Jesper Bratt, Tyce Thompson, and Vitek Vanecek have filed for arbitration. According to Capfriendly.com, Devils are roughly $13M under the salary cap. Miles Wood and Jesper Boqvist are also restricted free agents that need to be signed.
Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald already has been very busy this offseason. He traded Pavel Zacha to the Boston Bruins for veteran centerman Erik Haula. After losing out on the Johnny Hockey sweepstakes, he signed coveted free agent winger Ondrej Palat to a 5-year, $30M front loaded deal. Then this past weekend, he shipped off defenseman Ty Smith and 2023 third round pick to Pittsburgh for defenseman John Marino.
Aside from signing the remaining RFAs, is Tom Fitzgerald done wheeling and dealing?
It appears that the Devils will be using most of their remaining cap space this season to get every player under team control signed for this upcoming season. It begs the question: With newly acquired Marino under contract for five years at a reasonable price and does that make Damon Severson possibly trade material from now till next season’s NHL trade deadline?
Severson has one more year remaining on his contract with a cap hit of $4.16M per Capfriendly.com. He will certainly command a hefty raise and has said in the past he wants to stay in New Jersey. But the Devils are in need of a top six winger.
Things could get interesting from now till the season opener in Philadelphia.
Podcast
Last night, we discussed all of the deals made by the Devils since the start of free agency.
How do you grade Tom Fitzgerald so far?
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Sam Woo is co-host and executive producer of the Let's Go Devils Podcast which can be heard live every Sunday at 9pm ET and Wednesday at 8:30pm ET.