Let the newsy September chaos commence.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday night, the New Jersey Devils<\/a> acquired forward Luke Evangelista from the Nashville Predators<\/a>. In exchange, the Predators are receiving a conditional first-round pick in the 2028 NHL Draft and a 2028 second-round pick.<\/p>\n While the second-round selection belonged to the Devils, the first-round pick originally belonged to the Colorado Avalanche<\/a> but was sent to New Jersey as part of the deal that saw Maxim Tsyplakov and Simon Nemec<\/a> sent to the Calgary Flames<\/a> back in June. If the Avalanche\u2019s first-round pick in 2027 isn\u2019t transferred to the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a>, or the Avs\u2019 first-round pick in 2028 falls within the top 10, the Predators will receive Colorado\u2019s first-round spot in 2029.<\/p>\n Evangelista joins a retooling team in the Garden State that is hungry for more young talent under new general manager Sunny Mehta. The 24-year-old certainly fits that mold. In his first three full seasons in the NHL, he has quietly grown into a solid scorer on the wing and could add some offensive punch to a Devils squad that unquestionably lacks depth up front.<\/p>\n The Toronto native is coming off the best season of his young career. In 81 games, he posted 12 goals and 44 assists for a career-high 56 points. He also posted a plus\/minus of +1 while averaging 16:37 of ice time, helping the Preds make an honest push for a playoff spot.<\/p>\n In 253 regular-season games in the NHL, Evangelista has potted 45 goals and 97 assists for 142 points, with one goal during the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs with Smashville.<\/p>\n Evangelista is heading into the final season of his two-year contract, which he signed in October 2025. The deal carries a cap hit of $3 million. He\u2019s set to become a restricted free agent next summer, with arbitration rights. The London Knights product was taken by the Predators in the second round, 42nd overall, of the 2020 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let the newsy September chaos commence. On Tuesday night, the New Jersey Devils acquired forward Luke Evangelista from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-880385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}