Ranking the New Jersey Devils Players Most Likely to Be Traded

Despite a string of good results, the New Jersey Devils are still not playing particularly impressive hockey, sitting 12 points back of eighth-placed Boston.

Veteran-laden teams that will not make the playoffs tend to have one interesting day in the second half of the season—trade deadline day. There's no shortage of veteran players that could be moved in New Jersey, with Michael Ryder, Jaromir Jagr and Marek Zidlicky as obvious options.

The trade deadline is on March 2, which gives the Devils a little less than a month to figure out what players they would like to move, as well as to find potential suitors for those players. New Jersey would surely love to pick up a top goal scorer but would likely settle for promising prospects and high-end draft picks.

This list will look at both players that could leave New Jersey by March 2, as well as players that certainly will be staying. Additionally, it will consider what the Devils might want in return for these players.

Forwards: Steve Bernier, Michael Cammalleri, Patrik Elias, Stephen Gionta, Martin Havlat, Adam Henrique, Jacob Josefson, Tuomo Ruutu, Jordin Tootoo and Dainius Zubrus.

This group is, on the whole, not particularly impressive, which is the reason most of these players will not be traded.

Bernier, Gionta, Josefson and Tootoo will not be of any interest to other teams, as fourth-line players are not generally the ones seen moving on deadline day. Havlat, though he has improved his play in recent weeks, still has not shown enough promise to be a worthwhile addition for a playoff contender.

Elias and Zubrus both could be possible contributors for playoff contenders, particularly given their experience, but their contracts make such a move unlikely. Elias is in the second year of a three-year, $16.5 million contract, while Zubrus is in the second year of a three-year, $9.3 million contract.

It seems unlikely that any team would want to take on such a large cap hit next season for an aging player.

Cammalleri and Henrique are both players that New Jersey will simply not be looking to part with. Henrique is one of the only young forwards in the organization that has shown his worth at the NHL level, while Cammalleri is leading the team in goals this season, despite missing 12 games.

Defensemen: Mark Fraser, Andy Greene, Peter Harrold and Bryce Salvador.

Fraser and Harrold simply have no value on the trade market, as both are little more than serviceable third-pairing defensemen. Salvador's contract makes him unmovable even without considering his age, performance and injury.

Greene is New Jersey's clear No. 1 defenseman, and the Devils will have no interest in moving him.

Goaltenders: Cory Schneider and Keith Kinkaid.

The Devils have found their clear-cut No. 1 goalie in Schneider and a solid backup in Kinkaid. They have no reason to change what has become the team's strongest area.

Forwards: Scott Gomez and Travis Zajac.

Both Gomez and Zajac are playmaking centers who have had reasonable success since the Devils' coaching change. The Devils would likely prefer to keep both players, but if they were to make a move for a big-name player, they might be willing to part with one.

If the player was someone of Evander Kane's caliber, who Rich Chere at NJ.com and others are speculating New Jersey may be interested in, such a move might be worth losing a center over.

Defensemen: Adam Larsson, Jon Merrill and Damon Severson.

New Jersey will not be actively looking to move any of these players, as they certainly make up both the team's present and future defense corps. 

But, the team has five young defensemen who have spent time in the NHL this season (these three along with Seth Helgeson and Eric Gelinas), as well as prospects Reece Scarlett and Roman Hrabarenka in Albany and Steve Santini at Boston College.

Essentially, if there is one position in which the Devils can afford to trade obvious value, it is defense.

Larsson, Merrill and Severson are the team's top three young defensemen right now, so the Devils will not want to lose any of them. But, if trading one of these three helps to bring the team a top-level goal scorer, New Jersey's management may well accept that.

Eric Gelinas is in a different category than the defenders in the last slide for one simple reason. The Devils have clearly rated him lower than Larsson, Merrill and Severson at this point.

Gelinas has obvious offensive talent. In 34 games this season, he has four goals and seven assists, not a bad tally considering he is averaging 16:21 a night, the lowest average time on ice of any defender currently on the Devils' NHL roster.

Of course, his lack of appearances and ice time are not an accident. Gelinas is a clear defensive liability. 

Gelinas' defensive numbers are somewhat misleading, as he has a plus-two rating and the second-best Corsi (a statistic that measures the number a shots the team takes when a player is on the ice against the number of shots against when a player is on the ice) among the team's defensemen, according to Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com.

The cause for these seemingly complimentary statistics is simple—he rarely plays in defensive situations.

