After Tom Fitzgerald became the General Manager of the New Jersey Devils in 2019, he had two drafts with mixed success. In 2020, he selected Alexander Holtz, Dawson Mercer, and Shakir Mukhamadullin in the first round. In 2021, he selected Luke Hughes and Chase Stillman . Holtz, unfortunately, was the big dud there, as he has struggled to establish himself between the New Jersey Devils and the Vegas Golden Knights in fourth line roles. And while people bashed his pick of Mukhamadullin at the time,
he helped the New Jersey Devils acquire Timo Meier, and he now seems to be developing into a second or third-pair defenseman.
Dawson Mercer, selected 18th in the first round, is currently sixth in the 2020 Draft Class in NHL point production, though he will be passed by J.J. Peterka before long. Unless Mercer shows more of the flashes of scoring like he had in 2022-23 and the first quarter of this season, he will probably end up somewhere between eighth and tenth in his class in scoring, with Peterka, Byfield, and Sanderson on his tail. Mercer may be a story of poor development, given his strong offensive output through his first two seasons, which had him originally projected to be one of the top three or five scorers from his class. By only focusing on his defensive development and ignoring his rookie and sophomore season playmaking skills, the Devils have stunted Dawson Mercer.
2021 was the real poor year. Luke Hughes was the right pick, as he has developed into a much better five-on-five player by 22 years old and kept up his scoring despite a large decrease in power play opportunities. (Fun fact: Luke Hughes has played over 50 fewer minutes on the power play in the 127 combined games since 2024 than he had in his rookie season.) Chase Stillman, however, was a sinful pick at 29th overall. Drafted with a known fourth-line ceiling, Stillman was a bad attempt at introducing more grit to the pipeline when he likely would have been available in the third or fourth round. By picking him, the Devils missed out on players such as Josh Doan (37th) and Logan Stankoven (47th). There were even more players who would have been appropriate to select, but it would take too long to list all of them. Since Luke was a “gimme” pick, Stillman sticks out like a sore thumb in Fitzgerald’s record.
For what it’s worth, the Devils had some decent potential hits in the later rounds those years. Nico Daws and Ethan Edwards in 2020 may have NHL careers, while Jakub Malek and Topias Vilen from the 2021 Draft look ready for call-ups (though the Devils will not give them one). Samu Salminen could be an option out of college this season, too, while the Devils foolishly traded Zakhar Bardakov away for a handful of Kurtis MacDermid appearances.
So, from the 2020 and 2021 Drafts, Tom Fitzgerald had:
- Two good first-round picks (Mercer, Hughes)
- One decent first-round pick (Mukhamadullin)
- Two dud first-round picks (Holtz, Stillman)
- Six potential NHLers from the third or later (Daws, Edwards, Malek, Vilen, Bardakov, Salminen)
- Four unproductive picks from the third round or later (Pytlik, Shlaine, Baumgartner, Hurtig)
In August 2021, Mark Dennehy, former AHL coach for the Devils organization, became the Head Scout for the New Jersey Devils. His first draft as Head Scout in 2022 was heavily focused on defense: the Devils selected Simon Nemec, Seamus Casey, Daniil Orlov, Charlie Leddy, and Artem Barabosha in this draft, only selecting Tyler Brennan in net and Petr Hauser and Josh Filmon up front. The non-defense picks, at this point, seem largely unproductive. However, the defensive picks were largely good! Nemec is an NHL player. How far will he go? That seems to depend on what kind of structure the Devils put around him, but that more Fitzgerald’s job than Dennehy’s. Seamus Casey has looked good in the AHL, but he has been hampered by injuries. Lane Hutson, of course, went later in the round. Daniil Orlov, from the fourth round, looks to be the Devils’ big late hit from that draft, as he made big jumps in the KHL this year. but is unfortunately under contract for a couple more seasons. Charlie Leddy, meanwhile, may be an AHL shutdown option next season as he has been a reliable college defender. Barabosha, unfortunately, has been relegated to VHL play after getting some KHL games last year.
2023 was a much more difficult year. With only five picks to make, the Devils probably made the true best-pick available when Lenni Hameenaho was selected 58th overall. With six points in his first 18 games and showing some great flashes, Hameenaho currently has the third-best NHL points-per-game of any 2023 draftee selected after 29th in the first round, behind Denver Barkey (11 points in 31 games, 95th overall) and Emmitt Finnie (25 points in 67 games, 201st overall). As more players from the draft class get NHL opportunities, Hameenaho should hopefully tick his scoring up a bit as he gets more ice time himself.
