With the NHL draft set to begin in two weeks, thankfully this year is one of the few I’ve paid little attention to in the last decade or so, given the fact we have no pick until late in the second round. Not that you can’t pick good players in the late second round and beyond (recently departed Damon Severson being one such example), but it’s even more of a crapshoot from a fan’s perspective. Ironically the only way the draft is really relevant to me this year is as a flashpoint for our big-name potential RFA signings. Thankfully GM Tom Fitzgerald got half of that problem solved with the announcement of an 8-year, $63 million extension agreed to with Jesper Bratt about two weeks before this year’s draft.

After all my kvetching over Bratt’s contract situation (and some by Fitz himself after last offseason) with two previous failed long-term negotiations, I have to admit part of me thought we were headed to a fatal crossroads this month. With the unofficial deadline approaching, it was going to become apparent very quickly whether Bratt and his agent’s priority was maxing out on money or getting the best deal he could to stay here. Fortunately, the answer proved to be the latter. Especially since the perceived deadline looks like it became a real one indeed:

Things were always going to be decided this month. If Fitz don’t get a long-term commitment in a third negotiation (whether it was one year on an RFA deal or a two-year one a la Vladislav Gavrikov in LA, anticipating a higher cap at that point), odds are Bratt would have gone to free agency – and if that was the case you couldn’t do what the Islanders did with John Tavares and let him walk for nothing in return, even if the return likely wouldn’t have been ideal for a team that’s now transitioned from worrying about the future to supplementing the present.

Thankfully, when push came to shove Bratt did indeed want to stay. While I think the idea of Jack Hughes’s deal being a cap on all Devils contracts was vastly overplayed (especially with Dougie Hamilton already making more), it may well have been an unofficial ceiling in Bratt’s case – if only because he’s clearly not the player Jack is. Bratt was certainly important to retain long-term however, given his two straight 73-point seasons with a career-high 32 goals in 2022-23, and being one of the key figures in the Devils’ turnaround.

Make no mistake though, this wasn’t any kind of a lowball – it was a fair deal for all in the end. Could Bratt have made a $500k to a million per year more if he slow-walked it to free agency? Perhaps, but then you can’t exactly control what team is the one that’s offering such a contract, assuming there is going to be one out there. We’ve seen time and again where players get their payday on bad teams, then aren’t happy there while the player can’t do anything to help said bad team win and a long-term divorce is inevitable. Bratt in the end getting his jersey number ($63) in millions on his extension wasn’t quite Sidney Crosby type $8.7 per year superstitious but it worked out nicely all things considered.

Both Bratt and Fitz met with the media yesterday morning and ironically, I’m probably going watch both of those pressers right after this blog as I haven’t had the time to do it yet. Let’s face it though, you can get the big nuggets via Twitter and other avenues anyway. I’m not sure if Bratt really had one per se other than saying he texted Nico Hischier to let him know about the extension before it became public a couple days ago.

Given the departure of Severson this offseason, if pending UFA Miles Wood also doesn’t return, Nico and Bratt will both become the longest-tenured Devils on the roster with six seasons each. My, how time flies. While Nico was the #1 overall pick in 2017, Bratt took the longer road to get here after being an unheralded sixth-round pick in 2016. He scored thirteen goals and 35 points and played 74 regular season games as a 19-year old rookie and played a role in getting the Devils back to the postseason after a six-year absence, but Bratt only got in the lineup for one of the team’s five first-round games. Bratt, like the team stagnated to an extent the next couple years but had a true breakout in 2021-22 with 26 goals and 73 points in 76 games.

Was last offseason’s failed long-term contract negotiation in part a product of Fitz saying ‘do it again’ first? Perhaps…thankfully, we no longer have to speculate on Bratt’s contract status until the next decade. With Bratt done, Timo becomes the next focus, then after that Dawson Mercer is up for his first post-ELC extension after this month. Fitz made no bones about where he stands on both – in regard to Mercer saying he wanted to have discussions about locking up the Devils’ breakout second-year player long-term. First things first, however and that’s dealing with Timo before the draft.

I’ve been a little nervous about how that negotiation would go but Fitz dropped this little nugget during his 25-minute presser:

Given that Fitz exuded confidence in the Bratt negotiations before officially getting it done, how can I doubt him now? Of course, long-term deals aren’t the easiest thing in the world to negotiate – but if player and team’s interests are aligned in wanting to stay then it seems a matter of when and how, rather than if Timo will re-sign at this point – which would be a tremendous boon to the Devils’ offseason plans assuming his contract also got done in the next couple of weeks.