NHL trade deadline player profile: Jake Evans

The New Jersey Devils have been linked to Montreal's 3rd line center leading up to the deadline.

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Barring the bottom completely falling out in the coming weeks, the New Jersey Devils are likely to be buyers at this year’s trade deadline.

One player who has reportedly caught the team’s interest is Montreal Canadiens center Jake Evans.

Let’s take a look at some of the positives and negatives of pursuing an Evans trade.

The good

Evans has provided real pop offensively in Montreal’s bottom-6 and New Jersey could desperately use someone who can do that for them.

He has scored seven goals and tallied 17 points at 5v5 this season. For reference, Ondrej Palat and Stefan Noesen – two players who’ve mostly played in the top-6 – both sit at 17 points in that gamestate.

The outputs Evans has produced put him in a completely different stratosphere than Erik Haula, Curtis Lazar, and Justin Dowling, the team’s regular bottom-6 centers.

Haula (8 points), Lazar (4), and Dowling (4) have combined for just six goals and 16 points, albeit over a smaller amount of games. Still, it’s clear Evans would give the team more juice down the middle.

Evans’ impacts are better as well. He ranks 9th on the Canadiens in net rating and has helped the team score a larger share of the goals than they have without him on the ice.

Haula, Dowling, and Lazar each rank outside the Devils’ top-16 in net rating. They all own negative goal differentials on a team that is +12 at 5v5 on the year.

Evans is also very good in the faceoff circle – he’s won 52% of his draws or more in three straight years – and would give the Devils another reliable penalty killer.

In short, he’d add more offense to the bottom-6, make the Devils deeper down the middle, provide pace lower in the lineup, and is someone Sheldon Keefe could rely on in PK situations or with key faceoffs.

The bad