Good evening! Sunny Mehta has not stopped cooking with gas for these New Jersey Devils just yet! Luke Evangelista, the right-handed playmaking winger from Nashville, is coming up north.
Per Dan Amoia, the Devils published a longer press release in which they revealed the following pick conditions:
The conditions are as follows: in the event that either a) Colorado’s 2027 first-round pick
is not transferred to Toronto; or b) Colorado’s 2028 first-round pick falls within the top 10, Nashville shall instead receive Colorado’s 2029 first-round pick.
Currently, per PuckPedia, Luke Evangelista is in the final year of a two-year contract, and his cap hit is $3,000,000 for the 2026-27 season. He will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights following this season. Over his 253-game career, the 24-year old Evangelista has scored 45 goals and 97 assists for the Nashville Predators, giving the Devils another strong playmaker for their top three lines. Evangelista is not a super physical player, but he carries a strong analytical profile that features strong shot-rate impacts in both offensive and defensive zones. On HockeyViz, he is regarded as a first-line quality winger.
Brian Bastin, former On the Forecheck writer, wrote on Twitter that the Devils are getting a “really good player” who he believes “will get better.” Public analytic models, from HockeyViz to Evolving-Hockey to JFresh’s HockeyStats all generally agree that Evangelista impacts the game well on both ends, but especially defensively. There is, however, some disagreement on how good his offensive game is, with finishing-biased models like HockeyStats dinging him quite a bit for not being much of a goalscorer.
I’ll let you decide, though.
I think an immediate impact of this trade will be speculation about Dawson Mercer’s future. But for the time being, I am quite happy to project both of them into the Devils’ 2026-27 lineup. Just quickly thinking of a potential lineup, this could be a great mix:
Meier-Hischier-Evangelista
Gritsyuk-Hughes-Bratt
Mantha-Glass-Mercer
Noesen-Rodrigues-Brown
Extras: One or two of Boqvist, Bjugstad, Lombardi, Hameenaho
But still, more moves may be on the way. This may not be the final look of the Devils’ forward lineup, though I can already imagine Evangelista being a great playmaker for one of those top two lines if he’s not setting up Anthony Mantha on the third. The good thing here is that it looks like Sheldon Keefe is going to have a lot of options up front.
With this move, the Devils are listed as having $1.85 million in remaining cap space on PuckPedia. There are a few ways that number could quickly go up, from moving an extra forward above league minimum or a defenseman. Today, Sunny Mehta was singing Declan Chisholm’s praises on Barstool’s Spittin’ Chiclets, and Chisholm makes less than half of both Jonas Siegenthaler and Brenden Dillon’s contracts. I am quite happy with the spread of talent and depth that currently appears on the Devils’ roster, but do keep that in mind if we see any moves in the near future.
But what do you think of this trade for Evangelista? Do you love it, like it, or hate it? What do you make of the push for strong analytical profiles from Mehta and its results in changing the roster so far? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.
