Day 1 of NHL free agency was…actually somewhat quiet for the New Jersey Devils. New General Manager Sunny Mehta did well to not sign a deal for the sake of signing one, and instead went about with some more minor business. Nico Daws, Mark McLaughlin and Xavier Parent were all re-signed to new deals. He made a couple of depth additions by signing defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok earlier in the day and later in the day also coming to terms with winger Riley Tufte. The most important piece of news arguably
came at the very start of the day with the team officially announcing Nico Hischier’s five year contract extension. Lastly, as things began to quiet down, the Devils sent an offer sheet to Utah’s Barrett Hayton with terms he agreed upon; whether the Mammoth match or not remains to be seen.
Of course, all of this comes on the heels of moves that were made prior to free agency even beginning to mold this year’s Devils squad into something different. The pre-draft trade of Simon Nemec was already a big deal, but Mehta made arguably a larger one on the final day of June. Much maligned goaltender Jacob Markstrom is gone, and instead of salary retention, he was turned into assets in the form of Evan Rodrigues and old friend Jesper Boqvist. Arseny Gritsyuk was also given a new three year deal at a fantastic cap hit. Paul Cotter was not tendered a new deal prior to free agency and during Day 1 he officially found a new home with Vancouver. Depth trades were also made, with Declan Chisholm and Amadeus Lombardi being brought in from Washington and Detroit respectively.
If you look at all of those moves compiled, it absolutely feels like and should make the Devils a different team for 2026-27. Trying to find the right combination of support forwards to augment the scoring from the core group has been a struggle the past couple of seasons; the hope now has to be that Mehta’s skill with analytics brings forth some better results. As Day 2 has just begun, there are certainly still some things up in the air that makes it feel as though Sunny isn’t done.
Goaltending went from being a huge question mark to a…well, to a different huge question mark. While I still think Jake Allen is perfectly serviceable, I also think he’s at the stage of his career where he needs to be in a tandem as he had been with Markstrom. Allen isn’t going to magically start performing at starting goaltender level again if you add 20 starts to him, so the Devils need someone else to shoulder the load. Mehta did re-sign Daws, but I’m skeptical of him being the answer. While I had been high on his potential in the past, he hasn’t done much with it to make me feel as though h’s ready to jump in and take on a regular NHL workload. So what’s the plan here? Hope these two work well together for a season before trying to make a bigger move? Make the bigger move now? Hope that someone internal (Mikhail Yegorov who Mehta hopefully gets a deal done with?) plays well enough to be promoted into the starter role? Swing now for a bigger move? There’s still a lot of summer left, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Speaking of how things play out, one defender has already been moved on from, but will Mehta really run it back with the underperforming group of defenseman he has? Granted injuries played a huge part of the defense looking the way it did last season; when Dennis Cholowski gets into 17 games as essentially your eighth option, you know the injury bug has hit. Luke Hughes did not play like a $9 million man last season and had to get another shoulder surgery, which has to be concerning. Johnny Kovacevic couldn’t play the rust off upon his return last season (to put it nicely) but hopefully he’s managed to rid himself of it for 2026-27. There’s question marks around Dougie Hamilton, Brenden Dillon and Brett Pesce as well, while Jonas Siegenthaler needs to bounce back from a meh year. One has to wonder if there’s moves to be made here as well.
The forward group is in better shape, with much less to worry about after some of the moves Mehta made. That’s not to say it’s the best or even one of the best forward groups in the league, but they should be able to do some damage if everyone pulls their weight while also not going out for steak dinners. Or Mehta could try to pull off a big move and just outscore every other team on a nightly basis. I honestly don’t see this being the direction he goes in, not with the other forward acquisitions he’s made and the limited cap he has left, but never say never in the NHL, especially not with some of the deals that have happened already this summer!
As I said earlier, there’s still plenty of summer left, and I’m sure there will still be a lot of questions even after this week ends and most of the available free agent players have signed new deals. Rookie and training camps can help shape rosters just as offseasons can, and we’re two months away from the first of those happening. After the first day of free agency, I feel the Devils are improved, however Sunny still has work to do if he wants them to truly be a contender again as soon as this season.
What are your thoughts on the state of the New Jersey Devils as Day 2 of free agency begins; do you feel they are still in flux? Do you feel you have an idea of what Mehta is trying to accomplish with the moves he’s made? Are there any specific, realistic moves you want to see him make in order to continue improving the team? Any players you would prefer he stay away from? Do you think he’s done making moves and will look internally for any other improvements? Leave any and all thoughts below and thanks as always for reading!
