The Devils needed skill, and they managed to find it outside of the draft.
General manger Ray Shero traded the team’s third-round pick (No. 77 overall) in Saturday’s NHL Entry Draft to the Penguins for restricted free agent forward Beau Bennett. The 24-year-old winger played one postseason game with the Penguins as they went on their run to the Stanley Cup victory this past postseason, and he holds arbitration rights on his upcoming negotiation.
The draft pick Shero traded originally was acquired from Detroit in the Marek Zidlicky trade, which the Red Wings used to select Connor Hall in this year’s draft. How Hall and Bennett will stack up against one other in the years to come is hardly known, but Bennett, if healthy, should be able to contribute offense to the goal-starved Devils right away.
The team ranked in the bottom four of the league in scoring for the past four seasons, all of which they missed the playoffs. They were last in the league in 2015-16, averaging 2.22 goals per game.
Bennett hasn’t quite proven himself as a consistent NHL player yet, but has shown glimpses of high-end talent. He had one goal and four assists in 12 playoff games with the Pens in 2014, when they lost to the Rangers in an epic seven-game second-round series.
Shero then went on to stack his prospect pool by taking right-winger Nathan Bastian in the second round at No. 41 overall. Bastian played alongside the Devils’ first-round pick, Michael McLeod, at OHL Mississauga last season. At 6-foot-3, Bastian registered 59 points in 64 games with the Steelheads.
The Devils then used their earlier third-round pick on Minnesotan Joseph Anderson, a 5-foot-11 winger who played with the U.S. National Development team. He was followed by Russian winger Mikhail Maltsev (No. 102 overall), Canadian goalie Evan Cormier (No. 105), Russian defensman Yegor Rykov (No. 132), Swedish winger Jesper Bratt (No. 162) and finally American defenseman Jeremy Davies.