There have been many words written this summer by yours truly about the New Jersey Devils, their salary cap situation, and trying to make all of the pieces fit for the upcoming 2025-26 season.
While the here and now matters and short-term success is critical, its important in a salary cap league to keep an eye to the future as well. And while most of the Devils core is locked in through the end of the 2020s, there is one notable exception to that with their captain, Nico Hischier.
Hischier, the 1st
overall pick of the 2017 draft, is about to enter his ninth NHL season with the only NHL team he has known in the New Jersey Devils. He has served as the team’s captain since February 20, 2021 and is entering his fifth season in that role. He’s also entering Year 6 of the seven-year deal he signed way back in 2019, which means he will be eligible to sign a new contract on July 1st, 2026....one year before he is slated for unrestricted free agency.
The intention of this article isn’t to necessarily press the panic button and start pondering what this team would look like if he were to leave as a free agent. But I think there are several misconceptions in regards to both Hischier the player, his role, and how I think the common fan just assumes he’ll re-sign with the Devils when that time comes. While Hischier might ultimately re-sign in New Jersey, I think its important to discuss why he’s so valuable to this team and not just operate like its a formality.
Why Nico Hischier Is So Important To the Devils
Nico Hischier is the closest thing the Devils have to a jack-of-all-trades player.
Hischier is a consistent 60+ point player who is consistently matched up against the other team’s top line because he’s also their best defensive forward (and one of the best defensive forwards in the league, as evidenced by two Top-4 Selke votes). He plays on the top power play unit. He’s one of their top penalty killers. He’s typically on the ice in late-game situations where the Devils are up a goal and trying to protect a lead. And he’s typically in the dot for every key faceoff. All while taking a pounding from the opposition, wearing the ‘C’, and carrying himself in a manner where you’re proud to have Hischier represent your team.
This isn’t a knock on other players on the team. Every NHL team leans on their top players to some extent and there’s a reason why those guys get more ice time than the Daniel Sprongs of the world. Ice time isn’t handed out because some coaches simply like some players better than others. It’s because this is the NHL, this is the hardest hockey league in the world, and they’re trying to win games. Best players play, and make no mistake, Nico Hischier is one of the Devils best players. Some might argue he is their best player and I think those arguments have merit when one considers everything Hischier does for the team.
I do think to an extent though, the Devils have become overly reliant on what Hischier brings to the table. It’s part of the reason why I wanted a better answer at 3C this offseason than “well, I guess its Dawson Mercer and Cody Glass’s job”. Part of me hoped the Devils were able to find a defensive specialist who can hold his own in the faceoff circle solely to take some of those obligations off of Hischier’s plate. Not because he’s bad at them, but because I think Hischier has more to give offensively. I’d like to see Hischier’s line get easier matchups from time to time, and part of that is having the depth down the middle to have one of your bottom lines take on those shutdown defensive responsibilities.
What Do Other Top Six Centers Make Around The League?
This is the portion of the article where I would point out that with the salary cap going up, its probably a better idea in general moving forward to look at contracts from the perspective of what percentage of the salary cap they take up and not the actual dollar amount.
When Hischier signed his deal, it took up 8.8% of the salary cap ceiling at the time (which was $81.5M). The Devils made a bet that as Hischier got older and more established in the league, that deal would prove to be an excellent value. And it has been. As the salary cap ceiling has grown though, Hischier’s deal shrunk to taking up 7.6% of the cap. For everything that he does for the team, he is worth every penny.
Looking around the rest of the league, I would expect this offseason to be a big one in terms of new contracts for franchise centers. Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel are eligible to sign new deals this summer and very well may at any point between now and July 1st, 2026. In addition to that, Auston Matthews just finished the first season of a four-year deal paying him $13.25M AAV (now 13.9% of the cap). Nathan MacKinnon finished the second season of an eight-year deal paying him $12.6M AAV (now 13.2% of the cap).
Obviously, nobody is suggesting Hischier is quite on the level of those players, but one thing they all have in common is they’re franchise centers coming off of a lucrative second contract and about to sign a third (or in the case of Matthews and MacKinnon, have already signed it). All of those players are around the same age. McDavid will likely reclaim the mantle of “highest paid NHL player” once he signs his next deal, and Eichel is certainly in the mix to briefly claim that title as well. We’ve already covered how much Matthews and MacKinnon, former Hart Trophy winners, are making. Hischier obviously won’t sign for that much so let’s take a look at other centers who have recently signed long-term deals.
