The New Jersey Devils attempted to take advantage of one team needing to make room on their roster and traded for defenseman Ryan Graves from the Colorado Avalanche.
New Jersey traded the second-round pick that they have acquired from the New York Islanders in the upcoming draft (in the 2020 trade for Andy Greene) and left winger Mikhail Maltsev to Colorado in exchange for Graves, who will immediately slot into one of the allowed defensemen to protected from Seattle in their expansion draft.
Graves scored two goals with thirteen assists in fifty-four games last season in Colorado but scored a career-high nine in 2019-20 for the Avalanche.
The 6'5 defensemen was drafted in the first round by the Rangers in 2013 and made his NHL debut with Colorado in 2019 after being acquired from the Blueshirts at the trade deadline for defenseman Chris Bigras.
Graves is likely to be a top-four defenseman in New Jersey and as mentioned earlier is likely to be one of the Devils' three protected defensemen along with Damon Severson and earlier trade acquisition, Jonas Siegenthaler.
Graves is a big and physical defenseman that accumulates minutes on ice and in the penalty box, and at worst brings a big body that isn't afraid to knock someone around, which should make him a fan favorite in Newark.
Graves is signed for the next two seasons, earning three million for next season and four million for 2022-23, so the trade isn't a one-year stopgap for the defensive group.
With Graves addition to the roster, New Jersey will now expose all three of P.K. Subban, Will Butcher, and Ryan Murray and one of the three could very well be the selection of Seattle from the Devils.
Subban would bring a big name to Seattle and give the Devils more money off the ledger, although the Devils have plenty of cap space already, Murray would make sense as a solid, steady veteran, and Butcher is young enough at 26 to have a chance to rejuvenate his career in a new town and system.
Any of the three would be an easy-to-understand player for the Kraken to select.
The trade of the second-rounder (61) will take the Devils out of the second round in next weeks draft, but there isn't a lot of difference between that choice and the Devils third-rounder (69), so it's not catastrophic to the personnel department, especially when the team owns two first-rounders (theirs and the Islanders at 29).
The Devils also included Mikhail Maltsev in the trade, who scored six goals in thirty-three games last year, two of them in the final four games last season.
I actually liked Maltsev a bit, but I'm not sure that he was a better prospect than several of the players already in the system at left-wing including 2020 first-rounder Alexander Holtz.
New Jersey also re-signed Michael McLeod to a two-year contract worth just under two million total, which may or may not be a sign that McLeod is available for the Kraken in the expansion draft.
The former first-rounder in 2016 scored his first career goals last season and finished with nine goals and six assists in fifty-two games.
No comments:
Post a Comment