After Hameenaho, the 2023 Class is in an odd spot. Cam Squires looked awesome coming out of the QMJHL, with four points in three AHL games last season. However, they stuck him in the ECHL to start this year before allowing him some AHL ice time, and he has had a poor season as a result. I would be concerned about the Devils’ player development heads trying to turn Squires into a player he isn’t rather than leaning into his offensive and transition skill. Chase Cheslock, taken in the fifth round, has become a solid blueline scorer for the University of St. Thomas. Cheslock has helped St. Thomas become a contending threat in the NCAA this season despite few NHL draftees, though I would be interested to see him play on a more traditional powerhouse. Cole Brown, in his first NCAA season for Notre Dame, has had some decent scoring, though his team is in a rough state. Daniil Karpovich, selected in the sixth round that season, has broken a bit into the KHL but is strictly still in shutdown usage only, with one point and a +8 rating through 17 games, along with 0 points and a +2 rating in 32 VHL games. Karpovich looks to be more of a career KHLer than anything else, though maybe the Belarusian will try his hand at North American hockey to get more established in the AHL rather than be a KHL/VHL in-betweener.
The 2024 Draft was decent, but already seems to have been below its potential. The best pick made there was Mikhail Yegorov, selected 49th in the second round. Yegorov looks like he could be a career NHL starting goaltender with the potential to be an elite one. But the Devils’ first-round pick, Anton Silayev, is in limbo. The Devils passed on offensive defenseman Zeev Buium (who was traded by Minnesota to acquire Quinn Hughes) to get him, and Torpedo have vastly reduced Silayev’s ice time in an apparent measure to get him to re-commit to a longer tenure in the KHL. Silayev’s camp seems to have held steady, preferring to make the jump to North America this year, but this has come at the expense of a year of his development.
Beyond their top two, the 2024 Class has taken a hit for reasons beyond Dennehy’s control. Kasper Pikkarainen got hurt and only played three games in his D+1 year, leaving the WHL after just one appearance to go back to Finland. This season, he has just six points in4 4 games for TPS of the Liiga, and he does not really project to be an NHLer at this point. Continuing the European winger trend, Herman Traff looked like a solid pick. He had decent production in the SHL for a player his age and then some more points in second-tier Allsvenskan games. But Tom Fitzgerald traded him away for a handful of Brian Dumoulin appearances, and Traff has since torn the Allsvenskan league apart this season, and he should be in the SHL next season if he does not sign with the Ducks for an AHL jump. Max Graham, the Devils’ next pick, was also traded to Pittsburgh for Cody Glass along with Chase Stillman. That was a good move by Fitzgerald, as Graham does not look like a fantastic prospect. Their final two picks, Veeti Louhivaara and Matyas Melovsky, look like much better choices than Graham. Louhivaara went to Scott Gomez’s Chicago Steel team this year, putting up solid numbers, while Melovsky earned an ELC after some solid showings with Utica, though he has not kept up his production from the early season.
2025 is where things seem to go wrong. It is still too early to tell whether they missed on other players around them, but the Devils’ first three selections were Conrad Fondrk, Ben Kevan, and Mason Moe. I liked the Kevan and Moe picks, but Kevan has not been promising in his D+1 season. I disliked the Fondrk selection, and he has not done anything to change my mind. Fondrk has just eight points in 25 games for Boston University this season. Kevan has 10 points in 34 games for Arizona State. Mason Moe has just 12 points in 33 games for Minnesota, though he is the only one with a positive plus/minus. In short, Dennehy’s pivot to trusting the North American scouts in 2025 seems to have had a really negative effect on their outlook. When Dennehy and Fitzgerald went with more European forwards in the past, they had far more success.
This is even reflected later in the same draft. Gustav Hillstrom and David Rozsival were selected out of Swedish and Czech juniors, respectively, and they are tracking far better. Hillstrom did great in the Swedish junior league this season, earning 27 appearances with the big club for Brynas. Hopefully, he finds more production there next season. Rozsival has 21 goals and 32 points for the Green Bay Gamblers in the USHL in his first North American season as one of their better two-way forwards. These numbers don’t jump off the page, but they represent a much better trend than three forwards who were unable to make names for themselves in college play. (Rozsvial, technically, is the highest-scoring Devils prospect of any league this season.)
