Players from the Trade Board the Devils Should Target & Avoid

With Daily Faceoff's first trade board put out, who are some names the Devils should target, and who should they keep away from?

May 29, 2025

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Frank Seravalli put out Daily Faceoff’s first trade board of the 2025-26 NHL season yesterday morning, putting 20 names out there who are likely to be traded, based on sources that he has.

Of course, the natural next step, for me, is to think about where the New Jersey Devils fit into all of this. They had an entry of their own on the list: Erik Haula, number 16 on the list, but the more intriguing cogitation lay in who the Devils should and should not acquire.

To be honest with you, there were only a couple of names I would thoroughly be against on the trade bait list. The others seemed either tantalizing, palatable, exorbitantly unlikely (we’ll get into one of those later), or outright irrelevant.

Without further ado, let’s get into who I would target and avoid from this list, if I were in charge of the Devils.

Target: JJ Peterka (#1)

#1 on the trade bait list, and in the hearts of many a Devils fan, is JJ Peterka of the Buffalo Sabres. I’ve written about the 23-year-old German-born winger ad nauseam, so I’ll keep this one (relatively) brief.

Simply put, I’m not sure there’s a better fit stylistically for Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt. Peterka shoots a ton and shoots well, with pinpoint accuracy and heaviness in all shot types. He has a penchant for supplying high-danger chances, either for himself by virtue of getting into open space to pounce on an opportunity or by facilitating plays to his teammates with heady, tape-to-tape passes.

The cost of acquisition will be high, as it should be for a player who just put together the best statistical season of his career (27 goals, 68 total points in 77 games) and looks as though he’s going to take another step forward with the right cast around him. With an offer sheet seeming imminent for Peterka, the Sabres will have to move him before July 1 if they want the haul that he’s worth.

The Devils would be wise to keep him atop their trade boards.

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Target: Lukas Reichel (#13)

This was an interesting entry onto the list that I didn’t really expect in the slightest. With the Chicago Blackhawks firmly being in the midst of a rebuild and needing young talent to build around, Lukas Reichel finds himself #13 on the trade bait list. The now 23-year-old 17th overall selection from the 2020 NHL Entry Draft hasn’t quite put it all together at the NHL level yet, having a career-high of just 22 points and being relegated to a mostly bottom-six role this past season.

There’s a player there, though, and one line in particular stood out to me from Seravalli’s scoop:

“He won’t be expensive but he’s still relatively young.”

If the acquisition cost is truly inexpensive, there’s a high-ceiling player to be had here, even if that potential is still untapped.

I’ll be honest; the on-ice impacts are really, really rough. Evolving Hockey has Reichel ranked in the 7th percentile for overall goals above replacement (GAR). I’m a proponent of doing the little things right and having it eventually turn into results, and the process with Reichel is a good one.

Put briefly, he is a transition monster. He excels at getting the puck from zone to zone with possession, and it’s almost exclusively because of his bonkers speed. In 2024-25, despite missing 12 games, Reichel ranked in the 95th (!!) percentile for speed bursts of 20+ mph, totaling 198 as compared to the league average of 76.5. His top speed landed in the 85th percentile (23.04 mph). Here are his zone entry microstats from this past season:

I mean, that in and of itself is pretty tantalizing for a player getting fourth-line minutes.

Then, there’s the undeniable skill. Reichel has hands, legit playmaking chops, an underrated, if underutilized, shot, and the IQ to put it all together when things are meshing. He works hard, is an avid backchecker, and never gives up on a play. As with almost all 23-year-old NHLers, though, the struggle is with consistency. He certainly has the tools to succeed and has put it together for stretches where he’s looked like a bona fide top-six player, but has otherwise failed to do so.

Again, though, he might just need a change of scenery and a bit of TLC, because there is absolutely a good player in there. His microstatistical profile from his rookie season, one in which he played just 11 games, shows that:

That’s a damn promising showing from a then-20-year-old. If he can be had for cheap, he’d be pretty high up on my list.