Sam Bennett isn’t necessarily a great comp to Hischier as a player but I think he’s a somewhat reasonable comp in terms of AAV next contract. Bennett is coming off of a Conn Smythe run as playoff MVP and arguably left money on the table re-signing in Florida, but he still managed a fine payday for himself with an 8x$8M contract (8.4% of the cap). I think if Bennett had made it to July 1st, he gets $9M AAV easily and maybe some stupid, desperate team goes as high as $10M. Hischier has consistently been more productive than Bennett in terms of counting stats, while Bennett was very much in a situation where he hit free agency at the right time and developed a reputation as a big game player. Bennett also just signed his fifth NHL contract while Hischier would be signing his third.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t want Sam Bennett on my team. The Devils could certainly use a Sam Bennett type. But also, the last time the Devils paid for a guy with a winning reputation and a knack for coming through in big games, they signed Ondrej Palat. So lets dig a little deeper for a better comp.
Elias Lindholm signed as a UFA with the Bruins prior to last season for seven years and $7.75M AAV (8.8% of the cap). On the surface, it looks reasonable as Lindholm had similar counting stat production during his time in Calgary to what Nico Hischier has. But I would consider Hischier to be the better overall player and Boston already appears to have buyer’s remorse with that deal.
Elias Pettersson is the other extreme, as he signed his 8-year, $11.6M AAV extension last March. That deal takes up 13.2% of the cap and pays Pettersson like he’s on the McDavid/MacKinnon/Matthews tier. I don’t think he’s quite there though.
We could debate whether Hischier is better than Pettersson, who is coming off of a dreadful season and was the subject of trade rumors all season in Vancouver. The two players will always be linked together to some extent as they both went in the Top 5 of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. We do know when Pettersson is healthy and going good, he’s a lethal offensive talent and I don’t think Hischier quite compares in that respect. But I view Hischier as a more complete 200 foot player and I don’t recall Hischier’s effort ever being questioned like Pettersson’s was.
I view Hischier being somewhere in the middle. Not quite on the elite tier, but clearly better than the Nazem Kadris and Mike Zibanejads of the world. Since the NHL reduced the maximum length of player contracts in the recently agreed to CBA, I would guess Hischier could get seven years and $10.4M AAV, which would conveniently be 10% of the projected $104M salary cap at the time of signing. It’s tough to say exactly where this is going with a salary cap ceiling that will take yet another big jump the following season and he can’t sign any new deal for a year, but generally speaking, I don’t think its unreasonable that the team’s captain and such an important player takes up anywhere from 10-11% of the salary cap.
Before anyone tries to suggest that you can’t win a Stanley Cup with one player taking up that much of the salary cap, please note that Florida just won the Cup with three players effectively taking up 10% of the cap each in Sasha Barkov, Seth Jones (technically 9.9%), and Sergei Bobrovsky. Vegas won a Stanley Cup with Eichel taking up that much cap space. Tampa Bay won their cups with Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy commanding huge percentages of the cap. Yes, those teams also utilized LTIR in a way where they could go over the cap and that will no longer be an option after this season. But if you’re smart with how the rest of the roster is assembled, you can win with a player making that big a chunk of the cap. And as we mentioned before, the rest of the Devils core is already intact through the end of the decade.
It Would Be Foolish To Just Assume Nico Hischier Is Staying Until Its a Done Deal
I think the general assumption amongst Devils fans is that Hischier is low-maintenance, he loves New Jersey, he’s comfortable here, and that they’ll get a new deal done when the time comes to essentially make him a Devil for life.
All of this might be true, but there’s a saying for what happens when you assume things. And nothing is done until it’s signed and official.
For starters, the salary cap is about to blow up, and Hischier is well-positioned to cash in given it will be his turn for a new deal. Centers who can play in all situations and play in a Top Six role will always be in demand. And if the Devils were to balk at whatever the price would be, there would be 31 other teams lining up for a chance to pry the Devils captain away.
Hischier knows this. His agent Allain Roy knows this. The Devils and Tom Fitzgerald have a good working relationship with Roy, as other current and former Devils clients include Brenden Dillon, Ryan Graves, Jake Allen, Jonas Siegenthaler, Erik Haula, Juho Lammikko, and Dennis Cholowski. But just because other players like Siegenthaler and Allen wound up taking sweetheart deals to give the team flexibility doesn’t necessarily mean Hischier will, has to, or should feel pressured to.
Once Hischier’s current contract expires, he doesn’t owe the Devils anything and is free to do what he chooses for the next chapter of his career. He’s free to live where he wants. He’s free to play for whoever he wants. And while I get this is a different regime than what the Devils were under Lou Lamoriello, I’m old enough to remember when other star players have left. When other important players have left. When other fan favorites have left. When your captain leaves to play closer to home. When your guys leave for top dollar elsewhere. That’s the risk one runs when you allow a top player to so much as sniff UFA.
