Grading the Timo Meier trade: Devils get their man without overpaying

Matt Larkin
Matt Larkin(MLarkinHockey)
Grading the Timo Meier trade: Devils get their man without overpaying
Credit: © Robert Edwards-USA TODAY Sports

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Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. One after another, the Eastern Conference’s top teams continue to load up with major personnel upgrades approaching the Trade Deadline.

Keeping pace with the New York Islanders (Bo Horvat), New York Rangers (Vladimir Tarasenko), Toronto Maple Leafs (Ryan O’Reilly) and Boston Bruins (Dmitry Orlov), the New Jersey Devils and GM Tom Fitzgerald stepped up to the plate Sunday. Slowly, the suitors for left winger Timo Meier dropped out of the running as the week progressed, and the Devils were the last team standing. They acquired Meier, defenseman Scott Harrington, defenseman Santeri Hatakka, left winger Timur Ibragimov, goaltender Zach Emond and a 2024 fifth-round pick from the San Jose Sharks for a 2023 first-round pick, a 2024 conditional first-round pick, a 2024 seventh-round pick, left winger Fabian Zetterlund and prospect defensemen Shakir Mukhamadullin and Nikita Okhotiuk.

It’s a foundation-altering deal for both sides. The Devils crash the Stanley Cup contender party with the biggest difference maker on the market in Meier, while the Sharks get a beefy haul to accelerate their rebuild. At least, that’s the headline each team is going for. Did they accomplish their goals? Let’s grade the trade.

NEW JERSEY DEVILS

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LW Timo Meier, 26 – $3 million cap hit (Devils retain 50 percent of $6 million cap hit), 2023 RFA, due $10 million qualifying offer

D Scott Harrington, 29, $750,000 cap hit, 2023 UFA

D Santeri Hatakka, 22, $850,883 cap hit through 2023-24

LW Timur Ibragimov, 22, $813,333 cap hit, 2023 RFA

G Zach Emond, 22, $786,667 cap hit, 2023 RFA

2024 fifth-round pick (from COL)

There’s a reason so many teams circled the Sharks over the past few weeks trying to snag Meier. Even the St. Louis Blues, in the process of selling off their veteran UFAs, were linked to Meier, hoping to retool on the fly and lock him up as a future core piece.

Meier is a bona fide front-line NHL scorer, currently on track for a career-best 45 goals. He plays a fairly physical game at 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds, and he shoots the puck at an incredibly high volume. He is almost peerless in his ability to pepper opposing nets with pucks. Since the start of last season, he ranks second in the NHL in shots and scoring chances per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. The Devils are already top-four in the league at doing both of those things this season, so Meier makes an already dominant team even deadlier once he’s back fully healthy from a minor injury. Their power play ranked a mediocre 19th in the league going into Sunday’s action, so Meier’s presence there will be a major boost. He has 13 power play goals this season, seventh-most in the league.

The Devils did not secure a contract extension for Meier as part of the deal. He’s a restricted free agent this summer due a $10 million qualifying offer. But this is a contending team in the present, worrying for now about pursuing a Stanley Cup in 2022-23. They can sort out the rest later, whether it’s qualifying Meier for $10 million, re-signing him on a multi-year pact or trading his rights. Fitzgerald will at least have options, and perhaps the potential for magical chemistry with fellow Swiss star Nico Hischier will up the odds of Meier signing long-term.

Not that it’s an automatic that Meier and Hischier end up linemates. Coach Lindy Ruff could try loading up with Meier alongside superstar Jack Hughes. Between Hughes, Hischier, Meier, Dawson Mercer, Ondrej Palat, Jesper Bratt and so on, the Devils have plenty of exciting permutations to try.

The other pieces acquired are pretty much background noise. Harrington has played 28 games this season and qualifies as a depth blueliner, while minor-leaguers Hatakka, Ibragimov and Emond went New Jersey’s way to ensure San Jose didn’t exceed the maximum contract number of 50.

