Grading the moves: Jacob Markstrom, Pierre-Luc Dubois and ... Barclay Goodrow?

Wednesday was a shockingly busy day in the NHL for roster moves. Let's grade them.

The 2024 Stanley Cup Final is still going on for some insane reason, and if the Edmonton Oilers win Game 6 on Friday night the Stanley Cup will not be handed out until June 24.

That means the buyout window would not open until June 26.

The NHL Draft begins on June 28.

Free agency begins on July 1.

All of this is completely idiotic because there is absolutely zero break between the end of the season and the start of the offseason. It is always a compressed schedule, but this is taking it to the extreme.

Because NHL teams were seemingly tired of patiently waiting to start rebuilding their rosters in the offseason, a bunch of them decided to start making some major moves on Wednesday. Gary Bettman might not like trades and roster moves taking attention from the Stanley Cup Final, but I have a dumb suggestion for fixing that little problem — do not let your season almost reach July.

As for the moves themselves….

• The New Jersey Devils got their goalie.

• The Los Angeles Kings dumped Pierre-Luc Dubois while they still could.

• The Washington Capitals take an expensive gamble.

• The San Jose Sharks did the New York Rangers a solid and made a move that makes no sense.

Let’s talk about all of that and hand out some grades.

New Jersey Finally Gets A Goalie

The trade

New Jersey Devils get: Jacob Markstrom
Calgary Flames get: Kevin Bahl, 2025 first-round pick (top-10 protected)

From the Devils side: Goaltending was not the only issue for the 2023-24 Devils. Blaming all of their struggles on just goaltending would be taking the easy way out and ignoring the injury issues that added up and the questionable job that head coach Lindy Ruff did behind the bench.

But that does not mean goaltending was not a part of the problem.

It was a big part of the problem.

And they for some reason ignored it at the start of the season, and then continued to ignore it as the season went on despite having salary cap flexibility and quality trade assets to maybe fix it.

Well, they finally addressed it now with Markstrom and on paper it looks like a solid move. I have questions about how good Markstrom still is and the fact he is in his mid-30s, but he at least performed at a league-average level in 2023-24 behind a going nowhere team that didn’t do much well. Assuming the Devils are healthy and play up to their potential, a league average goaltending performance would do wonders for them.

The price to acquire Markstrom was also ideal. All it cost them was a bottom-pairing defenseman and a future (top-10 protected) first-round pick. They did not have to trade No. 10 overall, they did not have to trade any of their significant young players or prospects, and they are getting Markstrom at a reduced rate as the Flames are picking up more than 30 percent of his remaining salary over the next two years.

There is not much to find fault with here. It’s a smart win-now move for a team that should be in a win-now mode.

Devils grade: B+

From the Flames side: This seemed inevitable as soon as it became obvious that the Flames were going to miss the playoffs for a second year in a row and started selling off all of their pending free agents a year ago. The rebuild is here and Markstrom was the next natural player to go.