Two players the New Jersey Devils should avoid on the trade market

These forwards cost more than they're worth or don't fit in with the team's timeline.

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Frank Seravalli recently posted his annual off-season trade bait board, listing 25 players who could – or will – be moved in the weeks and months to come.

I have already written about a few players that might interest the New Jersey Devils; with Kevin Fiala and, more recently, Jesse Puljujarvi among them.

Today, I’m going to focus on some names GM Tom Fitzgerald would be smart to avoid.

W - Josh Anderson (28)
Contract: $5.5M x 5 years

The Montreal Canadiens seem destined to embrace a full fledged rebuild under Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes. That likely means exchanging plenty of veteran players for young assets that would better serve the team in the future.

While there will surely be at least a few teams chomping at the bit to pry Anderson from Montreal (#GRIT), the Devils should not be among them.

Anderson will chip in some goals but, as a whole, he is a rather inefficient point producer at 5v5; especially for someone on such a lucrative contract.

Over the last two years, he has kept some fairly alarming company in terms of his production rate.

Anderson looks better if we isolate goals but, even so, there’s not a player on this list I’d want to be paying a premium for on a long-term contract.

His on-ice impacts are not good either. Among 20 eligible Canadiens, Anderson ranks 14th in CF% and 17th in GF% over the last two years. His relative impacts range from ‘meh’ to ‘bad’ across the board.

If he’s not scoring goals, he is not providing anything of real value. That’s likely why Young Dom’s player cards have Anderson’s market value below $2 million.

Anderson is a power forward. Power forwards are more prone to injury – that’s a key reason Anderson has only one 20 goal season to his name – and they tend to age very poorly.

We have seen it time and time again, with Milan Lucic, James Neal, Kyle Okposo, and David Backes coming to mind off the top of my head.

I know Tom Fitzgerald wants to bring some different elements into the mix but Anderson is simply not the way to do it.

He makes too much money for too long. A one-time 20-goal scorer is not the guy you should be pouring assets into as he exits his prime.