This deal was obviously about Meier and Meier only. Giving up at least one first-round pick, possibly two depending on whether the condition is met on the 2024 pick, plus a top prospect in Shakir Mukhamadullin as the key pieces constitutes a fairly high acquisition cost. But damn right it did. Meier is a prime-years star under team control beyond this season. The price was always guaranteed to be high.

And it’s a win that the Devils managed to trade from an area of surplus rather than surrender top goal-scoring prospect Alexander Holtz in the trade. Since they already have two of the truly elite blueline prospects in the sport in Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec, not to mention another blue-chipper in Seamus Casey, Mukhamadullin was a logical sacrifice.

Since we still don’t know what Meier’s long-term fate will be, I can’t give New Jersey a perfect A+ score, but you did well, Mr. Fitzgerald.

Grade: A

SAN JOSE SHARKS

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2023 first-round pick

Conditional 2024 first-round pick

D Shakir Mukhamadullin 21, $894,167 cap hit through 2024-25

LW Fabian Zetterlund, 23, $750,000 cap hit, RFA

LW Andreas Johnsson, 28, $3.4 million cap hit, 2023 UFA

D Nikita Okhotiuk, 22, $789,167 cap hit through 2023-24

2024 seventh-round pick

We could blow up the grade for this trade by challenging the very idea of trading Meier in the first place, as he might have been just young enough to be part of the long-term solution in San Jose. But the Tomas Hertl extension last year came before Mike Grier took over as GM. This is his show now, and he recognized that the Sharks, with a subpar farm crop and several pricey veteran contracts bogging them down, needed to start over. The best way for Grier to do that was to use his best available asset in Meier. But the return had to be great.

So did Grier get enough? A first-rounder in a great 2023 draft class, albeit a pick that won’t be a high one, is a good place to start. The conditional 2024 pick becomes a top-10 lottery protected first-rounder if the Devils reach the Eastern Conference Final in either of the next two seasons and Meier plays in 50 percent of the games in 2023. If those conditions aren’t met, it drops to a second-round pick. But there’s a reasonable chance the Devils as currently constructed go deep enough to trigger the condition.

So you have the pick(s) element covered off. Next: the prospect element. The Sharks got a good one in Mukhamadullin, whom the Devils selected 20th overall in the 2020 NHL Draft. He’s a towering, rangy presence at 6-foot-4 who still has a lot of filling out to do at 178 pounds. He has a big shot, which has helped him score an impressive six goals this season for Salavat Yulaev Ufa – a high number for a youngster in the KHL. Big blueliners like him can take until almost their mid-20s to become steady NHL contributors, but he was expected to come to North America after this KHL season wraps up. He has plenty of upside. Okhotiuk, who was toiling with AHL Utica, projects as a more of a physical stay-at-home defenseman with a lower ceiling.

Zetterlund, in his second NHL season but still Calder Trophy eligible, is an intriguing get for the Sharks, an intelligent, well-rounded winger who got some looks on the Devils’ first line at times this season. His 20 points in 45 games this season are deceiving in that they’ve come in just 12:57 of ice time per game. Among 623 NHLers with 300 or minutes played at 5-on-5, he sits 20th in primary assists per 60. He’s not going to be a franchise changer, but he could be a useful middle-six NHLer for years to come.

Johnsson was once a promising top-nine NHL forward with the Toronto Maple Leafs but never found his touch as a Devil. He’s merely a Shark because New Jersey needed to dump his cap hit.

On one hand, the total package Grier got for Meier seems to check the necessary boxes: top prospect, first-round pick, viable NHLer. It meets the standard. But it doesn’t do much more than that, does it? The fact San Jose couldn’t pry one of the Devils true top prospects for the single best trade asset on the market feels like a mild disappointment. But it’s a reasonable haul when you factor in that Meier hasn’t signed an extension. It’s similar to what Vancouver got for Bo Horvat when an extension with the New York Islanders was in the cards.

So the Sharks have their rebuild moving in the right direction now. Even though Holtz would’ve been an exciting piece, most of the Sharks’ top prospects are actually forwards, from William Eklund to Thomas Bordeleau to Filip Bystedt. So it made sense to get stronger on defense.  

Grade: B-

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