Grading the Jacob Markstrom trade: Devils continue strong summer as Panthers identify Bobrovsky replacement

Despite a seemingly never-ending run of high-profile trades, many hockey fans have lamented the perceived dearth of talent that will become available tomorrow with the beginning of the NHL’s free agency period.

July 1 feeding frenzies aren’t what they used to be, but the latest big trade this summer has all but guaranteed that at least one nailed-on future Hall-of-Famer will make it to market: two-time Vezina winner and Stanley Cup champion Sergei Bobrovsky.

Bobrovsky’s soon-to-be former club, the Florida Panthers, continued a characteristically frenetic offseason by anointing his replacement, veteran Swede Jacob Markstrom, who began his career in Sunrise before the Cats sent him to Vancouver when an opportunity to reunite with Roberto Luongo presented itself way back in 2014.

Markstrom’s old employers, the New Jersey Devils, used the ostensibly chippy negotiations between pending UFA Bobrovsky and the Panthers as an opportunity to offload Markstrom’s upcoming two-year contract extension. It seemed like a last bit of bad business from deposed GM Tom Fitzgerald after a rocky 2025-26 for the netminder, before it began. Getting Evan Rodrigues, a crafty Swiss Army Knife of a player, in return doesn’t hurt, either.

Is it a clean sweep for Jersey despite their sudden lack of clarity in their own crease? Or should we know by now not to doubt Florida GM Bill Zito and his book-length CV of successful veteran reclamation projects? Find out all that and more with the final (?) Daily Faceoff Trade Grades of the 2025-26 league year.

Florida Panthers

Receive:

G Jacob Markstrom, 36 – $6-million cap hit through 2028

W Angus Crookshank, 26 – $850,000 cap hit through 2026

Let’s get this out of the way: while Markstrom’s contract had all the makings of an anchor for the cash-strapped Devils, this trade carries minimal opportunity cost for the Panthers. Florida already has 12 forwards and six defensemen signed for next season, and only one Panther of note, Eetu Luostorainen, will come due for a raise during the life of Markstrom’s deal.

Neither the loss of Rodrigues nor a painful breakup with the beloved Bobrovsky should come back to bite Florida, either. 

‘E-Rod’ is the sort of depth piece every winner needs, one who especially excelled during the postseason and on spot duty on captain Sasha Barkov’s left wing. Still, after the Brady Tkachuk blockbuster, Cats coach Paul Maurice will roll a top nine that looks something like Verhaeghe-Barkov-Reinhart, Tkachuk-Bennett-Tkachuk, and Luostarinen-Lundell-Marchand. We haven’t seen such a collection of heavy hitters since the pre-cap days, and Rodrigues would have been an expensive luxury on Florida’s fourth line.

As for Bobrovsky, the hangup between the goalie and Zito seemed to be how long the former’s next contract would be. ‘Bob’ wasn’t nearly as bad (.529 QS%) as his career-worst raw numbers would have you believe (3.07 GAA, .877 SV%) behind the injury-ravaged 2025-26 edition of the Panthers. It’d nonetheless take a desperate team to read through those stats and sign the player who posted them into his 40s. Though aggressive, Florida is hardly desperate.

So, no, Zito cannot lose his first trade with former protege Sunny Mehta because of the player he traded and the other he walked to free agency. What about the player he got?

Markstrom has had a bipolar career, even by goalie standards. His first campaign with the Devils in 2024-25 was the only season of the past five that did not see Markstrom finish in either the top 12 or bottom 15 of goals saved above expected (min. 30 games). While that implies a player who can bounce back from the sort of nightmare year he had in 2025-26 (.883 SV%, .395 QS%), at 36, ‘Marky’ is no spring chicken himself.

Most concerning are Markstrom’s numbers since rushing back from a knee injury in early 2025. In a full season’s worth of work (57 GP) since then, Markstrom’s SV% has been in the basement (.880, third-worst among goalies with 40+ appearances since 3/1/2025). If it’s the Swede’s body, and not his elusive focus, that is failing him, the team in front of him, no matter how stacked, can only do so much to change that. 

There’s a chance a big goalie like Markstrom (Anthony Stolarz was outstanding for Florida) can better keep up with what should be a manageable shot volume than the aging scrambler Bobrovsky. That Akira Schmid, a talented but inconsistent young netminder who Florida nabbed in a separate trade, earns enough starts to keep Markstrom whole throughout the season. 

Those factors, the aforementioned negligible cost of the deal, and the benefit of the doubt Zito has earned via his near-flawless resume are what’s keeping this grade respectable for Florida. Saving some coin in a depth-forward swap that sends Jesper Boqvist back to Jersey also helps. Still, it’s hard to think that Jordan Binnington, whose abrasive personality would fit right in with the Cats’ penchant for villainy, or even former Panther Sam Montembeault, wouldn’t have been a safer buy-low bet. 

Grade: C-

New Jersey Devils

Receive:

F Evan Rodrigues, 32 – $3.075-million cap hit through 2027

F Jesper Boqvist, 27 – $1.5-million cap hit through 2027

RFA rights to W Ben Steeves, 24

One of the perks of taking over a new team as GM is that you aren’t beholden to the commitments of the old regime. While scrambling to get out from under yet another contract he engineered might have been a fireable offense for Fitzgerald if he, uh, wasn’t already fired, it was just good business for Mehta to call time on what had been a loveless marriage between the Devils and Markstrom.

With two seven-figure contracts coming back, Mehta only cleared up a little under $1.5 million in cap space, but he should have more than enough resources to take care of his remaining business this summer. The additional cap room is secondary to the utility Rodrigues will bring to coach Sheldon Keefe’s lineup. 

A slight, quick forward who can play across the forward line while providing relevant, if not eye-popping, offense (36 P per 82 for FLA), Rodrigues’s value goes far beyond the stat sheet. His ability to thrive both as a complementary top-six player and a shutdown third-line option was a major asset to Florida and will continue to be in Newark.

The Devils can variously deploy Rodrigues as the defensive conscience of a line with skill players Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt, on a workhorse unit with former Selke runner-up and captain Nico Hischier, or as a third-line center to free up valuable top-six deployments for Dawson Mercer, a rapid young forward who is better on the wing than down the middle.

In all likelihood, Keefe will do all of those things for at least some length of time, and Rodrigues will be comfortable throughout. The dream scenario would be for Mercer and second-year Russian Arseny Gritsyuk to play well enough to phase Rodrigues out of a top-six role as the year goes on and allow him to give shape to a long-disjointed depth group he would lead alongside fellow vets Stefan Noesen and Nick Bjugstad. 

Should Rodrigues help New Jersey back into the postseason, he’ll bring an underrated pedigree to a stage that is usually unkind to players of his stature; the 32-year-old totalled 30 points in Florida’s back-to-back Cup victories and has 41 postseason points in 61 games played.

While former Devils’ draft pick Boqvist is very much a throw-in here to balance cap hits (Zito slightly overpaid him after a decent first season in Sunrise), he embraced the Panthers’ physicality during his two seasons with the team (332 hits in 151 GP) and has at least carved out a niche as a versatile bottom-six checker. 

All told, Mehta recruited a player he wanted, jettisoned a player he didn’t, and saved some scratch for his troubles. After getting a haul for struggling young defender Simon Nemec, he is off to a strong start in New Jersey. The lack of clarity in the Devils’ post-Markstrom crease beyond veteran platoon option Jake Allen means he left himself some work to do, but finding an upgrade shouldn’t be too difficult in a surprisingly robust trade market at the position. 

Grade: B+