Devils sign Dawson Mercer to 3-year, $4M-a-year contract

The New Jersey Devils have signed center Dawson Mercer to a three-year, $4 million contract, according to TSN insider Darren Dreger.

Mercer was a restricted free agent at the end of a three-year, $894,167 rookie contract. He’s getting a raise of nearly $3 million per year, and his new contract obviously has the highest average annual value of his career. With this new deal, the Devils lock him up until age 25 at 4.55% of the salary cap for 2024-25.

There are currently no details on any no-trade/no-transfer clauses or signing bonuses for this contract.

Mercer shares his $4 million annual salary with Alex Iafallo, Robby Fabbri, Ross Colton, Nino Niederreiter, Marcus Foligno, Ryan Hartman, Viktor Arvidsson, David Perron and Patrick Kane, which is a fairly common drain on the budget.

Mercer is coming off a slightly down 2023-24 season in which he scored just 20 goals and 13 assists for 33 points in 82 games. That’s nearly half the points he put up in his breakout 2022-23 season of 27 goals and 56 points, and even a slight drop from his 2021-22 rookie season of 17 goals and 42 points.

Mercer was the Devils’ 18th overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft out of the QMJHL. After spending another post-draft season in the QMJHL, he made his NHL debut in 2021 and has spent the last three seasons full-time with the Devils.

The Devils had a busy offseason, especially with rebuilding their defense and goaltending, acquiring Jacob Markstrom and signing Brett Pesce, Brenden Dillon and Jonathan Kovacevic, and bringing in Stefan Noesen, Paul Cotter and Tomas Tatar. New Jersey also added Kevin Labanc, Jakub Zboril, Andy Welinski and Michael Hutchinson to the training camp roster for the pro tryouts. The Devils have just under $1 million in salary cap space and no restricted free agents left to sign.