Devils Set To Trade #10 Pick To Land Goaltender

Now that they've got their new head coach in place in Sheldon Keefe, the most imminent order of business for the New Jersey Devils this offseason is to land themselves a No. 1 goaltender. GM Tom Fitzgerald makes no bones about it, and admitted to nhl.com that he's open to trading the No. 10 pick in this month's NHL Draft if it'll help facilitate that goal.

Does the No. 10 pick get you that type of player that you can add to the group. It's easy to say, 'Go get so-and-so and then you build from there.' But there are some guys who have different contracts so how are those players going to reprice at. There's a lot to it, but, yes, the focus is on finding that goaltender.

The top three candidates are as follows, with current contract status:

Jacob Markstrom, Calgary Flames, two years left, $6 million AAV
Juuse Saros, Nashville Predators, one year left, $5 million
Linus Ullmark, Boston Bruins, one year left, $5 million

"I'm in the goalie market talking to teams," added Fitzgerald, "but there's a 'but' and the 'but' is how do we want to build our team? We'd like to add up front, we'd like to add on the back end, so what are those pieces going to cost us. With the goaltending, what's that going to cost us?"

With Jake Allen set as the backup, any of those three would make the Devils' situation between the pipes one of the top ones in the league.

The Devils are in win-now mode, and Fitzgerald says the number 10 pick is a valuable asset in getting to where they want to be.

"At the end of the day, we're in a position now versus two years ago when we drafted (defenseman) Simon Nemec (No. 2 in the 2022 NHL Draft) where if we can find the right piece to help us get to where we want to go today, tomorrow and wherever the controllable future is for that player, great," Fitzgerald said. "That's the mindset versus 'Great, we have a top-10 pick and this kid is going to be fantastic when he's 25 years old'."

In other words, the Devils clearly don't have that long to wait, so expect to see that pick on the move by Draft Night.