New Jersey Devils notes: On Mehta's targeted buys and 12th overall
Breaking down value bets on Amadeus Lombardi and Declan Chisolm, as well as potential targets at 12.
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Sunny Mehta has been a busy man over the past few days and that will continue with the NHL draft here and free agency just around the corner.
A few notes on what’s happened and what’s to come:
Targeted adds 🎯
Amadeus Lombardi is a 23-year-old pivot with a strong statistical profile.
Lombardi chipped in 26 points as a 20-year-old AHL rookie back in 2023-24. He then took off in his sophomore campaign, producing 40 points in 44 games as a 21-year-old.
Lombardi followed that up with another strong season, putting up 42 points over 47 appearances while ranking second on Grand Rapids in assists and points per game.
A ton of his production has come at evens, which is very important when hunting depth pieces – they’re not going to be afforded much PP time in the big leagues.
Rather than waiting years to find out if a 4th round lottery ticket will amount to anything, the Devils are rolling the dice on someone with a very promising track record who could have a much, much, faster payoff.
It’s not an exaggeration to say the player chosen with the 4th rounder is unlikely to get to a point where he’s a highly productive AHL player, let alone a real NHLer.
This is a Justin Sourdif-type of bet, albeit on a smaller scale, and shows the kind of creativity Mehta and his staff will be operating with moving forward.
Dennis Chisolm is an interesting buy as well.
He ranked 4th among eight Capitals defensemen in CF% and posted a +3 goal differential at 5v5.
Those are solid results considering he had a 35% offensive zone start rate, third lowest on the backend.
His xG and chance outputs weren’t great but that’s not too concerning given a) his usage and b) his track record.
Chisolm posted an impressive 53.92 xGF% with Minnesota from 2023-25. That was good for 29th among 213 defensemen to log at least 1,000 minutes in that span.
There’s plenty of reason to be optimistic he can play a healthy chunk of games for the Devils and do so competently.
I can’t say how refreshing it is to see a GM making these kinds of unique but educated moves.
Steve Yzerman and Chris Patrick didn’t randomly call up Mehta and ask if he had interest in buying these players for 4th round picks.
They were very clearly targeted buys. Mehta and his team did their homework and believe they’ve found an NHL player, or two, at little cost.
