Trade Deadline | 10 TAKEAWAYS

The beasts are certainly in the Eastern Conference, with the top five teams in the league in the East and the big-name players that were on the market heading from the Western to the Eastern conference, Timo Meier of course being one of those! But that's it for the changes in rosters as the clock struck 3 p.m. today, player movement has come to a close with the Trade Deadline.
Most of the big moves were made well before today, Meier included, but there was still tinkering to be done, not only in New Jersey but league-wide as well.
This special edition of 10 Takeaways, presented by Ticketmaster, runs down the 2023 NHL Trade Deadline.

2.

This isn't Lazar's first rodeo at the trade deadline, this is his third time being a trade deadline acquisition. He's one of nine players traded three times on deadline day, with the record being four. Two players have been traded four times on deadline day, with Vladislav Namestnikov becoming the most recent, moving from the San Jose Sharks to the Winnipeg Jets earlier today, tying Alan May.
Namestnikov was traded on the 2018, 2020, 2022 and now 2023 deadline day.
You can learn more about the newest Devil in
Three Things
.
Video: Trade Deadline | 3-ON-3

3.

The Vancouver Canucks are 27th in the 32-team league in the overall standings, so for Lazar, with just one phone call he shot up the league standings from 27th to 3rd with the Devils. I asked him what goes through a player's mind, grasping the 180 their lives just took:
"Your mindset kind of switches pretty quickly," Lazar responded, "It does wonders for your overall being, you have a pep in your step, you're just excited and that's where I'm at now. I can't wait to meet the guys, get used to their systems and just start playing."
Of what his perspective has been on the Devils from the outside looking in?
"The thing with them is that they're a young team on the rise in such a fashion that everyone is just like 'Woah, these guys are good'the pace they play at is incredible, they're so creative on the offensive side as well, but also their defensive structure is so solid."

4.

Imagine for a moment, you hear that you're being traded to your brother's NHL team and the excitement that must be pumping through you.
But then... you find out the trade details. Your brother is the other player going the other way in the trade. That must feel like the ultimate disappointment.
Well, that's exactly what happened today in a trade between the Arizona Coyotes and the Calgary Flames. Brett Ritchie was shipped to Arizona as part of a deal that sent his younger brother Nick to the Flames.
It's the first time in NHL history a pair of brothers have been traded for one another.
No word yet on if they've taken each other's numbers yet... but that could make the equipment manager's lives a lot easier!

5.

You may have come across on the AHL transaction pages the names of three Devils players who are currently in Vegas and two are still set to play tonight for the NHL team. Both Kevin Bahl and Akira Schmid were "sent down" in a paper transaction, as they were immediately recalled back to the NHL club.
Graeme Clarke, who was called up at the start of the trip, was sent back to Utica and not recalled.
The purpose for these moves is based on NHL and American Hockey League rules a player must be on an AHL active roster at 3 p.m. today in order to be eligible to play the rest of, or parts of the remainder of the AHL season. These moves assure that the Devils will be able to have all three players join Utica if the circumstances are required.

6.

Now that all is said and done, I still feel the most shocking of trade of the deadline moves was watching goaltender Jonathan Quick shipped out of Los Angeles. The shock factor was not because of his play - he's struggled by all accounts this season - but because of what he has meant to the franchise and the fan base. It caught many people off-guard, especially his Kings teammates. In a season, years ago, where he was wildly considered a backup goaltender to the heir apparent Jonathan Bernier with the Kings, Quick shot out of a cannon, so to speak, backstopping the Kings to their first Stanley Cup as an eighth seed in the West and later repeated in 2012 as winners (sorry, Devils fans, I couldn't ignore that part of history!).

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7.

Around the league, there were several players who were traded back to teams they previously played for. Nick Bonino returns to Pittsburgh in a trade with the San Jose Sharks. Marcus Johannson moved back to the Minnesota Wild from the Washington Capitals and Luke Schenn is a Maple Leaf once more, the 33-year-old added from the Vancouver Canucks to the team he broke into the league with, everything coming full circle.

8.

There are still 22 games left in the season, the Devils are firmly sitting in a playoff spot and are a single point behind the Carolina Hurricanes for the top spot in the Metropolitan Division. The Metro as a whole had been busy leading up to the deadline in adding players to bolster their rosters, some have been big splashes others have made lesser ripples, but the job of the general manager is to find the right balance between adding what needs to be added and keeping things status quo. Sometimes when you add too much to a group, it could throw things off, which is one of the questions I had for Fitzgerald today:
"I've been on the record saying I do believe you build your team in the summer, right into training camp," he said, "it's called training camp for a reason, you're training your body and your brain to be conditioned to certain ways you want to play. That takes some time. There's also a reason why people say we want to evaluate our team after the 20, 25-game mark because it takes that long to see what your team is all about.
"So when you get to the end, adding multiple players could be detrimental to your team because of the chemistry, because understanding where you want to play. The word that we use, one word in particular is 'connected'. So, if one guy is not connected, because he's not comfortable with the system, then you've got four other guys that are dislodged as well. And that could be disastrous."

9.

Congratulations, we made it! We no longer have to hear the newest hockey term added to the lexicon this season: Roster Management.
Players will no longer be held out from lineups for roster managementas teams were protecting their trade assets.

10.

Lock this one away for your Trivia Nights at your local pub... Tom Fitzgerald suggested that Luke Hughes will join the Devils once his season in Michigan comes to a close in the coming weeks. The second that he does, Curtis Lazar will become the first NHL player to have played with all three Hughes brothers.
Lazar joins the Devils from the Canucks where the eldest Hughes brother, Quinn, is a star defenseman.