Only 21.3 percent of the faceoffs Gelinas has been on the ice for this season have been in the defensive zone, the lowest such rate on the team and 6 percent lower than that of a comparable player, Marek Zidlicky. Similarly, his rate of offensive zone faceoffs is 44.1 percent, the highest on the team and 8.7 percent higher than Zidlicky's.

Former coach Peter DeBoer tended to be slow to trust young defensemen, so his cautious handling of Gelinas came as no surprise. But Gelinas has gotten even less trust from the new coaching staff, playing in five of the team's 15 games since the change.

When Gelinas has played, the coaching staff has given him the same in-game treatment that DeBoer did—limited ice time only in certain situations.

As noted in the previous slide, the Devils have several young defensemen with high potential, so it would not come as a surprise to see the team trade away one of them in a package deal aimed toward picking up a goal scorer. Given the distrust of Gelinas' defensive play, he appears to be the young defenseman the Devils would prefer to trade.

The trend of potential Devils defensemen on the move continues with Marek Zidlicky. The 38-year-old Czech defenseman has a set of skills that makes him a potentially valuable commodity at the deadline.

Zidlicky has years of NHL experience and is a strong puck-moving defenseman, a valuable combination for a team looking for a player to help in a playoff push. Zidlicky's 17 assists are tied for best on the team, he is a useful player on the power play and has proved his durability by playing in all of the Devils' 51 games this season.

Zidlicky can be a defensive liability at times, but his offensive ability usually outweighs his defensive shortcomings.

Given that Zidlicky's contract expires at the end of the season, a team interested in his services would not have to commit themselves to him for more than this season, a likely plus for any possible suitors.

As noted earlier, the Devils have the depth to function if they get rid of a defenseman. With a youth movement in the cards for New Jersey, getting rid of Zidlicky for prospects or draft picks could serve two purposes by bringing in more youth and making room for another young defenseman in the lineup.

Jaromir Jagr is no stranger to being dealt near the trade deadline, having moved from Washington to New York in 2003-04 and Dallas to Boston in 2012-13. Will he hit the trifecta of trades before March 2?

Jagr has over 20 NHL seasons and 200 playoff games under his belt and would bring a glut of experience to any playoff contender looking to add a bit of offense before the deadline. 

His production this season has been hit and miss, but surely some part of that is related to the lack of offensive talent in New Jersey. While he may be a step slower than in recent years, his work ethic and positive presence in the locker room are as clear as ever.

At 42 years old, Jagr may not fetch a particularly high price, which leaves the Devils with a decision to make about his future.

He appears to have enjoyed his time in New Jersey and has shown no signs of retiring at the end of the season. It does not seem unreasonable to think that if he is not traded, Jagr may return to New Jersey again next season. 

Are the contributions of a 43-year-old Jagr worth more to the team than the draft picks or prospects he could get the team in the next month?

Lou Lamoriello must figure out the answer to that question before the deadline passes.

If Michael Ryder gets traded between now and March 2, it will likely come as a relief to all parties involved. 

Ryder has been a healthy scratch the last four games, a particularly harsh condemnation of his contributions to the club, given that the Devils have averaged only 17.5 shots per game during that stretch. Ryder was the extra skater at Thursday's practice nonetheless.

He had issues with the amount of playing time given to him by former coach DeBoer. per Rich Chere at NJ.com, seeming to lack the understanding that if he continued to be a defensive liability, more ice time was not in the cards. 

So the organization appears to be done with him, and he appears to be done with the organization. A trade would be best for both parties.

But who would want Ryder, and what would the Devils receive in return?

Ryder has scored 30 goals in a season three times in his career, so he at least had goal-scoring abilities at one point in his career. Is it still there though?

One could posit that he has struggled simply because the Devils have not had much offensive talent around him during his time in New Jersey, and he has failed to fit into the Devils' system. Still, some may reasonably feel that his best days are behind him, with age being the top culprit in the 34-year-old's struggles.

What the Devils can get in return for Ryder will depend on which school of thought the potential suitor believes in. With the Evander Kane saga dragging on in Winnipeg, Devils fans may hope that Ryder be part of a deal that brings the out-of-favor 23-year-old winger to New Jersey, even if Kane misses the rest of the season with shoulder surgery, per Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy.

Even if no team rates Ryder particularly highly, it seems unlikely that there is not one playoff contender willing to take a chance on him.

Given that anything New Jersey gets in return is probably worth more than Ryder, whose contract expires at the end of the season, the worst-case scenario for the Devils regarding Ryder may be dumping him for a low draft pick.

At any rate, Ryder's subpar play and rocky relationship with the team's management make him the most likely New Jersey Devil to be traded.