Earlier this week, I wrote why I was cautiously optimistic about the Devils heading into the second half of the season.
The Devils then proceeded to play some of the most uninspired and frankly gutless hockey we’ve seen from them over the next five periods in Toronto and Columbus. It took a third period explosion where the Devils scored three goals in a span of about two minutes of game time and a clutch penalty kill in the final five minutes for the Devils to avoid disaster and pick up a much needed
win in Columbus to end their 2025.
I don’t know whether or not these Devils are capable of building off of that momentum and looking like they actually care for more than a five minute spurt here or there. Prior to that comeback, my takeaway was that while I’m optimistic, this is a team that could probably use a shake up of some sort just to wake everyone up. Despite the win, that hasn’t really changed my opinion. I don’t want to say the players don’t care but the optics certainly made it look like they’re a team that was going through the motions, and one great period against the last place team in the Metropolitan Division isn’t going to be enough for me to definitively say anything about this group. It didn’t do anything to change my mind that they need to do something.
But what is that something? What are their options? How does one find ways to motivate players who are comfortable with their multi-million dollar contracts and no-trade clauses. Why does one even need to motivate said players when “You’re a competitor. You’re a professional athlete. Start acting like one” should suffice.
As appreciated as it is that Connor Brown delivered the “wake the hell up” speech during the second intermission the other night, it shouldn’t fall on Connor Brown to have to be that guy. It shouldn’t be the case that somebody on the team needs to deliver said speech every few nights because the team has played so poorly for as long as they have.
There are options though. There are always options. So let’s go through said options.
Firing GM Tom Fitzgerald
It seems silly to suggest that firing the general manager might have a direct and immediate impact on what’s going on in the room, but I would’ve said the same thing with the Buffalo Sabres as well and they’ve been on a heater since dismissing now former GM Kevyn Adams.
Now, a heater is just that. A heater. But the Devils could certainly use the spark of a heater right about now and making a change of that magnitude also gets the attention of everyone in the room and is reflective of the on-ice performance. The results haven’t been good enough, so an ownership group that is rarely directly hands-on with the day-to-day hockey operations feels the need to step in and make this change.
Eventually, Fitzgerald’s time as general manager of this group will come to an end. Eventually, ownership will hire a new general manager. Preferably somebody from the outside like what Buffalo did with Jarmo Kekalainen. I’m not the biggest Jarmo fan as his results in Columbus were middling at best and he hasn’t really had a chance to do much of anything to impact the Sabres, but I do think sometimes, you have to bring in somebody from the outside who doesn’t have any particular attachments to what is already in place. Having a fresh set of eyes and a fresh perspective from the outside could help.
There’s a reason I’ve been writing so much about Fitzgerald over the last few months, whether it’s grading his free agency signings or his trades. Fitzgerald has been on the job for almost six years now. There’s enough of a body of work to judge him on, and while there has been some good, the bad has been egregiously bad. The team is currently capped out and a lot of players have some form of no-trade protection, which hampers Fitzgerald’s ability to do anything to fix the mess he had a hand in creating. Dougie Hamilton has been dreadful this season and has two more years to go at $9M AAV. Ondrej Palat has been Ondrej Palat and has one year left at $6M AAV. The timing of some of his contract extensions has made zero sense, from Kurtis MacDermid to Johnathan Kovacevic to Jacob Markstrom. Add it all together and they lack the space to add the high-end skill they’re missing. Skill that they’re missing in part because they whiffed on a 7th overall draft pick in Alexander Holtz. Skill that they’re missing, in part, because they didn’t have those assets to trade for Quinn Hughes when he was available.
I’m not necessarily advocating for a change in general manager, nor do I write that to complain about the job he has done after the fact. That said, it’s tough to argue that a change wouldn’t be completely justified given his body of work and where the Devils currently sit. Whether that happens today, tomorrow, at the end of the season, or sometime down the road is to be determined.
The one thing I’ll add is that I pray if HBSE does make a change with the general manager, DO NOT go with an internal hire to replace Fitzgerald. I don’t mean any disrespect to AGMs Dan MacKinnon or Kate Madigan, senior adviser Chuck Fletcher, or EVP of hockey operations Martin Brodeur. But if you’re going to make a change of that magnitude, I want someone from the outside coming in to run the show how they see fit. If you’re going to clean house, clean house. No half measures. That includes revamping everything, from drafting and development (an area the Devils haven’t had as much success of late) to hockey analytics (show me the analytics that say Dennis Cholowski, for example, is good at hockey) to pro scouting (why can’t the Devils find guys off the scrap heap that other teams do) to making Utica a watchable product. Give me a general manager who had nothing to do with what is currently in place and let him bring in their own staff.
