Devils’ Luke Evangelista Trade Could Have a Bigger Impact Than Anyone Realizes
The New Jersey Devils may have finally found an answer to a question Tom Fitzgerald once admitted drove him crazy.
“I banged my head against the wall every day wondering: ‘What is depth scoring’!?,” said the Devils’ ex-GM in May of 2025.
This offseason, GM Sunny Mehta and the Devils have added Anthony Mantha, Evan Rodrigues and now Luke Evangelista to a forward group already featuring stars like Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt and Nico Hischier. They’ve done it all while simultaneously overhauling both AHL and NHL depth.
Suddenly, the Devils’ search for another top six scorer is over. Now, they need to figure out where everyone fits.
Evangelista, acquired last night from the Nashville Predators, is coming off a career-high 56-point season and is only 24 years old. He’ll make just $3 million next season before remaining under team control as a restricted free agent.
The Devils paid a significant price (2028 1st and 2nd) to get him. But after analyzing all facets of this trade, much like all of Mehta’s other moves, this seems like the pros outweigh the cons.
Let’s dive into it.
Luke Evangelista Was the Common Denominator on Nashville’s Best Lines
The Predators were not a particularly good team last season. They won just 38 of 82 games and finished with a minus-22 goal differential. Yet, when looking at Nashville’s best line combinations, one name kept appearing:
You guessed it…Evangelista.
Per MoneyPuck, the Predators’ three best lines in expected-goals percentage among combinations that played at least 120 minutes all featured Evangelista.
Michael Bunting, Erik Haula and Evangelista posted a ridiculous 61.3% of the expected goals share (xG%) in 123.9 minutes together.
Steven Stamkos, Ryan O’Reilly and Evangelista controlled 59.9% of the expected goals across 266.6 minutes.
Filip Forsberg, O’Reilly and Evangelista posted a 58.0 xG% across another 274.6 minutes.
The two larger samples didn’t just win the expected-goals battle, either. The Stamkos-O’Reilly-Evangelista line outscored opponents 18-9, while the Forsberg-O’Reilly-Evangelista line outscored opponents 17-11.
He was also one of just two regular Predators players to finish with a positive plus-minus (+1), joining O’Reilly (+8). While plus-minus isn’t always a reliable metric, remember the Predators finished minus-22 overall. Then consider that Evangelista faced tougher competition than 90% of players at his position.
The Devils Don’t Need Evangelista to Be a Superstar
The projected top-six most people seem to be landing on is:
Jesper Bratt — Jack Hughes — Anthony Mantha
Timo Meier — Nico Hischier — Luke Evangelista
That could be an extremely interesting fit.
Evangelista wouldn’t need to carry a line. He’d be joining two established stars in Hischier and Meier after spending last season helping form Nashville’s best combinations alongside players such as O’Reilly, Forsberg and Stamkos.
“Luke Evangelista is a superstar that just doesn’t have name cred yet,” Devils’ analyst CJ Tutoro wrote, later pointing to Evangelista’s shot impacts and what he accomplished with an otherwise-brutal Nashville roster.
While “superstar” might be a little too aggressive, the Devils don’t need him to become one. They need him to be a legitimately good top-six winger… and there’s nothing in his profile to suggest he can’t be.
In addition to his 56 points in 81 games, Evangelista has been pretty available throughout his young NHL career, something the Devils as a whole need desperately. Remember: the best ability is availability. He played 80 games in his first full season in 2023-24, 68 games in 2024-25 and 81 last season.
His defensive profile is also super intriguing.
JFresh Hockey’s analytics placed Evangelista in the 91st percentile league-wide defensively. Factor in regularly doing it against other team’s top lines, and that means the Devils have another forward capable of handling difficult minutes rather than someone who needs to be protected.
While he’s way more of a playmaker — his 44 assists were eighth out of 152 right wingers — he can certainly finish, too. Check out his sweet hands:
Per NHL EDGE, Evangelista’s 22.41 MPH maximum skating speed placed him above league average in the 59th percentile last season. He isn’t Connor McDavid-level fast, but he certainly has enough speed to mesh with the Devils’ top talent while bringing his own skill and creativity with the puck.
Most importantly, he’s only 24. That’s why this feels like such a calculated Mehta move.
“We Just Really Want Good Players”
Mehta was asked this offseason whether the Devils needed to lean further into the speed-and-rush identity that made their franchise-record 2022-23 season so successful.
Mehta acknowledged the Devils have plenty of speed and skill, and he said he’d be surprised if New Jersey didn’t stylistically resemble that group next season.
But he also made it clear the Devils aren’t restricting themselves to one specific type of player.
