Nashville Predators general manager Chris MacFarland explained why he traded forward Luke Evangelista to the New Jersey Devils.
In a surprising trade, the Predators dealt Evangelista — who scored 12 goals and 56 points for the Predators last season — to the Devils for a pair of future draft picks in the first and second rounds.
Now, MacFarland has explained why he made the deal.
Chris MacFarland Explains Luke Evangelista Trade
Speaking to NHL.com, MacFarland explained why he decided to deal Evangelista to the Devils for futures.
“We felt with the depth of the winger market and the depth of our winger prospects, we feel we’re very forward heavy. We have a lot of good young wingers that are going to wear our colors over the next few years and I think one of the challenges we ran into this summer in trying to improve other positional silos was we just didn’t have the right mix of darts to throw, and I think that that was certainly a part of the rationale. We think Luke is a good player, he’s a proven player, but we’re very happy with the return,” MacFarland said.
“It’s not so much the story of Luke Evangelista, we have a lot of right-handed shots. We have (Filip) Forsberg and (Steven) Stamkos and ‘Marchy’ (Jonathan Marchessault), Matthew Wood and (Mavrik) Bourque, and I think the pieces for us as a management group, it’s that next layer that we expect at some point to filter into that top nine. Whether we’re talking about Brady Martin or Egor Surin, Cole O’Hara, guys that have been in the Preds reserve list for a few years and have been developing. … We felt pretty strong that our winger position could absorb this and we’re excited about what the potential capital might be able to do for the lineup at some point.”
Predators Open to Upgrading Roster
Although MacFarland says that he doesn’t have anything in the pipeline lined up right now, he admitted that getting two picks from the Devils in the Evangelista deal gives the Predators extra ammunition to line up a subsequent trade, if they see something out there that they like.
“We certainly don’t have another deal lined up to announce after today, but what I do think it’s given us is a bullet in the holster that we didn’t have yesterday that we can potentially now be involved on, whether it’s next week, two months from now or three months from now,” MacFarland said.
“Our goal is to try and build something to have some sustained success and right now we think while the roster is improved, it’s still got a long way to go in certain silos for us to get it going to where we want it to get to. I think this arms up with a draft pick high in the draft that is going to be potentially attractive in a lot of different ways. But when that will be we don’t know. Obviously high picks, first and second-round picks are liquid, and we’ll be curious to see how that looks like in whatever amount of time that is.”
Predators GM Chris MacFarland Explains Luke Evangelista Trade