With the 2014 NHL trade deadline having passed on March 5th, all of the speculation on who would be moving where has come to a concise end. While most of the hockey world was concerned with what kind of return the inevitable trade of Islanders forward Thomas Vanek would bring or the surprise move by Vancouver to trade starting goaltender Roberto Luongo less than one season after apparently putting their faith in him by trading Cory Schneider to New Jersey, Many Devils fans were worried that by the end of the day, they would have confirmation that they had seen the last of legendary goaltender Martin Brodeur in New Jersey. For the benefit of everyone involved, in my opinion, and also not entirely surprising, Brodeur was not moved and still retains the chance to have remained a Devil for his entire Hall of Fame career. More intriguing to my mind was the seemingly unconsidered possibility of the Devils trading Jaromir Jagr.
While it certainly would have signaled the end of an era had the Devils decided to do what Vancouver did not in the Summer and move the older franchise Goalie to make room for the younger Schneider, the reality is that the torch is already in the process of being passed, and while Brodeur gets more playing time than most goalies in his situation would likely get, trading him would not have made much of an impact on the current team. Jagr, however, would have been quite a bit more meaningful to this team. While Jagr speaks often about playing for quite some time more, the reality is that he is forty-two years old and likely has only a season or two left in him. If the winger wants to add another Stanley Cup win to his Hall of Fame career, he will have to do it soon. This makes the fact that he not only never asked for a trade, but seemingly discouraged one by implying that he would fail to report to some teams interesting. While players always say to the media that they believe in their team and want to compete, these men are not idiots. Many of them know that they are not on a team that can make the playoffs and compete for a league championship. The fact that Jagr did not feel the need to rectify this situation by asking for a trade to a team higher in the standings implies that he truly feels that the Devils, who currently sit just outside playoff position, have a chance of being a force in late April and May.
From the team's perspective, keeping Jagr and fellow impending free agents comes as less than a surprise considering General Manager Lou Lamoriello has never thrown in the towel on a season in his nearly two decades of managing the team. Jagr is the Devils' leading scorer and has only bolstered the team's strong leadership group. In short, Jagr is a key cog in the hope that the team can be a contender with coach Pete DeBoer's system if they can sneak into the playoffs. After all, The team was hardly considered a a favorite when they came within two games of winning the Cup as a sixth seed in the Eastern Conference in 2012, and while the current squad certainly lacks the top end talent that it had then, many would say it has even more of the depth that made it so deadly at the time.
While the returns brought in by other pending free agents at this year's deadline imply that the devils would not have gotten as much as they would have hoped for from trading players such as Jagr, Brodeur, and defensemen Mark Fayne and Marek Zidlicky, the decision to keep them does mean that the necessary retooling of the farm system, which lacks any semblance of impact forwards to replace the losses of Ilya Kovalchuk and Zach Parise over the past two offseasons, will have all the fewer resources to work with moving forward. If the team makes it far into the playoffs, The decision not to sell will be hailed as a brilliant show of faith in the team. But if the team falls short of the playoffs or fizzles in the first round, it will be yet another in a line of criticisms of Lamoriello's failure to abandon some of the old guard in order to build for the future in recent years. Whatever the outcome, Jagr, Brodeur, and the others remain in the fold for now. For Devils fans, it can only be hoped that these players can contribute to something truly special.
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