The New Jersey Devils need help. But before they can even do that, they need to create room for players to return from injury. Most notable, Johnathan Kovacevic, who has been out all season as he recovers from offseason knee surgery.
General manager Tom Fitzgerald doesn’t have much to work with right now. He’s projected to have $-5,030,247 in cap space with Kovacevic on long-term injured reserve with a new $4 million cap hit, Simon Nemec on injured reserve, as well as Zack MacEwen and Evgenii Dadonov on the shelf.
Former Florida Panthers assistant GM Steve Werier joined me on the Devils Rink Report to break down the long-term pitfalls of handing out no-trade and no-move clauses—issues currently hamstringing New Jersey’s efforts to clear cap space tied to Dougie Hamilton and Ondřej Palát.
“It’s a little bit of supply and demand, right? It depends on the player, not necessarily the market as much,” Werier explained. “Just who you’re going after and at what time and what their leverage is.”
He warned against over-generosity.
“I think there are clubs—[the Devils, Edmonton Oilers, and Carolina Hurricanes], I could probably point to a couple more—who are probably too liberal in terms of giving the wrong players those trade protections.”
The key, Werier stressed, is always weighing alternatives.
“You always should look at what’s your best alternative to negotiating that deal. And oftentimes, if you’re having to negotiate a no-move clause or a really onerous no-trade on a player who isn’t necessarily a blue-chip signing, then you might need to get away from that, because the cost of getting out from that deal, or the inability to do so, becomes so much more prohibitive down the line than you anticipate at the time of the signing.”
Hamilton and Palat aside, Dadonov is another example of a player who likely didn’t need trade protection if the Devils tacked on a few more dollars. Instead, his small $1 million cap hit is difficult to move, and he has barely played for New Jersey this season.
Werier drew from his own experience in Florida.
“Using the Florida analogy… when I signed Jonathan Huberdeau to a six-year deal that expired in 2023, there was a lot of back and forth with his agent… pushing for no-trade and no-move protection. And we gave Jonathan some at the beginning of the deal, but I was very clear at the time with our owners… not to give no-trade protection on the back end of the deal in the event we wanted to monetize this contract.”
That foresight paid massive dividends. Werier helped turn a few excellent support players into a franchise cornerstone.
“At the time of the signing, a lot of people would have said, ‘Well, you’re not going to trade Jonathan Huberdeau… just give him the no-trade. You’ll be fine.’ It turns out, fast-forward five years, and the lack of a no-trade in Huberdeau’s sixth year is what by and large got Florida Matthew Tkachuk.”
The inverse is equally punishing.
“The flip side of that is if you sign a contract that doesn’t age well—and even some of the best managers do that, New Jersey does that too—not being able to get out of those contracts when you have some other pretty thing coming your way that you didn’t think was going to be there, it becomes very painful.”
Even with a rising cap, the problem persists.
“That’s going to remain true even as the cap rises, because contract values are going to rise as well.”
Werier’s message to teams like the Devils: trade flexibility isn’t just nice to have—it can be the difference between landing a franchise-altering star and being stuck on the sidelines.