Avoid: Jonathan Marchessault (#5)

Last off-season, the Devils were in the running for veteran winger and Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Marchessault. Just one off-season later, and he is #5 on the trade board after a wholly disastrous season from the Nashville Predators.

In my opinion, he would be a rancid get.

I get the concept of acquiring him, I really do. Marchesseault is a “proven playoff guy.” He plays hard, and he can score. The problems are the aging curve and the contract.

Marchessault is already one of the slowest players in the league, logging fewer than half the league average of speed bursts of 20+ mph and having a top speed almost 1.0 mph slower than the mean. That’s only going to get worse over time. Sure, he still managed to score 21 goals and 56 total points, which is all fine and well, but you can’t chance the prospect of decline if you’re the Devils, and at 34 years of age, Marchessault has already shown a steep decline in the quality of his play.

Take a look at his tracked data from just three years ago:

He was still a below-average skater then, too, but has seen a steady decline in both top speed (down 0.6mph) and 20+ mph speed bursts (down seven) in the three seasons since. Now, look at his tracked data from this past season:

Looking at the two data sets, there is an interesting case study to be had about aging curves. Marchessault is still doing the same things and not doing the same things, but everything across the board is just… worse than it used to be. With four more years left at $5.5 million AAV, the writing is on the wall for an albatross contract for a player entering the twilight of his career. The Devils, who already have Ondrej Palat on their books and are reaping the punishment of that ill-advised signing, can’t afford to tack on another contract like that. It would be disastrous.

Target: Marco Rossi (#3)

I’ve been on the Marco Rossi train for a long time now — since he was regarded as a potential draft target for the Devils in 2020, to be specific — and have harped on how important an asset he could be for this team quite recently.

With that in mind, I’ll spare you the redundancy.

Just know that, if the Devils’ goal is to add center depth and a young, top-six-caliber player who can play on the wing, Rossi is the unequivocal perfect target. He’s fast. He’s skilled. He’s gritty. He’s a dawg. He’s a solid finisher. He’s a great playmaker. He’s not small (he’s short, there’s a difference). He’s probably cheaper than he should be, considering the GM in charge of the Wild and his proven track record of selling low on players he doesn’t mesh with.

Rossi would be a difference maker on this team, and the Devils would be extremely wise to keep him at the pinnacle of their priority list.

Target: Chris Kreider (#2)

I know, I just harped on the idea of adding a 34-year-old winger because of aging curves and cap hit, but there’s a difference here, being that the dip in Kreider’s game directly correlated to a litany of injuries he sustained during the season and played through. And yes, I am acknowledging the irony of the Devils targeting a player with injury issues. I’m also acknowledging the flack I’m probably going to receive by saying to target a player on the Rangers. Hear me out, though:

He missed three games with back spasms early in the season, but more pressingly, dealt with a “significant” hand injury that may require off-season surgery. Kreider sustained the injury during the Four Nations Tournament and tried to play through it, but ultimately missed six games because of it.

The season as a whole, to me, should probably be considered a wash. By proxy of his injuries, he couldn’t do some of the things that made him so threatening in the past. He attempted nearly 200 fewer shot attempts than last season; he had 56 fewer speed bursts of 20+ mph; he had over 100 fewer bursts between 18-20 mph.

Ordinarily, I’d be on team “this is the result of an aging veteran,” but the stark difference between the two seasons in those regards, rather than a steady decline, leads me to believe it’s entirely injury-related.

The on-ice metrics share the same steep drop-off. Here is his abysmal player card from 2024-25:

Meanwhile, here are his cards from 2023-24 and 2022-23, respectively:

You simply don’t go from that good to that bad in one season by just… getting older. There is an obvious correlation between the injuries he had this past season and the dropoff in play.

The Devils and Rangers engaging in a trade with each other is practically unheard of, and I do think it’s extremely unlikely, but it would probably be a worthwhile endeavor for New Jersey. This is especially true considering the buy-extremely-low nature of the prospective deal.