The bottom line is that Fitzgerald has been in place long enough though that whatever happens is ultimately on him. This is his team. His (capped-out) roster. His hand-picked free agency signings. His trades. His draft classes. His draft busts. His contract extensions. His NMCs and NTCs. His (second) head coach. His staff. His braintrust. And sitting here in January of 2026, after nearly six years on the job, the results have not been good enough.
Firing HC Sheldon Keefe
The other, more immediate way of getting the attention of everybody in the room is by making a change with the head coach. And if Fitzgerald senses he might be in self-preservation mode, the easiest move to save his own skin for the time being is to change the coach.
There have been instances where changing the coach midseason has led to great success, from Mike Sullivan becoming Penguins coach to Craig Berube becoming Blues coach to Darryl Sutter in Los Angeles. Once upon a time, the Devils did this by firing Robbie Ftorek with 8 games left in the regular season and naming Larry Robinson head coach. That worked out pretty well.
Of course, there’s also a long history of teams that were simply bad also making a change. And most teams that make an in-season coaching change do not go on to win a championship, because most teams that feel things are bad enough to make that change are simply bad hockey teams. There has been a lot of Devils teams that have fired a coach midseason only to not go on a run because those teams were bad. But there’s also a difference between being a good, underachieving team and a bad, underachieving team. I think the Devils are closer to being the former than the latter.
That’s not to say that I think Keefe should be fired so soon. His record isn’t that bad on paper at 63-50-7 and a playoff appearance as of this writing. But that’s also not that far above actual .500, let alone NHL .500, and if you’re of the mindset that the Devils have underachieved, that record isn’t good enough.
The problem is that if you do dismiss Keefe, where are you going for a head coach? Especially if you want to start clean and not go with somebody currently on Keefe’s staff to be the interim. Which again, would be my personal preference as I’d want an outside voice who had nothing to do with assembling this group coming in with a fresh perspective.
Peter DeBoer is probably the top name available right now and would likely jump at the right opportunity to get back in. He has a long track record of success as he lead the Devils and Sharks to the Stanley Cup Final and had success in Vegas and Dallas as well. There’s also warts on his resume. He has a history of publicly burying goaltenders who don’t play well, and none of this is considering the “been there, done that” aspect of him already being a former Devils head coach. DeBoer might want the right opportunity, but would the Devils be that? Would DeBoer even want to come back?
If you want someone who will tell hard truths and say what you might not want to hear, John Tortorella is available. Tortorella has a history of flaming out wherever he’s been, alienating players, and wearing out his welcome, but he also has a history of squeezing every last point out of any given roster and overseeing teams that play with structure and play ‘the right way’. Jay Woodcroft, who is currently an assistant on the Ducks staff, is another intriguing option, although that one would likely need to wait until the summer.
Firing Both Fitzgerald and Keefe
To quote an old El Paso commercial, when presented with the choice of soft or hard shells for tacos, a young girl simply suggests “why don’t we have both?”. And then everybody rejoiced at the apparent, obvious solution because both hard shelled tacos and soft shell tacos rock.
Of course, its debatable whether or not a GM with the lack of long-term success like Fitzgerald should even be allowed to hire a third head coach after his first two choices didn’t work out. If I were HBSE and that was the recommendation that Fitzgerald was giving me less than 18 months after hiring Keefe, I’d be asking why and I’d be inclined to get rid of both the coach and GM and find people who know what they’re doing to run my hockey team.
But if you’re going to go as far as to change the GM, you have to do so knowing that whoever the next GM is is going to want to pick his own coach and not be saddled with an incumbent. That’s not to say that whoever the next GM is won’t ultimately decide to keep the coach already in place….something we’ve most recently seen with Kekalainen as well as Islanders GM Mathieu Darche keeping Patrick Roy as coach. But you’d want to give the next guy the option to pick his own guy.
Make A Trade
This one might be the most difficult at the moment. Not because trading is hard. Trading is actually easy. There’s been 14 of them since the season started, and nine in December. What’s hard is not being able to trade because of the Devils cap situation and aforementioned trade clauses that the GM handed out, and because we’re also talking about a GM who has a history of sitting on his hands and not doing much of anything until about a week before the trade deadline. One of Fitzgerald’s biggest flaws is that he’s slow to pivot when something isn’t working, primarily because he’s the type of GM who believes you do your team-building in the summertime.
I don’t even know where to begin making realistic suggestions here. They’re not trading Nico Hischier. They’re not trading Jack or Luke Hughes. Those are non-starter, idiotic suggestions. Timo Meier, Jesper Bratt, Jacob Markstrom, Ondrej Palat, and Dougie Hamilton have no-move clauses, with the latter two having 10-team trade lists. Jake Allen, Brett Pesce, Brenden Dillon, Johnathan Kovacevic, Evgenii Dadonov, and Connor Brown have full no-trade clauses. For those keeping track at home, I just rattled off over half the roster.
