New Jersey Devils sign Jesper Bratt to long-term extension

The 24-year-old put pen to paper on an eight-year deal carrying a team friendly value of $7.875 million per season.

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Signed, sealed, delivered. At long last, Tom Fitzgerald and the New Jersey Devils have inked Jesper Bratt to a long-term contract extension.

It is a max-length, eight-year deal worth a grand total of $63 million. That equates to a very reasonable $7.875 million per season.

I am not surprised Bratt signed for a little less than the $8 million benchmark Jack Hughes set, nor that his contract resonated with his number. That is what I heard and forwarded all along.

From May 24th:

I believe Bratt will get in the ballpark of ~$8 million per year on an extension – perhaps $7.963 or $7.63M – for, say, five years and then Bratt can strike gold again on his next deal.

What I am surprised about is Bratt signing for eight years at that figure.

RFA contracts are getting shorter and shorter in this era. Many stars want to sign big money deals while giving away only medium term and then cash in again in their late 20s when the salary cap is higher.

That is what I expected with Bratt. I thought he’d be happy to take that AAV but over, say, a five-year span, allowing him to hit it big in a handful of years when the salary cap could be as much as $10 million higher than what it is now.

But if you wanted him for eight years? My thought was that the price would go up. Evolving-Hockey’s contract projection model was on the same wavelength, projecting Bratt to command $8.329 million per over an eight-year deal.