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The New Jersey Devils are shuffling things around after a disappointing 2023-24 season. Not only did the team hire a new coach and hold a top-10 draft pick it is supposedly willing to trade, but general manager Tom Fitzgerald has given insight into what he thinks is lacking from New Jersey.
While speaking to The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun, Fitzgerald said that he would like to add a few more gritty forwards.
“We're a little too vanilla up front,” Fitzgerald said before adding, “I’m looking on the back end, as well, for something.”
Fitzgerald, who had previously criticized the Devils forwards for doing too much of the same thing, mentioned earlier this year that he had thought his forward group may have been too ‘soft.'
“I think we are getting there,” Fitzgerald said of the forwards' diversity in March. “If you look at the lineup back then, you know, with certain players, they were skilled, but maybe on the, I don't want to say softer side, but not the hardness that we have now. Do we have a forward group of fighters? No, but we have forwards who play hard and finish checks. I think that is a demand from the coaches, too. I think anybody can finish checks if they are asked to play harder.”
Devils entering big offseason
In 2023, the New Jersey Devils defeated their archrivals, the New York Rangers, in the first round of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs. But following a second-round exit against the Carolina Hurricanes, the Devils failed to capitalize on the momentum built in 2022-23. Instead, the team middled and ultimately missed the postseason. New Jersey fired head coach Lindy Ruff in March, and after a month of Travis Green as interim head coach, the Devils hired Sheldon Keefe, who had just been fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs.
With Keefe at the helm and with Tom Fitzgerald looking to sign or acquire a certain type of forward, as well as a goaltender, the Devils have an important offseason in front of them. The team holds the No. 10 overall pick in the draft and nearly $20 million in cap space to work with. As for the draft pick, while the Devils could use it to grab a talented prospect, Fitzgerald said he is more than than open to shipping it off to another team — if the price is right.
“Yeah, for sure,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m more than willing to move the pick for the right asset. One that we control, one that’s probably in the same demographic as our team — maybe not 23, 24 years old but somebody we control for a few years.
“Nothing’s come my way yet, though.”
Fortunately, even if things don't break right for the Devils in their offseason pursuits, the team has already locked down a talented young core of Timo Meier, Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, and Jesper Bratt, all of whom of 27 years or younger, and New Jersey also looks to have found a pillar defenseman in 20-year-old Simon Nemec, who made his NHL debut in December 2023.