Avoid: David Kampf (#17)

The Devils are in the market for a completely reworked bottom six. One archetype they’re probably looking for is a center who can win draws and play physically.

David Kampf, meanwhile, has a connection to Devils’ Head Coach Sheldon Keefe in that he spent three years under him as the Maple Leafs’ fourth-line center. Sounds like there would be some interest there, from a logical standpoint, but I would argue that it would be a gigantic mistake.

The defense from Kampf is, and has always been, a nonissue. He positions himself smartly in his own zone, he is tenacious on the backcheck, he is active in pushing play to the perimeter without sacrificing his positioning or overcommitting, and he is generally successful in getting the puck out of the zone when called upon to do so. To add to that, he’s a fantastic penalty killer too.

The issue, then, is everything else. Kampf can’t do anything offensively. He doesn’t drive play. He doesn’t shoot the puck. He doesn’t facilitate play for his teammates. He doesn’t hound the net. He doesn’t enter the zone with possession. Not only is he below average in all of these facets, but he’s also among the league’s worst:

Simply put, that’s just not a player the Devils should be after.

Targets: Pavel Zacha & Morgan Geekie (#16)

What a world we live in, eh? The Bruins are finally entering the phase that fans around the league have been clamoring for: rebuilding.

With that, outside of their core players in David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, and Jeremy Swayman, they should probably be looking to offload whoever and whatever they can to load up on draft picks, especially considering how weak their pipeline has become by virtue of “going for it” every year.

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the saga of the Pavel Zacha/Erik Haula trade has been like going through the five stages of grief, but now with a surprise sixth step.

Denial: There’s no way. They finally did it? Zacha is finally gone? I wonder what the return is!
Anger: The best they could do was Erik Haula? Erik friggin’ Haula?! Surely there were better offers out there.
Bargaining: Okay, maybe it was a win-win. Haula has been good for us while playing wing with Jack and Bratt, and Zacha seems to be meshing well with the Bruins in his first year.
Depression: Another year, another step for Zacha, while Haula fades into nothingness. Now we have to buy him out while the Bruins get a perennial 60-point guy. Good riddance.
Acceptance: Well, that trade kind of sucked in retrospect, eh? Guess there’s nothing we can do about it, though! Zacha was never going to be that guy here, and at least Haula seems like a good dude…
Reincarnation: …you’re saying there’s a chance..?

The year is 2025, and Pavel Zacha is back on the trade block. Only this time, a reunion could be had, and would actually be a pretty good idea. Hear me out:

Point number one: In the past three seasons, Zacha has put up 57, 59, and 47 points while operating in a top-six capacity, playing both down the middle for Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak and on the wing on the second line. The point production is solid, particularly from a guy who never cracked 40 points in his seven seasons with the Devils. He scored back-to-back 21-goal seasons in his first two years with the Bs before regressing to 14 in a season mired by poor management and roster construction, which ultimately led to a predictable demise.

Point number two: he’s actually pretty good now from an underlying standpoint, too. For the most part, his two-way game has been pretty strong since being acquired by Boston, and he’s genuinely doing almost all of the little things the right way, as illustrated by his 2024-25 microstat card:

If the Devils could reclaim Zacha as their own, considering the player he has turned into in the past few years, I’d be completely on board. He already has chemistry with both Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt and is a dual-threat player on offense now, without sacrificing anything defensively.

The only part of his game that he hasn’t quite worked on during his tenure with the Bruins is the limited physicality he brings to the game despite his frame. Pre-2015 NHL Entry Draft, Zacha was so highly-regarded because of the meanness within his game. That meanness was dragged out of his game at the tail-end of his junior career, when he was hit with two suspensions in a short time frame in November of 2014 — the first being a two-game suspension for slew-footing, and the second being six games for charging and boarding. I wish, and still feel as though he’d have more success if he had that part of his game still intact. He ramped up the physicality a bit in Boston, but it’s still nowhere near what made him such an appealing power forward prospect.

