The most important piece of business for Sunny Mehta to get done in his first offseason as Devils general manager was to get Nico Hischier signed to a contract extension, keeping the Devils captain in the fold for the next several years.
Negotiations seemed to be moving along swimmingly in the weeks leading up to today, the first day Hischier is eligible to put pen to paper on a new deal. But at the end of the day, talks are just talks. Nothing is done until its officially done, and nothing is done until Hischier signs
the contract.
Kevin Weekes reported several weeks ago that the Devils and Hischier were closing in on medium term contract extension in the range of $11-$13M AAV. There’s little reason to doubt Weekes’ reporting as he’s as plugged in as anyone when it comes to how the Devils operate. He followed that up this morning saying the Devils are closing in on a 5-year deal just shy of $12M AAV. Pierre LeBrun nailed down the exact terms at five years and $11.7M AAV.
Is there a bit of sticker shock with the new deal? Perhaps.
When Hischier signed the 7-year, $50.75M ($7.25M AAV) contract that he is currently slated to enter the final season of, he was slated to earn 8.9% of the salary cap ceiling (which at the time in 2020-21, was $81.5M). That percentage has gone down over time as the salary cap has increased to the point where Hischier’s deal now takes up 6.97% of the cap going into 2026-27. Hischier’s new deal will take up 10.3% of the salary cap when it kicks in to begin the 2027-28 season.
So yes, Hischier is definitely earning a bigger number, as well as a bigger slice of the pie. And yes, there is only so much pie to go around once you start slicing it up among the 23 players on your NHL roster. But unlike his previous deal, this deal is buying out UFA years. Hischier was always going to get a healthy raise.
That’s the reality of a rising cap environment where Alex Tuch and Darren Raddysh bypassed UFA for $10.5M AAV and $8.5M AAV, respectively. We live in a new era where Martin Necas is getting $11.5M AAV to buy out a bunch of UFA years, where Jack Eichel will make $13.5M AAV starting next season, and Connor McDavid is heralded a hero for ‘only taking $12.5M’ when he should be a max player. When you consider that, it really isn’t an egregious number once you also consider Hischier’s role and importance to this team.
Top Six centers are difficult to find, particularly those who can….
- Play in all situations
- Play 20+ minutes a night
- Be trusted to match up defensively against the other team’s top line, and more often than not, win those matchups
- Average 30 goals and 70 points over the last four seasons
- Average 77 games played out of 82 over the last four seasons
Hischier does all of those things, while simultaneously wearing the “C” and acting as an unofficial spokesman for the organization whenever the team addresses the media.
There’s a reason why teams like Montreal and every other team that was looking for a Top Six caliber center were circling the waters, hoping that talks between Hischier and the Devils would fall through. Those teams would’ve been all too happy to flood Sunny Mehta’s inbox with their magic beans offer to try to pry Hischier away.
That’s not going to be happening.
Sunny Mehta was correct to prioritize getting a new deal done with Hischier. The free agent market is barren, particularly with top six centers. As far as I’m aware of, there is no indication that Dylan Larkin would consider a trade to New Jersey. There’s also no reason to think that even if someone like McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, or Auston Matthews were to hit the market in the next 12-24 months that they’d give New Jersey any serious consideration. And even if the Devils could trade for one of those guys, the return would likely exceed what the Devils just got back in the Simon Nemec trade. After all, we’re talking about three of the ten best players in the NHL in McDavid, Draisaitl, and Matthews.
Mehta has done a good job early in his Devils tenure of rebuilding the center pipeline, between drafting Alexander Command 12th overall and trading for Amadeus Lombardi. The newly acquired Evan Rodrigues and Jesper Boqvist are also options to fill in at center in a pinch. Cody Glass and Nick Bjugstad are still on the roster as well, and we’ll see if recent draft picks like Matyas Melovsky or Conrad Fondrk become options down the road for the team.
But are any of those guys viable long-term replacements for Hischier? With the possible exception of Command, who would need to outperform all reasonable projections to get there, the answer to that question is probably not. It’s easy to say “they haven’t won anything with Nico, they should go get (player X) instead”. It’s harder to go out and actually get that player.
Mehta smartly realized that in order for this iteration of the Devils to maximize their potential, retaining the services of Nico Hischier was mandatory. Is the cap hit bigger than I’d personally like? Sure. But it’s also not my job to manage the salary cap and make all of the pieces fit. It’s not my money and I don’t care what Nico Hischier is making. And after seeing Mehta work magic yesterday by managing to move off of the Jacob Markstrom contract, I have faith that he can create cap space down the road if he needs to.
We’re now in the player empowerment era of the NHL where star players are trying to force their way to the same handful of teams in warm-weather, no-tax states. NHL front offices can either accept that and adapt, or be forced to trade away their key players and get stuck in the never-ending cycle of not being a contender.
I’m not going to get mad that the Devils convinced Nico Hischier to stay in New Jersey, and now that the deal is done, Sunny Mehta can focus his efforts on putting a better supporting cast around the Devils core than his predecessor did. And if you don’t think that this matters, keep in mind that Jack Hughes, a key member of the US Hockey team that just won gold and is seeing other players want to flee their current situation for a better opportunity to win, is only four years away from UFA himself. The clock is always ticking, even if the player is signed long-term.
At the end of the day, I’m pleased to see that Hischier will be staying in New Jersey. Yes, I would prefer a little more term, but with the salary cap ceiling set to continue rising in future years, I can understand Hischier wanting to keep some flexibility to be able to potentially cash in again in free agency. And if the Devils don’t turn things around in the next few years, it will be tough to blame Nico Hischier if, after 13, 14, or 15 years of not winning in New Jersey, he’s ready to move on. Either way, Hischier is now under team control through the 2031-32 season, should eclipse the 1,000 games mark as a Devil, and will sit at or near the top of every major statistical category in franchise history, health permitting.
That’s how I’m looking at this deal. Perhaps you view things differently. Please feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts on this deal, and thanks for reading.
