{"id":445988,"date":"2026-02-04T23:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T23:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/445988\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T23:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T23:35:20","slug":"blues-trade-nick-bjugstad-to-devils-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/445988\/","title":{"rendered":"Blues Trade Nick Bjugstad To Devils \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Devils acquired center Nick Bjugstad<\/a>\u00a0from the Blues in exchange for center Thomas Bordeleau<\/a> and a conditional 2026 fourth-round pick, the teams announced. St. Louis will receive the latest of the three fourth-rounders that the Devils own (their own, the Stars\u2019 and the Jets\u2019), Frank Seravalli of Victory+<\/a> reports. New Jersey assigned forward\u00a0Juho Lammikko<\/a>\u00a0to AHL Utica in the corresponding move, per a team announcement.<\/p>\n

The move comes with less than an hour remaining until a league-wide trade moratorium that will last through the Olympic break. With only 12 days on the other side of the freeze before the trade deadline, it was widely speculated that there would be increased action this week. That hasn\u2019t really happened outside of the Islanders\u2019 back-to-back moves early last week, but New Jersey and St. Louis appear to have at least gotten the ball rolling on moves today.<\/p>\n

This season has been a trying one for the 33-year-old Bjugstad. Injuries have been a theme throughout his 14-year NHL career, and an upper-body issue ended up sidelining him for nearly a month in December and January. He was also a semi-frequent healthy scratch for the stretch preceding his injury, leaving him with only 35 appearances on the year so far. He\u2019s scored six goals but added only one assist for a 0.20 points per game rate, the worst of his career (min. 25 games).<\/p>\n

The defensive aspects of Bjugstad\u2019s game have been up to par, though. St. Louis has put its line combinations in a blender all year long due to injuries, but Bjugstad found success when centering the fourth line with Nathan Walker<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Alexey Toropchenko<\/a>. That trio controlled 54.2% of expected goals, per MoneyPuck<\/a>, despite being given mostly defensive zone starts. He\u2019s also had an uncharacteristically strong run in the faceoff dot, winning 51.1% of his draws. His career average is 49%.<\/p>\n

With the Blues in the basement of the Western Conference, it\u2019s no surprise that they\u2019re willing to sell off tertiary pieces for futures \u2013 even if they\u2019re not pending free agents. Bjugstad is still under contract through next season at a $1.75MM cap hit after signing a two-year, $3.5MM deal with St. Louis<\/a> in free agency last summer.<\/p>\n

The Devils aren\u2019t in much better shape in the standings, though, making their willingness to add to their roster rather than subtract a tad perplexing at first glance. Their dwindling likelihood of a playoff berth this season is presumably why Bjugstad was attractive to them, though \u2013 he\u2019ll be sticking around next season as a hopefully cost-effective fourth-line solution.<\/p>\n

Center depth has been a problem in New Jersey this year, with Jack Hughes<\/a>\u00a0missing a significant chunk of games. That\u2019s led them to be over-reliant on names like the injury-prone\u00a0Cody Glass<\/a>\u00a0to succeed in top-nine roles, and they haven\u2019t received much of any offense from their fourth line as a result. Their current group of Lammiko,\u00a0Luke Glendening<\/a>, and\u00a0Maxim Tsyplakov<\/a>\u00a0has combined for just one goal all year long. Bjugstad won\u2019t be a season-saver, but he\u2019s a far more effective goal-scorer that low in the lineup than any of those names have proven to be this season.<\/p>\n

Bordeleau, 24, was a second-round pick by the Sharks back in 2020 and was once viewed as a potential long-term piece. His development has stagnated over the past couple of seasons, though. After recording 38 points in 59 AHL games last season and not landing the NHL opportunities he\u2019d hoped for in San Jose, he opted not to entertain offers from the Sharks as an RFA last summer and eventually had his signing rights traded<\/a> to the Devils, inking a two-way deal a few weeks later.<\/p>\n

Any trade value Bordeleau still had has been erased by a disastrous showing in Utica this season. In 35 minor-league appearances, he\u2019s scored just two goals and eight points with a -13 rating. A pending restricted free agent, his inclusion is purely to leave the Devils with a bit of breathing room regarding the 50-contract limit \u2013 they\u2019re currently at 49.<\/p>\n

Lammikko doesn\u2019t need waivers for today\u2019s reassignment because he cleared them<\/a> back on Jan. 17. While he wasn\u2019t immediately reassigned to Utica then, the Devils had 30 days to do so before they would have needed to waive him a second time. Since he\u2019s still in that window, they can make the demotion today without any obstacles. The 30-year-old has been limited to two assists and a -4 rating in 24 appearances for New Jersey, averaging 9:53 of ice time per game.<\/p>\n

Podcaster and former NHLer Jordan Schmaltz<\/a> was first to report the trade. Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman<\/a> was first to report the return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Devils acquired center Nick Bjugstad\u00a0from the Blues in exchange for center Thomas Bordeleau and a conditional 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,4158,151,30,4463,84,5245,405],"class_list":{"0":"post-445988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-juho-lammikko","10":"tag-new-jersey-devils","11":"tag-newsstand","12":"tag-nick-bjugstad","13":"tag-st-louis-blues","14":"tag-thomas-bordeleau","15":"tag-transactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116014988052296280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}