Then there’s Geekie, who burst onto the scene this year, scoring 33 goals and 57 points while being promoted to the top line for the back half of the season. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that the 33-goal campaign is going to be repeatable — Geekie shot 22% as compared to his career average of 14.6% — but the development was encouraging to say the least, and he’s still only 26 years of age.

For the Bruins, this feels like a player they should be trying to extend. He’s an expiring RFA, so they own his rights, he just had a breakout campaign, and as I mentioned, he’s still only 26 years old.

He still appears on the trade bait list, though, and for the Devils, he would be a damn good get. Geekie is a net positive on both ends of the ice, particularly in the offensive zone. He is obviously a plus finisher, having scored at an above-expected rate in every season of his career but 2021-22, including those 33 goals on just 19.8 individual expected goals (ixG) this past season.

Beyond that, he’s a solid enough playmaker to hang in any team’s top-six from that perspective, he’s surprisingly fast for a guy his size — at 6’3, 210 pounds, his top speed ranked in the 84th percentile in the NHL — and he plays the kind of heavy game that Tom Fitzgerald covets. Geekie is hard on the forecheck, is physical, grinds away at the netfront, and supplies his team with offense through the use of his body. Pair that with the fact that he’s also just a very good, highly-skilled player, and there’s a recipe for success.

Avoid: All Defensemen

It seems pretty obvious, but I thought I’d throw it in here anyway.

Target: Elias Pettersson (#20)

Let’s end the write-up with a bang, eh?

This would obviously require some monumental cap gymnastics, but Elias Pettersson, ranked #20 on the trade bait list, would scratch the itch I have for another bona fide star in the lineup.

For what it’s worth, I believe the Devils poked around Pettersson around the trade deadline, so it’s not like it’s entirely just a pipe dream.

Pettersson, like Kreider, was a product of playing through injury to a diminished on-ice product. All you need to do to deduce that is take a look at his NHL EDGE profile as compared to his best statistical season in 2022-23:

For clarity’s sake, the dark gray data is from this past season, while the light gray details the player he was in 2022-23.

His top speed that season ranked in the 94th percentile of the league, while his top speed in 2024-25 was in the 72nd percentile. He logged 153 bursts of 20+ mph in 2022-23 (90th percentile), but just 67 in 2024-25 (62nd percentile).

Even his shot speed, though comparable in the chart, was drastically different. Firstly, he took 257 shots in 2022-23, and just 109 in 2024-25, which, to me, is a clear indication in and of itself that something just wasn’t right from a health perspective. You don’t just magically turn from one of the shootiest to one of the least shooty players in the league. Beyond that, though, the shot speed metrics are way, way down. 24 of his 257 shots (9.4%) in 2022-23 were between 90-100 mph, and 86 of them (33.5%) were between 80-90. Flash forward to 2024-25, and he put just three shots (2.8%) of 90+ mph on net and 22 (20.2%) of 80+. That’s a drastic difference.

At 26 years old, there’s no other excuse. You don’t magically turn from a top-10 player in the league, who held that status for several years, into a pumpkin overnight. Pettersson is the ultimate buy-low candidate, and if the Devils are serious about adding a superstar to their lineup, he’s the one I’d be most interested in. The $11.6 million cap hit is scary to be sure, but the player who earned that contract scored 412 points in 407 games prior to this past season, and you don’t just stumble into that production. If the goal is to make waves, buying extremely low on a superstar is the way to do it.

As I said in the second sentence, it would require some monumental cap gymnastics to make it work. Palat would need to go. Haula would need to go. Hamilton would need to go. Mercer would need to be a part of the package going to Vancouver. Highly unlikely? Absolutely. Bonkers? Certainly. Fun and worthwhile? Definitely.

NHL trades are likely to pick up after the Stanley Cup Final ends (go Oilers!), so it’ll soon be an exciting time of year for the teams who are already in off-season mode. I’d expect the Devils to be one of the more active teams around the league, if not the most active. There are a lot of boxes to check off for GM Tom Fitzgerald, and many of them can be solved through the trade market.