The New Jersey Devils moved fast to lock in Luke Evangelista, getting the deal done with less than an hour left before the midnight deadline that ended the previous collective bargaining agreement.
Evangelista had just arrived in New Jersey on September 1st in a stunning trade with the Nashville Predators. The Devils sent a first- and second-round pick in the 2028 NHL Draft the other way, with the first-rounder originally belonging to Colorado after the Simon Nemec trade. It was the kind of move that immediately put the spotlight on what the Devils would do next.
The answer came quickly enough: an extension. First-year GM Sunny Mehta signed Evangelista to a five-year contract worth $7.25 million. A lot of Devils fans, including writers at Pucks and Pitchforks, had pushed for an eight-year deal, but the chance to sign that length expired at midnight on September 16th.
Even without a game in a Devils sweater yet, Evangelista was always a candidate to get paid. He’s coming off a 56-point season, and while he scored only 12 goals, his value is in the way he sets up teammates. He’s a distributor who should fit well next to a high-end finisher on the wing.
The timing mattered just as much as the money. The structure of the contract would have been illegal literally an hour after it was announced, which made the race to the finish line a real part of the story.
The deal is also built in a way that shows how aggressive New Jersey was willing to be. It’s heavily front-loaded, with some of the risk softened by buyout protection.
Evangelista will make $9.7 million in the first year of the contract, then drop to $6.085 million in the final season, 2031-32. The next CBA limits the extreme differences between yearly salaries, which is why this kind of structure had to be handled before the deadline.
Insider Chris Johnson said more than 60% of the contract will be paid in bonuses, and those bonus-heavy deals are no longer being signed after Tuesday because of the new CBA rules. Evangelista may have signed the last contract ever under the previous agreement.
The numbers coming out on Tuesday only underscored why New Jersey wanted this wrapped up. The Washington Capitals gave Ryan Leonard $10.5 million per season, Justin Sourdif got $6.35 million per season, and Cutter Gauthier landed $81 million over six years, which works out to more than $13 million per season. All of those deals were tied to the same September 15th deadline.
For the Devils, the bottom line is simple: they got a young player with real upward momentum under contract before the rules changed underneath them. After a messy negotiation with the Predators before last season, getting this done fast had to be a priority. Now it’s settled, and the focus shifts back to hockey.
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