For years, the joke has been the New Jersey Devils make stars out of players for them to make money elsewhere. It’s not always about the Devils being cheap, per se. They showed with contracts for players like Scott Stevens, Ilya Kovalchuk and Nico Hischier that they are willing to pay big for insane talent. There are a few examples where a player found a team willing to pay out the nose, and the Devils and Lou Lamoriello/Ray Shero just didn’t see the value in going for that type of overpay.
There’s a laundry list of players who left, but the list of people who succeeded when they left is not very high.