom of the National Hockey League standings for several years now, unloading players for draft capital or acquiring a player to add to the young core of the roster might have seemingly made sense from an outside perspective. So why would General Manager Tom Fitzgerald largely stand pat, with the only move being trading AHLer Nate Schnarr for goaltender Andrew Hammond?
In the last couple of seasons, the Devils have offloaded players such as Sami Vatanen, Andy Greene, and Blake Coleman for prospects and future draft picks. New Jersey had a few similar players they could have gotten decent returns for in the form of Tomas Tatar, P.K. Subban, and Damon Severson. Draft picks for rebuilding teams are extremely valuable, but for a team that has not sniffed the playoffs since 2018, at some point, the rebuilding has to stop.
Over the past few years, New Jersey has continued to stockpile prospects to repair a broken farm system. While young talent will always be valuable in every sport, there comes a time when adding so many new players disrupts continuity that they are trying to build. Yes, perhaps the Devils could have gotten decent returns for some of their veterans. But it is easy to forget about the hidden effect that trading Tatar and Subban would have on the team’s current youth, including Jesper Boqvist and Ty Smith who are linemates of those players. For the first time in a while, the Devils will end their year with a very similar roster to the one that began the season.
This was a vote of confidence from the organization that, while it certainly is not happening this year, they believe that the core of this team will bring the New Jersey Devils back to the playoffs and into contention in the near future. Whether that assessment from Fitzgerald proves to be accurate remains to be seen, but for the first time in a long time, for better or for worse, at least someone is confident in the direction that the Devils are heading.
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