I'll be writing about that signing later but for now I'll finally get around to discussing the Devils draft day trade and their free agency day swap with the Boston Bruins.
On the second day of the NHL draft last week, New Jersey hopes to have solved at least some of their problems in net with the acquisition of Vitek Vanecek from fellow division member Washington.
The teams flipped second-round picks and New Jersey sent Washington a third-rounder for the signing rights to Vanecek, who is a restricted free agent.
The Devils had massive problems in goal last season with Mackenzie Blackwood looking like he had never played before, Jonathan Bernier played in only ten less than effective games, and a parade of players either too young, too old, or vagabond types that were incapable of patching the hole even temporarily.
The 26-year-old Vanecek won twenty games for Washington last season with a 2.67 GAA, a .908 save percentage, and four shutouts in his second season with the Capitals, sharing the position with
Vanecek is hoped to team with a revitalized Blackwood as the Devils goaltending tandem as no one knows what they would receive if anything out of Bernier this season.
Is Vanecek the long-term answer? I doubt it but he seems at least capable of producing similar statistics to his two seasons in Washington and I think the Devils would be pleased with those results.
On the first day of free agency, New Jersey traded former 2015 first-round pick Pavel Zacha to Boston for veteran left wing Erik Haula in a deal that spelled the end of high hopes for Zacha, who did a little of everything as a forward but not enough of anything to be special.
Zacha scored 15 goals with 21 assists last season but was an awful minus twenty-one and scored two fewer goals than in 2020-21 in twenty more games played.
The time may have come to cut Zacha loose and see if he needed a change of scenery.
As for Erik Haula, he's 31 and has one year remaining on his contract, which is worth 2.3 million to Haula and is coming off his second-best season in his career with 18 goals and 26 assists in his first and only season in Boston.
I wonder about older players that exceed their normal statistics playing with a strong team and then move to a lesser one and that's my concern on Haula.
Haula should help the third line a bit but while I understand moving Pavel Zacha might be best for both parties, I'm not sure that I'm expecting Erik Haula for perhaps only one season to be worth Zacha's chances of putting it all together.
As the weekend approaches, I hope to have a look at the Devils free agent signees and the one that got away.
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