General manager Tom Fitzgerald hopes that he has addressed that problem after swinging an inter-divisional trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins to add John Marino in exchange for defenseman Ty Smith and a 2023 third-round draft pick.
The twenty-five-year-old Marino played in eighty-one games for Pittsburgh, scoring one goal, finishing with twenty-four assists and a plus one in the plus-minus rating.
Marino finished third in the Calder Trophy voting (rookie of the year) in 2019-20, scoring six goals with twenty assists in the shortened by pandemic season in fifty-six games.
Marino's play has slipped a bit according to followers over the last two seasons but at 25, Marino could return to his rookie form.
Marino is expected to slot into the second defensive pairing and while Pittsburgh needed to clear some cap space quickly to re-sign Evgeny Malkin, that doesn't mean that Marino is overpaid.
Actually, Marino is locked up under a very friendly contract that will pay him 4.4 million for each of the next five seasons with the final three seasons under a limited no-trade clause (Marino will pick eight teams at the beginning of each season that he cannot be moved to without his permission).
The Devils traded former first-round selection, Ty Smith, to Pittsburgh and I'm sad to see Smith go as I had high expectations for him as an offensive blueliner.
Smith was the Devils top pick in 2018 and the Devils were hoping that Smith could develop into at least a second-pairing defender that would be strong on the power play.
Smith's play in his rookie season of 2020-21 was promising ( two goals, twenty-one assists, seven power-play points and an acceptable minus six in forty-eight games for a non-playoff team) but he regressed badly in his second season with five goals, fifteen assists, four power-play points and an awful minus twenty-six in sixty-six games.
Smith has only one season remaining on his entry-level contract and with the Devils having to make decisions on the future of Damon Severson and Ryan Graves with contracts that end at the conclusion of the upcoming season, the Devils didn't need to have questions about the future of three of their top six defenders.
I'm not ready to give up on Ty Smith yet but the Devils needed a little more certainty for the next few seasons and if Smith is the player that played in Newark last year and not the promising rookie, the Devils did well in getting a steady, cost-controlled defenseman in John Marino.
And for a team that was trying to move salary, Pittsburgh did well in getting a talented and still young (22) defenseman that could easily improve with a change of scenery, and adding a third-rounder doesn't hurt the Penguins side of the swap either.
In other words, this could be a deal that both teams are able to profit from over the next few seasons.
All About The Jersey writes of the trade with more statistical detail.
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