General Manager Sunny Mehta made two announcements in quick succession that together represent one of the more consequential single-day transactions periods the New Jersey Devils have had in the current front office era, securing a multi-year contract extension with the team’s most productive rookie forward from this past season while simultaneously completing a trade with the Florida Panthers that brings a veteran depth presence and two additional forwards into the organization in exchange for the goaltender the Devils acquired from Calgary just two seasons ago.
The contract extension for Arseny Gritsyuk covers three years and carries a total value of $9,750,000, structured on a graduated scale that reflects both the organization’s confidence in his development and the budget constraints of signing a restricted free agent entering his second professional season. The contract’s first year carries a $2,250,000 salary, rising to $2,750,000 in the second year and stepping up to $4,750,000 in the final year of the deal — a back-loaded structure that gives the Devils some cap relief in the near term while rewarding Gritsyuk with meaningful earning growth as he establishes himself at the NHL level. At an average annual value of $3,250,000, the contract is consistent with the market for forwards who put up production in the low-to-mid thirties of points in their rookie seasons, though the graduated structure suggests the team expects his output to grow into and beyond that average over the contract’s term.
Gritsyuk’s debut NHL season was substantive enough to justify that expectation. The 25-year-old forward, born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, and playing in the first of his five KHL seasons with Avangard Omsk beginning in 2020 before transitioning to St. Petersburg, arrived in New Jersey with more professional seasoning than most rookies carry into their first NHL campaigns. He spent parts of five KHL seasons accumulating 152 career points in 216 regular-season games, including a career-high 44 points in 49 games in his final year with St. Petersburg before making the jump across the Atlantic — production that placed him in the top five of St. Petersburg skaters in points, goals, and assists simultaneously, the kind of comprehensive offensive contribution that separates a scorer from a genuine forward presence. He was also a member of the 2020-21 Avangard Omsk team that won the Gagarin Cup, the KHL’s championship trophy, providing him the experience of playing on a winning professional team before he appeared in a single NHL game.
In Prudential Center and on the road this past season, Gritsyuk’s 31 points in 66 games ranked thirteenth among all NHL rookie skaters, while his 149 shots on goal ranked sixth — a volume-shooting tendency that reflects the kind of aggressive offensive instinct that translates well across leagues and that tends to sustain production over time as finishing percentages stabilize. His six multi-point games placed him in the top ten for all NHL rookies in that category. He made his NHL debut in the team’s regular-season opener against Carolina on October 9, 2025, recorded his first NHL point two days later in a multi-assist performance at Tampa Bay, and scored his first NHL goal on October 22 against Minnesota at Prudential Center. In becoming the first player in franchise history to wear number 81, he also added a small footnote to the organizational record that tends to follow players who leave distinctive marks on a franchise even in relatively modest early circumstances.
The trade with Florida, announced simultaneously with the Gritsyuk extension, acquires three players in exchange for goaltender Jacob Markstrom and forward Angus Crookshank. Markstrom, who came to New Jersey from Calgary in a trade on June 19, 2024, spent two seasons with the Devils before this transaction ends his tenure with the organization. Crookshank, who appeared in eight games with the NHL club last season while spending the bulk of his time with the AHL Utica Comets across 60 games, was a depth piece who did not figure prominently in the organization’s NHL plans going forward.
The most established of the three incoming players is Evan Rodrigues, the 32-year-old forward who spent the last three seasons in Florida after a career path that took him from Buffalo through Pittsburgh and a brief stop in Colorado before he signed with the Panthers. Rodrigues spent eleven NHL seasons establishing himself as the kind of reliable two-way forward that playoff contenders specifically target to fill bottom-six roles — not a player who produces at a rate that draws significant attention during contract negotiations, but one whose 31 points in 69 games last season, combined with an 11-year track record of consistent, defensively sound NHL play, makes him exactly what a team like New Jersey needs when it is building out the bottom portions of its roster around a top-end core. His two Stanley Cup Championships with Florida in 2024 and 2025 give him the winning culture experience that organizations explicitly seek when adding veteran depth. He carries one remaining year on his contract at a cap hit of $3,075,000, a manageable figure for what he provides. His professional roots trace back to Boston University, where he spent four seasons and finished his senior year second in NCAA scoring behind Jack Eichel while serving as Eichel’s linemate — a biographical detail that speaks to the offensive company he kept at his professional formation stage, even if his subsequent NHL role has been defined more by defensive responsibility than top-line production.
Jesper Boqvist, 27, represents what might be the most emotionally interesting dimension of this transaction from a New Jersey perspective, given that the Devils originally drafted him in the second round, 36th overall, in the 2017 NHL Draft and that he spent his first four NHL seasons with the organization before being traded away. His return to New Jersey closes a circle of sorts: Boqvist, a Falun, Sweden native who developed within the Devils’ system from 2019-20 through 2022-23 before moving to Florida, joins the organization now as a player who has won a Stanley Cup championship and accumulated 387 NHL games of experience, 105 points, and six additional postseason appearances since his original departure. His history with the organization gives him familiarity with the market, the building, and potentially the coaching expectations that an incoming free agent or trade acquisition from outside the Devils ecosystem would require additional time to absorb. That familiarity is worth something even if it cannot be precisely quantified on a transaction sheet.
Ben Steeves, the youngest of the three incoming players at 24, arrives from Florida’s AHL system in Charlotte after spending two-plus seasons there following his signing as an undrafted free agent out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth. His 45-point season in Charlotte last year, driven substantially by a 23-goal output, represents exactly the kind of AHL production profile that earns players a serious look at the NHL level, and his 62-point, 45-goal performance across two collegiate seasons suggests a finishing ability that translates effectively across competitive levels. At 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, Steeves does not carry the physical profile that occupies most conversations about power-forward depth acquisitions, but his scoring instincts and his consistent production in Charlotte give the Devils an additional option at the NHL bubble level who can legitimately compete for a roster spot or provide the Utica Comets with a reliable offensive contributor until that opportunity materializes.
Taken together, the Gritsyuk re-signing and the Florida trade tell a coherent story about the direction Sunny Mehta and the Devils’ front office are pursuing in the construction of the roster’s depth beyond its established top-end core. The Gritsyuk extension signals that the organization sees genuine NHL-level offensive production in the Russian forward’s game and wants to secure him before his restricted free agent status opened the door to arbitration or competitive offers, locking in a reasonable market contract before that situation became complicated. The Florida trade replenishes veteran depth in specific categories — experienced two-way forwards with playoff pedigree, a returning organizational product who knows the systems and environment, and a young finisher working toward his NHL opportunity — while moving pieces that had reached their natural ceiling within the organization’s current construction. Markstrom’s departure closes the book on a two-year chapter that never fully achieved the goaltending stability the team was seeking when it acquired him from Calgary. Crookshank’s move creates space for the returning Boqvist and the developing Steeves to compete for depth roles going into training camp. The net effect is a deeper, more experienced organizational depth chart entering a season in which the Devils will need consistent performance throughout their lineup to compete seriously in the Eastern Conference.
