The Devils could do much better than a cap dump and a pick a few years down the road.

Replace Mikheyev with a piece of interest.

yeah i mean they acquired him for a 3rd round pick and an ahl player like 2 years ago. his value hasnt gone up since then

It has 100% gone up since then.

Also pretending Ty Smith didn't have significant value at that time lmao

To be fair that trade would be the equivalent of VAN sending Podkolzin and a 3rd last year. While Smith's value has lowered a lot since that time he was seen as a pretty solid prospect back then.

Mikheyev and a 1st is better value than podkolzin and a 3rd

Mikheyev isn't the kind of sweetener likely to win the bidding war. Here are some currently listed 2RD in the NHL with some assumptions on signings

Holl, Miromanev (Calgary has played Weegar at LD), Clifton, Lybushkin, Savard, Hamonic, Jensen, Letang, Drysdale, Trouba, Gudbranson, Chatfield**, Pionk*, N/A (Utah), Faulk, Schenn, Tanev*, Manson**, Murphy, Whitecloud, Myers, Larsson, Addison, Ceci, Lindstrom,

* indicates resigning of player (Demelo, Tanev)
** indicates letting go of player (Pesce, Walker)
Also assumes Montour and Roy resign, if they sign elsewhere you can just swap out the team they sign with with the team they've left in needs

I tend to agree but that is largely relative to each team's situation.

A team close to the cap and hoping to contend like PIT was at the time or NJD now would place higher priority on minimizing cap, while those with cap would probably be fine taking Mikheyev. There are also probably some people who value Podkolzin higher than others. I'm sure there are still people who believe he can become a solid top 6 powerforward while others have given up on him entirely. All that to say that while the 1st and 3rd values are pretty straightforward those of Mikheyev, Podkolzin and Smith have a far greater level of variance that would be largely be dependent on the individual team's cap and roster situation along with their own opinion of the players involved.