The Devils could probably find a trade for Jonas Siegenthaler, Dawson Mercer, Stefan Noesen, or Cody Glass, but those don’t exactly scream “shake it up” unless some of those players are the outgoing players for a big-time offensive threat. Not to mention the Devils could use those players to varying degrees. Guys like Paul Cotter, Colton White, Juho Lammikko and Luke Glendening have little to no trade value as is. Trading Arseny Gritsyuk or Simon Nemec would likely be doing more harm than good unless they’re bringing in that aforementioned scoring threat. So again, what are your options here? Keep in mind, none of this is even considering who they might bring in via trade. Some trades might be of the variety where the return you get is whatever cap space is created or a lottery ticket late round draft pick.
Fitzgerald made his bed with this roster and he (or more likely, his successor) is probably going to have to lie in it for the rest of this season. That’s not to say they can’t find hockey trades to make in the summer when some of the no-trade clauses are less restrictive and teams have cap space, or that they can’t find a way dump some of the more problematic contracts they currently have. That’s something that they’re going to need to do to bring in more high-end talent. But that also doesn’t do much to solve today’s problem.
Look To Utica For a Spark
One of the Devils issues last year was that they really didn’t have any options in Utica to turn to when things went poorly. The Utica roster was bad and most of the Devils remaining top prospects weren’t even playing there last season.
Utica is still bad this season, as they currently sit with the worst record in the AHL, but there are some pieces there that, at least theoretically, could be options for callups.
I’m not going to suggest that players like Lenni Hameenaho, Shane Lachance, or Seamus Casey should be viewed as franchise saviors. Aside from a brief one-game cameo for Lachance and two games for Casey, the Devils have mostly kept those players at Utica to develop (or kept them away from the mess that has been the Devils, depending upon your perspective) while other players got some run while the Devils were going through their injury woes. They’re probably not quite ready for the NHL as they’re 21-22 years old, but then again, were you ready to get married at 25 years old? Were you ready to become a parent when you did? Were you ready to buy a home when you did? Maybe it’s not so much about being ready as it is making the most of your opportunity when you get it and giving the decision makers a reason to never send you back down to Utica?
Would the Devils be losing all that much at this point though if they were to healthy scratch Paul Cotter or Stefan Noesen (or heck, Ondrej Palat) to give Hameenaho or Lachance an extended look? Would they be losing a lot by sitting Colton White (or heck, Dougie Hamilton) and giving Seamus Casey a chance? Maybe it doesn’t work, as we’re talking about young players who would be getting their first legitimate shot at the NHL.
But what if that injection of youth does work? What if said players do give you a spark. You won’t know with certainty without trying it.
Show A Willingness To Be The Bad Guy and Healthy Scratch Veteran Player(s)
At the end of the day, this is professional sports. This isn’t youth sports where everyone gets a chance to play and then when we’re all done, we all get participation trophies and go out for pizza and ice cream afterwards. There are, or at least there should be, ramifications as to whether or not players continue to play if they’re not performing.
Nobody wants to sit if they’re healthy and good to go, but that doesn’t mean you just get to automatically get your 15 minutes a night to get your cardio in and otherwise do nothing either. And heck, maybe sitting a respected veteran is the type of move you need to do to light a fire under everybody else’s ass. Maybe it’s the type of move that you need to do to wake up the entire room.
Just to use these players as an example, Dougie Hamilton has EIGHT points in 36 games despite getting some power play time and despite playing over 21:30 a night. For a guy who is making $9M AAV and is primarily being paid BECAUSE of what he supposedly brings to the table offensively, that is not acceptable. Period. End of story. I don’t care about injuries or excuses. I don’t care what his advanced stats say. I care about the REAL goals that he’s not scoring, and not the so-called expected goals that he supposedly has. Sitting down the highest paid player on the team would be one way of getting everybody’s attention.
Ondrej Palat has eight points in 40 games, and his scoresheet production, which has been bad since the moment he signed in New Jersey, has dried up. Yet he continues to get his 13 minutes a night. Why? Because he’s a veteran and wears an “A”? Not good enough, just like his performance isn’t good enough. Certainly not good enough for a player making $6M AAV. I can find a guy who can dig pucks out along the wall and forecheck who cost 1/6th of that.
Maybe an ancillary benefit of healthy scratching the players with the worst contracts on the team is that once those players realize they’re not going to play much anymore, they’re more willing to accept a trade elsewhere where they can play and try to prove the Devils wrong. Again, it’s one of those things you’re not going to find out unless you actually try it.
But Jared, I can hear you thinking…..what if they lose the room doing this? What if you lose the room by treating respected veterans this way?
Really?
You’re worried about losing a room of a hockey team that has won six hockey games since Thanksgiving? And lost eleven? You’re worried about losing THAT group?
I’m ok with taking that chance.
