NHL: New Jersey Devils – 2025/2026 Review
Eight straight wins to open the season. Then a slow, ugly unravelling that nobody in the room saw coming. New Jersey finished on 87 points and missed the playoffs by 10, a brutal outcome for a team that started the year believing it belonged in the Cup conversation.
Key numbers
2025-2026 record: 42-37-3 (230 goals for, 254 against)
2025-2026 NHL finish: 7th in the Metropolitan Division
Top goal scorer 2025-2026: Nico Hischier (28)
Most assists 2025-2026: Jack Hughes (50)
Most points 2025-2026: Jack Hughes (77)
Average age of roster (2026-2027): 29.3 years
Available cap space (2026-2027): $1.85M
Recent moves (offseason)
Arrivals:
- Declan Chisholm (D)
- Evan Rodrigues (F)
- Jesper Boqvist (F)
- David Rittich (G)
- Anthony Mantha (F)
Departures:
- Simon Nemec (D)
- Maxim Tsyplakov (F)
- Jacob Markstrom (G)
- Paul Cotter (F)
A front office reshuffle, and a Hughes brother watching from Minnesota
New Jersey Devils – Future contracts and draft picks
New Jersey cleared house after the disappointment, firing Tom Fitzgerald and handing the job to Sunny Mehta, a former Florida executive. Mehta’s first real call was to keep Sheldon Keefe behind the bench instead of tearing the whole thing down.
The bigger story has nothing to do with the current roster. Quinn Hughes and Minnesota are going nowhere in extension talks. If that stalemate holds, the oldest Hughes brother could end up in New Jersey alongside Jack and Luke, and the Devils would become a genuine Cup threat overnight. The core underneath is already locked down: Luke Hughes, Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt are signed through 2030-31 or beyond, and Jack Hughes has four years left.
Draft capital is healthy too, with extra 2027 picks banked from earlier trades. Mehta has to work with the room he inherited for now. The Hughes situation is what the rest of the league will be watching, and it matters far more than any stretch of the schedule this season.
35-20-1 against everyone else, 7-17-2 against the division
On paper, New Jersey have one of the most gifted attacking cores in the league. They never turned it into anything steady. Jack Hughes led the team with 77 points, a number that would satisfy most players and nobody around this one, coming off a year already shortened by injury.
Captain Nico Hischier had his own peaks and troughs, and he said plainly that the team never found a rhythm it could hold. Jesper Bratt was the exception, dependable in almost any role he was handed. Luke Hughes kept growing into a genuinely dangerous offensive defenseman. In net, the Markstrom experiment is over. He was shipped to Florida this summer and Jake Allen finally gets the full-time No. 1 job after years of waiting behind someone else.
That eight-game run to open the year was not a fluke. The talent is real. Stretching it across 82 games instead of three weeks is the whole job in 2026-27, and failing at it last season cost them the postseason.
Player to watch: Jack Hughes (F)
A cut at a team dinner. Finger surgery. Season over. That is how Hughes lost his fourth straight campaign, and the reputation is sticking to him now.
When he plays, none of it matters. He buried the overtime winner that gave Team USA Olympic gold, then came back and produced at close to a 135-point pace over a full-season rate. Four years without a clean campaign has people around the league wondering whether the injuries are the rule rather than the exception. Production was never the question. Ice time is. Crack 100 points and the conversation changes, and he has come within touching distance twice already.
2026-2027 target
Projected New Jersey Devils lines 2026-2027
The problem last year was not talent. It was far more specific. New Jersey went 35-20-1 against the rest of the league and 7-17-2 against the Metropolitan, the only games that really decide a playoff race.
So the aim this season is narrow rather than grand: beat the teams directly in front of you. Mehta stayed busy through the summer, adding Luke Evangelista, Evan Rodrigues and Anthony Mantha to thicken the forward group, and backing Jake Allen in goal rather than chasing a name.
Get back to the playoffs and the summer work is vindicated. Miss for a third time in four years and the questions stop being about the division and start being about the core itself.
My prediction
I like this roster. They lost a couple of useful pieces, sure, but the additions fit what Keefe wants to do. I have them finishing no lower than third, and second is well within reach. The one thing that could wreck it is health. Can Jack Hughes give them 82 games? If he does, I have New Jersey second in the conference.
Photo credit: wallpapersafari.com | lbaker36
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