“At the end of the day,” Mehta said, “the goal is to outscore, outchance, outplay the other team. And there’s a lot of different ways you can do that.”
Later, he simplified the philosophy even further.
“We just really want good players.”
That might be the best way to understand the Evangelista acquisition. The Devils didn’t acquire him because he checks one specific stylistic box. They acquired a good, young player who can slot into the top six, contribute offensively, defend well and help drive play.
The Positive Trickle-Down Effect
Luke Evangelista’s arrival does more to the team than just his direct impact alone.
For example, Dawson Mercer is a useful NHL player. His versatility and durability have made him incredibly valuable to the Devils. But there’s a major difference between having a player who can play in the top six and needing that player to be one of your permanent top-six solutions.
Previously, the Devils have repeatedly needed Mercer — and a hodgepodge of other guys like Connor Brown, Paul Cotter, Arseny Gritsyuk, etc… — to slot into the top six.
With the addition of Evangelista and Mantha, barring a catastrophic barrage of injuries, those days are likely over.
Those middle six-type guys, like Mercer, can move lower in the lineup without the Devils losing anything. Thus, they’re able to feast on weaker opponents.
That’s the trickle-down effect Mehta’s newfound depth helps build toward.
Heck, if everyone’s healthy, Connor Brown and Evan Rodrigues could legitimately be fourth liners. Find me another NHL team where this would be the case. There aren’t many…if any.
That depth also gives the Devils something they desperately lacked last season:
Protection.
The Devils Were Too Vulnerable Without Jack Hughes. This Helps Fix That.
At his exit interview, Sheldon Keefe gave an extremely honest assessment of what happened when Hughes was healthy — and what happened when he wasn’t. Without him, the Devils were 8-13-0 in 2025-26. Dating back to 2023-24, they’re 24-35-2.
“It speaks to the impact that Jack has, but it also kind of exposed how we need to have more support underneath that,” said Keefe. “We can’t be vulnerable like that … When Jack plays, the team looks one certain way and plays one certain way, and when he leaves, it seems to take a while for us to recalibrate and to figure our game out.”
Well, now — at least on paper — they have the necessary support.
The Devils are much better equipped to survive an injury to Hughes — or Hischier, Bratt or Meier — when the roster has a couple more legitimate top six players available.
They obviously wouldn’t be the same team. But they also wouldn’t have to completely reinvent their lineup and ask multiple players to immediately move into roles they aren’t ideally suited for. That’s a major difference.
Nashville’s Reaction Means Something, Too
The immediate reaction from Nashville might be one of the most interesting parts of this trade. Alex Daugherty, one of the Predators’ prominent beat reporters, summed up his reaction in three words:
“I am… stunned.”
Fans on X were even more direct. One reaction read:
“I can’t believe they did that… seriously 😭”
Domb (@dChills07) asked:
“Why are you trading the only young player that had any sort of promise for that? Are you trying to piss off your fanbase?”
User @alexsears97 used a Family Guy meme to mock the idea of trading a known commodity for draft picks, writing that a first- and second-round pick “could be anything. It could even be a player like Luke Evangelista!”
Fan reaction alone doesn’t determine whether a trade is good. But this wasn’t Nashville simply losing a popular veteran. This was a 24-year-old player who may not have even entered his prime yet — and could still improve significantly.
Luke Evangelista scored 9 goals below expected last year. That adjustment would have netted him 65 points. He shot at 6.8%, 1.6% below his career-average, and recorded a third-straight season with a PDO below 100. Even after a career-year, he still has space to climb. Only 24.
– Foley (@NHLFoley / X)
Using data from AFP Analytics, Evolving Hockey and Hockey Stat Cards, a recent model placed Evangelista’s market value at $9.2 million. That’s over triple what the Devils will pay him next season.
Better Possession Could Help Solve Other Problems
Lastly, there’s one more reason Evangelista could matter beyond his own offense. The Devils still have questions on defense and in net.
Evangelista excels at tilting the ice and driving play. Arseny Gritsyuk is stellar in this area as well.
Combine those players with Hughes, Bratt, Hischier, Meier and Mantha, and the Devils suddenly have a forward group capable of spending significantly more time in the offensive zone.
More possession means less time defending. Less time defending means fewer opportunities for opponents to expose weaknesses on the blue line, while also reducing the workload on the goaltending.
If the Devils become one of the NHL’s better possession teams, their defense and goaltending don’t need to carry quite as much of the burden.
As long as they stay healthy, the Devils have enough good players that they no longer have to ask everyone to be something they aren’t. But we’ve heard about how things look on paper for years now. Now, it’s time to prove it on the ice.