Revisiting the Cody Glass extension

Now that the dust has settled a little bit, I wanted to circle back to Glass' two-year extension with the New Jersey Devils.

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The New Jersey Devils didn’t plan on qualifying Cody Glass. After getting a better lay of the land for this year’s center market – or lack thereof – the team opted to pivot and circle back to Glass.

The end result was a two-year contract extension worth an annual value of $2.5 million.

I didn’t get to share my thoughts at the time due to all the other Devils happenings – the Connor Brown signing, the Evgenii Dadonov signing, the surprising Jake Allen extension, etc. – so I wanted to do so now that things have settled a little bit.

The Devils made the right call

When news broke the Devils were unlikely to qualify Glass, I could understand the decision in a vaccuum.

He has scored just 10 goals over his last 106 regular season games and the Devils aren’t flush with cash. Given the necessity to make every dollar count, I’m not surprised there was at least some level of hesitation to giving Glass $2.5 million per season.

Ultimately, they were right to take a mulligan and lock Glass up.

Centers are at such a premium league-wide. It’s almost impossible to find competent players without drastically overpaying, be it by dollars, cost of acquisition, or a combination of the two.

For his shortcomings, Glass is a good player and capabale 3C. The Devils don’t have anyone else in their organization who could fill that role as well as he can – or close – and the Devils would’ve left themselves very vulnerable had they walked away.

Jack Hughes has missed 20+ games in three of the last four seasons while Nico Hischier has missed 10+ in five of the last seven.

They’ve had varying levels of injury problems and given the Devils ample reason to ensure they have good insurance policies behind them.

If Glass was not brought back, the Devils would’ve needed not one but two solid centers who – at worst – were capable of playing at a 3C level in a pinch. That’d be all but impossible to find this summer.

Glass provides real value