The Devils’ other twos elections in 2025, Trenten Bennett (6’8” goalie) and Sigge Holmgren (a defenseman who missed his entire draft year), have had mixed years. Bennett has trended far better as the season went on, putting up an .897 save percentage with a whopping 3.93 goals against average for the Owen Sound Attack, and he is slated to join St. Lawrence in the NCAA next season. Holmgren has simply not progressed in the way Deivls scouts hoped. In his D-1 season, Holmgren had 16 points in 18 games in the U18 league in Sweden, and he only has seven points in 34 games for their U20 team this season. Of course, he missed an entire year, but he looks more like a wasted low-risk, high-reward sixth-round dart at this point than anything. Trying to put the above names into similar categories to the pre-Dennehy days might result like this:
- One good first-round pick (Nemec)
- One stagnating, but still promising first-round pick (Silayev)
- Two true second-round BPAs (Hameenaho, Yegorov)
- One good, but not true BPA in the second (Casey)
- Two negatively-trending second-round picks (Fondrk, Kevan)
- Two good third-round picks (Traff, Moe)
- One negatively-trending third-round pick (Pikkarainen)
- Nine positively-trending or good post-third round picks (Orlov, Leddy, Cheslock, Louhivaara, Melovsky, Hillstrom, Rozsival, Bennett, Karpovich)
- Two stagnating post-third round picks (Squires, Brown)
- Six negatively-trending or bad post-third round picks (Brennan, Hauser, Filmon, Barabosha, Graham, Holmgren)
In total:
- 15 picks appear positively-trending or outright good
- One pick is Anton Silayev
- Two picks appear to be stagnating, but not yet lost
- Nine picks appear to be negatively-trending or outright bad
And among some other unfortunate trends:
- The best positive trends appear to come from the blueline (six good or promising to two negatively-trending picks)
- Forwards are much more mixed (Six good, two stagnating, and five negatively-trending picks)
- Goalies are the best (One great, two good, one bad selection)
So what is the takeaway?
Mark Dennehy might be decent at his job, but he is not a world-beater just yet. Still, he seems to be finding some good players. The big problem is that he is entirely reliant on defensemen, goalies, and Europeans to make good choices. Tommy Westlund, the Head European Scout for the Devils, might be due a promotion of some sorts. Anders Nilsson, their European Goalie Scout, is also doing a bang-up job. But Paul Castron and Scott Lachance do not seem as great to me, if they are more responsible for the North American scouting operations. The Devils:
- Have no skaters in Canadian juniors (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- Have largely middling or poor forward scorers in the NCAA from this regime (Salminen was pre-Dennehy)
- And their best North American juniors scorer is actually a European scouting find (Rozsival)
So, do I trust Tom Fitzgerald to run another NHL Draft? I am not sure. What I am sure is that the North American scouting operation for the New Jersey Devils is legitimately poor. It’s not impossible. Cole McKinney, selected 53rd in 2025, has over double Fondrk’s production for the University of Michigan. The Devils made three NCAA-bound selections in 2025 and not one of them has done outstanding, with the latest of those picks being the best college player so far. The European scouts are doing their job and putting prospects in play for the player development heads to turn into NHLers. The North American scouts do not seem to be doing a good job.
It is true that one year of prospect development is not everything. A prospect that has a good year is not necessarily NHL-bound, but point production in younger years is by far the best predictor of NHL viability. If all of the forwards are having poor seasons, well, that is a bad sign. It is also true that the landscape is changing. The NHL world is running more than ever through the USHL and the NCAA, and Canadian junior leagues are having more mixed results than they did 20 years ago. But the Devils have to do better, and the longer they keep making bad North American draft picks while trading away their good Europeans, the more they close the back-end of their potential competitive window with players like Jack Hughes.
It may be too late to find a new North American scouting operation for this season, but they should certainly be on notice. Mark Dennehy should be, too, if he cannot find a solid North American forward.
Those European scouts, though? Give them a raise.
Your Thoughts
What do you think of the state of Devils scouting? Do you think Mark Dennehy has done a good job? What do you think of the difference between forward and defense finds, as well as the North American-European differences? Leave your thoughts below, and thanks for reading.