The fact that the Devils have a couple of his fellow Swiss countrymen on the roster in Siegenthaler and Timo Meier is nice, but that doesn’t mean he’ll just automatically re-up when his time comes to be with his friends. The captain’s “C” isn’t an anchor that just automatically tethers him to the organization forever. Hischier is a competitor. He wants to win and you can see how badly he wants to win to the point where he wears his heart on his sleeve. You have to show him that not only are you willing to pay him, but there’s a reasonable path to competing for a championship sometime over the life of that deal.
The Devils have done a decent job of putting talent around their core. They traded for and signed Meier. They brought in both goaltenders from outside the organization. They’ve revamped their blueline. But they haven’t quite gone all-in like other teams have around the league. Part of that is due to constraints with the salary cap, some of those being Fitzgerald’s own doing, Part of that is also using free agency and trades to make up for their whiffs when its come to the draft and/or prospect development. The Devils need a Top Six scoring winger because Alex Holtz failed to develop into one. The Devils needed a goaltender because they got to a point where they couldn’t rely on Mackenzie Blackwood, Vitek Vanecek, and Akira Schmid. The Devils needed to go get those depth pieces because players such as Nolan Foote, Chase Stillman, Nikita Okhotiuk, and Daniil Misyul, among others, showed they weren’t capable of winning an NHL job. When you don’t have the cap space and you don’t have the prospects other teams might want to convince them to trade their stud players to you, its tough to make those all-in type of moves. And those limitations are probably still holding the Devils back to some extent this summer.
I’m not saying that Hischier should necessarily be angry that the Devils haven’t gone all-in yet. It’s not like they’ve done nothing to improve the roster. But just to look at this from Hischier’s perspective, he’s been to the playoffs three times in his first eight seasons and has gotten out of the first round once. The Devils haven’t been able to get past Carolina, let alone deep enough in the postseason to where the idea of winning the Stanley Cup is tangible. Hischier is doing the best he can in all situations but for one reason or another, there’s always been something holding the Devils back. Last year, it was an abysmal bottom six. The year before, it was goaltending.
If Hischier is at the point where he feels like the Devils aren’t doing everything reasonable within their ability to put a winner around him, I wouldn’t blame him if he ultimately decided he wanted to go elsewhere.
Final Thoughts
I hate to use the term “no choice” when it comes to whether or not a team has to keep a player. Hockey is ultimately not just a team sport, but THE team sport, after all.
That said, star players are treated differently from others for a reason. They’re more difficult to replace. They’re not your run of the mill players. They’re special for a reason. The Devils can’t just go out and buy another Nico Hischier if the one they have decides to leave in free agency. And if for whatever reason you think Hischier stinks and you’d rather take your chances with McDavid or Eichel, there’s no guarantee those guys ever hit UFA, and even if they do, its unlikely they pick New Jersey as their next destination.
For what its worth, I expect the Devils to not let things get that far when it comes to Hischier. I suspect at some point next summer, Hischier’s side and Fitzgerald will agree to a long-term deal that keeps him in New Jersey for the remainder of his prime years. I suspect he’ll ultimately be in the conversation for one of the greatest players in Devils history, and rightly so as Hischier is already on the doorstep of cracking the Top 10 for most of the Devils individual statistics.
Hischier will likely become the highest paid player on the Devils roster, and I don’t think the Devils have any choice but to pay it. The alternative would likely see the Devils either trade for or hand out a contract to an inferior option, the Devils taking a step back in the standings as Hischier’s replacement isn’t capable of duplicating what he can do, and this era of Devils hockey ultimately being a failure. Good luck with that as the Devils are having a hard enough time finding a trade partner to give them a third line center.
If I had to make a prediction right now, I would guess Hischier gets 7x$10.5M AAV on his next deal. A healthy raise that makes him the highest paid player on the team, yet, a deal that still gives the Devils some flexibility as the salary cap continues to rise.
More from allaboutthejersey.com:
- Looking Back at the 2008-09 Devils for Ideas for the Future Devils Offense
- Let’s Re-Do the 2015-16 New Jersey Devils Season in EHM: December 2015
- Beware: October Offensive Woes
- Devils Sign Gormley to One Year Contract
- Injuries Hurt Devils Much More than Most
- Devils Will Need Their Youth to Power the Bottom Six
- Team with our drafted player only
