Prior to the New Jersey Devils loss to the Winnipeg Jets, Devils team reporter Amanda Stein reported that veteran winger Ondrej Palat was being held out of the game for “roster related decisions.”
For those who aren’t on Hockey Twitter an unhealthy amount of time, “roster related decisions” is typically code for “we’re holding out this player because we anticipate a trade coming to fruition shortly”. And indeed, that was the case as the Devils announced a deal with the New York Islanders during the game.
The New Jersey Devils are trading Ondrej Palat, along with a 2026 third round pick and a 2027 6th round pick to the Islanders for winger Maxim Tsyplakov.
The key for the Devils in this deal is that while they had to attach two draft picks to Palat to entice the Islanders to take him on, the Devils did NOT have to retain salary in the deal. The Islanders assume Palat’s cap hit for the remainder of this season, along with the entirety of his $6M AAV cat hit for next season. While the Devils did find a taker for Palat, they also had to take back Tsyplakov’s contract, which runs through next season at an AAV of $2.25M. Tsyplakov will be a UFA at the completion of his contract.
The fact that the Devils took this deal now and paid the price they paid to essentially dump Palat’s contract now is interesting. They did pick up $3.75M in salary cap savings for this season as well as next season, but at the cost of a Top-1oo draft pick and a late round dart throw. An alternative option would’ve been to simply hold on to Palat for the remainder of this season, buy him out at the end of the season, and save $3.3M next season with a $1.65M dead cap charge for the 2027-28 season (along with saving your draft picks). Is that roughly $450,000 in savings, plus acquiring the services of Maxim Tsyplakov, worth giving up a 3rd and 6th so you can have more salary cap space today? I’ll let you decide in the comments section.
Let’s talk about Tsyplakov for a moment. The 6’3”, 201 right winger went undrafted, so he honed his skills in the KHL for Spartak Moscow. After playing most of his early 20s in the KHL, the Islanders convinced him to come to the NHL prior to last season with a one-year, entry level deal. He made a good first impression in the NHL with 10 goals and 25 assists in 77 games, playing roughly 15 minutes a night. The Islanders avoided arbitration and rewarded him with a 2-year deal worth $2.25M this past offseason.
Tsyplakov has since fallen out of the Islanders favor. He’s only appeared in 27 games this season with 1 goal and 1 assist, playing 9:39 on average a night. It makes sense that the Islanders were looking to move on from his contract and give him a fresh start and this deal will provide that opportunity for him as Tsyplakov should plug in somewhere in the Devils bottom six.
As for Palat, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that the Islanders wound up being the team to take a flier on him. After all, new Islanders GM Mathieu Darche is familiar with Palat from their time together in Tampa Bay. Palat brings to the Islanders a lot of the same intangibles he brought to New Jersey when he signed here. He’s a winner. He brings “rings to the room”. He plays the game the right way. He does a lot of the things that don’t show up on the scoresheet, but you need if you’re a playoff team. Palat clearly had an impact on Nico Hischier, along with everybody else in the room, and I don’t think that should be understated. With the Islanders on track to reach the playoffs this season, we shall see if Palat indeed brings those things, along with some of the more traditional counting stats to Elmont.
The main question for me coming out of this deal is what’s next? The Devils accomplished their goal of freeing up cap space, and they managed to get Palat’s deal off of the books without retaining salary and without giving up a premium draft pick (unless you consider a 3rd round pick to be a premium pick. I do not). If you told me a week ago that Tom Fitzgerald would be able to do this, I probably would’ve laughed at the idea. I probably would’ve been happy as a fan if the return was simply “future considerations”, as well as the cap space. I’m guessing that deal wasn’t out there for Fitzgerald to take, and seeing as how Fitzgerald talked about how Palat would be treated with respect a few weeks ago, I think sending him to a team with a realistic chance of playing playoff hockey is doing right by the player. Now that I see the deal on paper in front of me, it makes sense.
But what are the Devils going to do with that newfound cap space? Are they hoping to add prior to the Olympic break (and subsequent roster freeze)? Is it even worth adding to this group when they sit five points behind the Islanders for third in the Metropolitan and the teams in front of them have games in hand? I don’t know the answer to that, or whether or not there is anyone out there on the trade block who can have that much of an impact. But this move did create some flexibility in the short-term. They have an interesting young player in Tsyplakov who they can give a test drive for the rest of the season.
I would think most Devils fans are happy to see Palat go. I would also think they’re happy that the Devils managed to move out the final year and change of Palat’s contract. What the Devils do with their cap savings remains to be seen, and we shall see what Fitzgerald has up his sleeve, if anything. But for now, Ondrej Palat is a New York Islander. Maxim Tsyplakov is a New Jersey Devil. The deal is done. I look forward to seeing if the Devils can find something with Tsyplakov to where he looks more like the player we saw last season with the Islanders. Part of me is scared to death with what Fitzgerald might do with cap space, but there’s nothing to do but take a wait and see approach.
That’s how I feel about this deal. Perhaps you feel differently, or similarly. Please feel free to leave a comment below and thanks for reading.
