Devils Should Extend Luke Evangelista Now — Before It’s Too Late
The New Jersey Devils did not spend a first-round pick so Luke Evangelista could walk through the room for one season and explore restricted free agency.
After the Leo Carlsson offer sheet, the Devils don’t need to take that kind of risk.
Evangelista can sign an extension today with one year remaining on his contract. However, after Sept. 15, he cannot sign for eight years. The new CBA starts on the 16th and the max term with your own club becomes seven. One year of control vanishes. The cap hit on the next deal jumps because the same money has to fit in a shorter window. Teams have been racing that date for a month. Cale Makar got his eight. This is not that negotiation. It is the same calendar.
We already went over the case for buying the 24-year-old forward in the Devils trade grades. The process beating the finishing, the even-strength profile, the minutes with Ryan O’Reilly. None of that needs another tour. What matters now is the date, the cap, and what the projected cost is.
Nothing signed in the near future hits this year’s books. Evangelista still plays 2026-27 at a $3 million cap hit. The new contract would start in 2027-28, which is the year New Jersey actually has room. The ceiling this season is $104 million now. Currently, the Devils have a $102.15 million against the cap and about $1.85 million in space after the trade.
Next summer the cap is projected at $113.5 million, and New Jersey is looking at roughly $81.2 million already committed and more than $32 million in space. That $32 million is before Nico Hischier’s next deal and before Evangelista’s. Hischier will take a bite. Evangelista does not have to.
AFP Analytics already ran the numbers. The long-term projection is six years at $7.90 million — $47.4 million total, 6.96 percent of that $113.5 million cap. The short-term quote is one year at $5.76 million. That is the fork. Pay him $5.76 million for 2027-28, let him play it out next to Jack Hughes and Hischier, and come back to the table as a 26-year-old coming off a Devils season. Or take the six-year, $7.90 million path AFP sees as market.
Eight years is better than both, if Sunny Mehta can get it done by the 15th.
The extra two years are the bet Mehta can still make this month and cannot make after the 15th. Maxing out the term under the current CBA will shave some dollars off the AAV of the six-year term. Evangelista at a $7-$7.5 million AAV through 2034-35 is quite enticing. You are paying a mid-tier play-driving winger like a mid-tier play-driving winger — with room to solidify himself as a top-six forward — and you have him until he is 32.
The rising cap is why the long number ages well. Let’s call it $7.5 million, which is 6.61 percent of the cap in the first year of the new deal, and the ceiling is not even staying there. It is $104 million now and already projected $9.5 million higher the following season, with expectations the cap will continue climbing. Every extra dollar in the league-wide pot shrinks his slice. A contract that feels like real money this September is a complementary hit by Year 3. That is the logic behind the eight-year deals that already look clean.
Logan Stankoven signed eight years at $6 million in Carolina. Jackson Blake signed eight at $5.11 million. Dylan Guenther signed eight at $7.14 million in Utah before he had a full body of NHL work. Lane Hutson is on eight at $8.85 million. Ivan Demidov is on eight at $9.15 million. Those are not copies of Evangelista. They are the same idea: take a young player whose process is ahead of the boxcars, lock him through his prime, and let the cap grow around the number. Guenther’s $7.14 million is the closest dollar figure to what AFP has on Evangelista — except Guenther’s deal is eight years, not six. That is the gap Mehta can still close.
Judd Moldaver is not going to miss the other side of this. He already waited until October a year ago on a bridge. Leave Evangelista unsigned into July and the offer-sheet noise starts—looking at you, Utah.
The Devils can, of course, match. But that’s a situation the Devils GM doesn’t want to find himself in.
After the 15th the best Mehta can do is seven, and the best a new team can do later is six.
And look, Mehta has already proven to be better at negotiating trade protections. Signing him does not glue him to the roster in the unlikely case things don’t work out with their new forward.
New Jersey is crowded on the wing. A long-term Evangelista contract is still movable, and he is easier to move on a number another club can live with than as a pending RFA with a hearing on the calendar. Mehta can extend him and still trade someone else next week. Those are separate calls. Only one of them expires on the 15th.
The risk is Evangelista hitting a ceiling lower than his outlook. If the finishing never comes, you are paying a connector into his early 30s. Fair. The other risk is watching the points follow Hughes and Hischier and then buying the same player at a higher AAV with one fewer year allowed. Nashville already took the short path and sold. The Devils do not need the sequel.
Training camp is coming. Next summer New Jersey has the space and a core of players that Evangelista fits in with and compliments. Betting on the upside and hanging onto him long-term with what will be a low cap hit as the cap rises seems like a logical bet to make before Sept.15th comes and goes and changes the math on a potential extension entirely.