The Devils were ready for a trade like this for several reasons:

Being shrewd and discerning in free agency for the past two to three seasons, and holding back from committing too much cap and term to second tier players. It isn’t the exciting option, but it is the most prudent one.

Being willing to acquire and subsequently trade secondary players that hold value for other teams (Boyle, Johansson, Lovejoy) to build a stock of draft capital, but also replenish the team’s cap space each offseason. The Devils have very few long term commitments, and it’s been several seasons since the team had significant term commitments throughout the lineup.

More than acquiring tradeable assets, patience and prudence were the biggest factors in landing PK Subban. What could the future hold if we take the hindsight we’re discussing here to analyze the Devils’ current situation? What contracts, other than future earnings for Hischier, Hall, Hughes, and Smith, are we planning and preparing for?

If anyone doubted Ray Shero and the owners when they said that they’d be willing to pay up when the time came, the Subban trade should be proof of those claims. While he has no signing bonus this year, he’s making $10 million in real dollars this year, and the devils will pay out $12 million in signing bonuses over the next two seasons.

3. PK Subban and Drafting

While cap space formed the basis of the Subban trade, the Devils sent futures back to the Predators via young defensemen (Santini, Davies) and two 2nd round draft picks. The 34th pick in the 2019 NHL draft was likely the highest value traded, but LD Jeremy Davies was likely the second-biggest piece of the deal.

Davies, a 7th round pick in 2016, demonstrates the value of good drafting. He played at a point-per-game pace during the last two seasons in the NCAA, and is now a positive example of one of the Devils’ draft tenets - choosing players with the raw tools, that will be able to grow into a larger role on their individual teams. Davies joins players like Jesper Bratt as success stories from the later rounds. While he has yet to play a game at the NHL level, I believe he’ll make the show within the next season or two.

Ian and I recently talked through each of the Devils’ 11 picks in the 2019 NHL draft, and while a player’s chances at making it decrease throughout the draft, these picks matter. Bratt is a key player on the Devils roster. Davies was one of the main pieces in the Subban trade. Someone in the later rounds of the 2019 draft will make an impact, whether for the Devils or another team.

4. The Timeline

One small anecdote - the road towards the Devils in the Details podcast started the day of the Taylor Hall trade. I decided to reach out to a particular reddit user whose work I admired. I wanted to talk with him about how Taylor Hall’s age told us something about the timeline in which Ray Shero wanted to compete. Ian and I started talking, and we quickly became co-conspirators in a new blog. A year later, we decided to do a one-off podcast to talk about the draft, and we haven’t stopped since.

I believe that the PK Subban trade gives us some further clarity on our upcoming competition window. Subban is on a $9 million dollar contract for the next three years, after which he’ll be 33 years old. The Devils have the option to run with PK for the next three seasons and move on to clear cap space for younger players if they choose. In an ideal situation, the following players will have received, or will be about to receive, a potentially big raise:

Taylor Hall (UFA 2020)

Nico Hischier (RFA 2020)

Jesper Bratt (RFA 2020)

Mackenzie Blackwood (RFA 2020)

Jack Hughes (RFA 2022)

Ty Smith (RFA 2022)

Other players, such as Andy Greene ($5 million until 2020) and Cory Schneider ($6 million until 2022) will have contracts expire throughout this window, helping the Devils’ cap. However, if Jack Hughes is the player we hope and think he is, the window throughout his entry level contract, which overlaps with Subban’s $9 million contract, is our best guess at an immediate window for competition.

That’s not a guarantee, but the acquisition of Subban shows that the team’s mindset is shifting. Shero is more motivated to make moves to capitalize on players like Hughes, Hischier, Smith, and others playing above their contract values, to win during this window.

The rebuild is coming to a close.

5. Making Good Bets in the Later Rounds

On the last episode of the podcast, Ian described 2019 7th rounder Nikola Pasic as a prospect with raw tools and talent, but no clear identity as a player. This description should sound familiar, as it also applied to prospects like Jesper Bratt, Aarne Talvitie, Jeremy Davies, and others.

Rasid Becirovic on twitter confirms that this is a trend that the Devils look for in the later rounds: