The New Jersey Devils have had too many disappointing seasons in recent years. We noted in the March Metropolitan Division Notebook that the Devils rebuild was in serious trouble and another year outside the playoff picture has to raise some big questions in Newark. Ownership clearly has a similar view, as GM Tom Fitzgerald and brought in Sunny Mehta to guide the team in moving forward.
The Devils rebuild started in the mid 2010s, but stalled early on until they drafted Jack Hughes in 2019. He joined 2017 draftee Nico Hischier as key components of the Devils future and it looked like New Jersey may be on it’s way back to contention.
Perhaps where the Devils went wrong was a desire for immediate results that lead to additions like Timo Meier that stripped a lot of future assets from the organization. They also tipped the balance of players ages on the roster to a group that is centered more around Hischier than Jack Hughes and locked up a chunk of long term cap space in the process. The roster as is stands is fairly locked in for the medium to long term and is almost entirely under contract for next season. To make things even more difficult to maneuver, there 13 players with no move or no trade protection.
This is a team that needs to makes some changes and Mehta will have his work cut out for him to reshape the roster under it’s current constraints. The prospect pipeline isn’t in great shape, although it’s only slightly below baseline. Building up the pipeline would certainly be an aspirational goal, although doing so with a full tear down would be overreactive at this point. Seeing a few prospects hit the NHL on cost efficient ELCs would help the big picture. They’ll have to move out some established NHLers to make space for them on the roster, though, and finding some running mates for Jack Hughes and building up his cohort could be the shortest realistic path to contention.
