The Devils and Islanders don’t usually make life easy on each other, but the Ondřej Palát deal shows that even within the division, a trade can get done when both sides see a path forward.
Back in the 2022 offseason, New Jersey signed Palát to a five-year contract, betting the veteran winger would help push a young team to the next level. He arrived with two Stanley Cup titles from Tampa Bay and the kind of middle-six pedigree the Devils wanted around their rising core.
It didn’t click. Palát produced 38 goals and 55 assists in 248 games, but he never found a steady fit, whether he was alongside the Jack Hughes line, the Nico Hischier line, or down in the bottom six. What was supposed to be a boost turned into a heavy contract with a $6 million average annual value that became harder to justify.
So New Jersey moved on and sent Palát to the Islanders. In return, the Devils got Maxim Tsyplakov, along with a third-round pick in the 2026 draft and a 2026 sixth-rounder, while New York absorbed the veteran’s deal. For the Islanders, it was a relatively low-cost swing aimed at helping a team on the playoff bubble get over the hump.
The trade has not exactly turned into a clear win for either club. The Devils missed the playoffs last season, the Islanders also fell short, and Palát has managed just nine points in 44 games with New York.
Still, the move helped New Jersey in ways that went beyond the box score. It cleared cap space and gave the Devils more flexibility. After Sunny Mehta took over as GM this offseason, Tsyplakov was included in the Šimon Nemec trade to the Calgary Flames, a deal that brought back two conditional first-round picks, one of which Mehta later flipped in the Luke Evangelista trade.
That chain of moves is part of why the Devils can view the Palát deal as the beginning of a pivot rather than a dead end. It opened room for roster upgrades in the bottom six, with players such as Anthony Mantha and Evan Rodrigues stepping into roles Palát was expected to fill.
The Islanders, meanwhile, may have more reason to wonder what might have been. Palát hasn’t delivered the kind of impact they hoped for, but he has still mattered as a veteran presence on a younger roster, helping guide a group with more prospects making a high impact. And there’s still time for him to turn this season around and become a useful depth forward.
The bigger lesson is simple: sometimes a team has to cut bait and keep moving. Fitzgerald signed Palát with the idea that he could be the final piece, then eventually dealt him when that vision didn’t hold up.
For New Jersey, that decision has allowed a reset. Evangelista is now a top-six winger on the Hischier line, while Mantha, Rodrigues, and Jesper Boqvist form the third line. The cap relief mattered, but the roster space mattered just as much.
And on a broader level, the deal undercuts the idea that division rivals won’t do business with each other. GMs may hesitate to send a player to a team they’ll see often, but the Devils and Islanders still made the move. Looking back, New Jersey has every reason to feel better about it now than it did then.
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