Prior to the Devils hiring Sunny Mehta as general manager, I compiled a list of the pressing matters that needed to be tended to before the incoming GM could actually get to work and try to improve this hockey team.
By now, most of those things have indeed been tended to. The Devils are retaining Sheldon Keefe as head coach. Nico Hischier has been re-signed. Simon Nemec’s situation has been resolved in the sense that trading him to the Calgary Flames made his new contract their concern and not the Devils’
concern moving forward. They even managed to move off of Jacob Markstrom’s contract.
By moving off of Nemec and Markstrom and bringing in versatile forwards like Evan Rodrigues and Jesper Boqvist, the Devils have set themselves up to do something, even though they haven’t actually gone and done it already. They tried to get Barrett Hayton via offer sheet, but that didn’t work out as Utah matched it. They have the two extra first round picks to work with from the Nemec trade and a projected $36M in cap space for 2027-28, a figure that includes Hischier’s new deal.
On paper, its a much better situation than the one Mehta inherited.
But are they actually better than they were last season?
Puckmarks put out an interesting tweet last week where they estimated how many new wins above replacement each team added this offseason. The Devils are surprisingly high on the list, adding 2.1 WAR. That is good for 4th best in the NHL this offseason.
That’s all well and good, but the three teams ahead of them? All division rivals. Washington, New York Rangers, and Philadelphia. And most of the teams directly behind the Devils on that list also play in the Eastern Conference.
The Flyers were in the playoffs last season and won a playoff series. The Capitals are a popular pick to return to the playoffs after missing last season. And the other team is the Rangers, but admittedly, the moves they’ve made were designed to remove them from being one of the four worst teams in the NHL like they were this past season. The Rangers might still be bad, but they should be better than they were.
The arms race is officially on in the NHL, particularly in a deep Eastern Conference that saw the previous year’s Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers miss the playoffs, but you know they’ll be back with a vengeance. It’s a conference where the Devils finished 13th of the 16 teams one season ago. The Devils are a team that finished 11 points out of the final playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division. Never mind that they finished 26 points behind the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes. Carolina remains the standard in the division, and the Devils have yet to prove they have the answers to solving the mystery of why Carolina has owned them for years now.
Making the playoffs is one thing. Showing you’re capable of going on a run once you get there is another thing entirely.
I don’t point that out to try to paint a bleak picture for this upcoming season. But I look at a forward group Mehta inherited that, while improved in the bottom six, hasn’t done a whole lot to improve from the conference worst 230 goals for scored this past season.
Even if one were to squint hard enough to find areas where the Devils can realistically improve….getting a full season from Jack Hughes, younger players like Arseny Gritsyuk and Luke Hughes taking a big step, and players like Jesper Bratt and Timo Meier having bounceback seasons…..we are at the point where we actually need to see it before just accepting it as a matter of fact.
Even if one were to paint the rosiest of projections for what Amadeus Lombardi and Vladislav Kolyachonok might be if they were to earn a role on this roster, at this point, they’re unknowns. I have no issue with Mehta making smart, calculated bets on players like these. I’m just trying to keep expectations in check for them.
I could point out how bad Simon Nemec actually was defensively, and theoretically, the Devils should be better defensively by removing Nemec from the equation, but the Devils haven’t exactly replaced his offense either.
And that’s without considering whether or not goal scoring performances from players like Cody Glass are sustainable.
Even if one were to accept that Jacob Markstrom was one of the worst goaltenders in the NHL last season, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Devils apparent plan of going into the 2026-27 season with Jake Allen, Nico Daws, and David Rittich will ensure they get better results in net next season. Allen will be 36 years old next season, Daws is relatively unproven, and Rittich is a career backup who was bad in the second half of last season.
The Devils are probably better in their bottom six by replacing Evgenii Dadonov and Paul Cotter with Rodrigues and Boqvist. They might be better in terms of neutral zone play, forechecking, and the other things that don’t necessarily show up on a traditional score sheet. But of course, we thought the Devils were improved in those areas the last couple years as well and it hasn’t actually turned out to be the case.
To be clear, I’m not criticizing Mehta for his approach this offseason. The classic saying is that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither are championship caliber hockey teams.
I think we can all look at the situation he inherited from Tom Fitzgerald and see that he had his work cut out to untangle the massive knot that was left for him. Now that the knot has mostly been untangled, Mehta can indeed get to work with actually trying to improve this roster. I’m sure that there are things that Mehta would like to do that he hasn’t yet, for one reason or another. Players have to want to sign with you, or waive their no-trade to play for you, after all.
But now that we’re sitting in the middle of July with a weak free agent class mostly picked over and big names on the trading block who seemingly don’t have the Devils on their approved list, where does Mehta go from here to move this forward?
Chris had some interesting suggestions the other day, but even if the Devils wind up doing some of those, it feels like more of what we’ve already seen where its more tinkering around the edges and improving on the margins. It’s more adding expected goals when the team needs to be adding more real goals. I’m not saying that improving the bottom six isn’t important, or that winning your minutes on the ice aren’t important. But at the end of the day, it’s about winning games and whether or not the Devils have done enough to win more games.
The good thing is that the Devils are positioned to do something. We don’t know what opportunities will present themselves over the remainder of the offseason or in season. Regardless of what that is, the Devils should be in a position to strike.
But until they do, I don’t know how excited I should be in regards to whether or not they’re actually better.
