Vegas Golden Knights: A (very) early assessment of the Nikita Gusev trade

Final Verdict

Obviously, and we stressed this at the beginning of the article, you can’t fully judge a trade just a few months after it has happened.

That would be crazy and unfair.

But, it is interesting to analyze it at this point to see if a clear winner is emerging from the pack.

However, at this point, it is hard to tell because on the Vegas Golden Knights side, there have been a number of contributing factors to their lack of secondary scoring, including missing Alex Tuch for most of the season so far.

Plus, it has been obvious that Nikita Gusev has struggled with the transition to North America so it is safe to assume that he wouldn’t have exactly hit the ground running in Vegas either.

And, when looking at it from the perspective of the New Jersey Devils, the picture is blurred somewhat by the fact that they have endured a largely poor start to the year and, as a result, Gusev hasn’t always been put in the best situations to succeed.

However, as already mentioned, there have been tantalizing glimpses of the player Gusev could morph into in the National Hockey League, which would result in this trade being an absolute home run for the Devils.

But, for now at least, there are no clear winners where this trade is concerned and it could be at least a year until we are any the wiser as to whether the Vegas Golden Knights made the right decision trading Nikita Gusev or if the New Jersey Devils committed absolute daylight robbery.

In anycase, this was a fun exercise to do and we’ll take another deep dive into this trade once the regular season is done and dusted.