It was announced on Monday night that the New Jersey Devils have decided to part ways with President and General Manager Tom Fitzgerald.
“Tom and I had a thoughtful conversation today and agreed it was time to move in a new direction,” Blitzer said in a press release. “Tom changed the trajectory of our team here, including setting a franchise record for points in a season and helping make New Jersey a hockey destination.”
It is no secret that the Devils have been planning this move for a while now. David Blitzer had been conducting a top-to-bottom review of the hockey operations department in New Jersey. This has been ongoing for the last couple of months.
Devils Rumors: Will Tom Fitzgerald Have a Limited Role Moving Forward in New Jersey?
There is a reason why Tom Fitzgerald did not make any significant trades at the trade deadline. He wasn’t allowed to, as ownership knew around that time, the best decision would be to move on from Fitzgerald.
🚨Night Cap Recap 🚨
Tom Fitzgerald Fired by the New Jersey Devils #njdevils pic.twitter.com/VgAIgGRoz0
— Jim Biringer (@JimBiringer) April 6, 2026
While New Jersey is technically still in the playoffs, they have seen multiple teams make changes not only to their coaching staffs but also to their managerial staffs.
Devils ownership saw the Nashville Predators and Toronto Maple Leafs get a head start on their general manager searches. The Predators began months ago, while the Maple Leafs just fired Brad Treliving a week ago, Monday night. Don’t think those decisions went into this one made by David Blitzer on Monday.
As Mathieu Darche proved when he removed Patrick Roy as head coach and hired Pete DeBoer, when someone is available, you go and get them. Blitzer had been noticing his team becoming stagnant and ok with the status quo.
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The New Jersey Devils needed a change if they wanted to take winning seriously. There were too many mistakes that didn’t add up in favor of Tom Fitzgerald staying on board through the 2026 NHL Draft and Offseason.
Fitzgerald was on the hot seat dating back to last season. While injuries to top players like Jack Hughes, Dougie Hamilton, Luke Hughes, Jonas Siegenthaler, and Johnathan Kovacevic saved his job once, this year, injuries cannot be an excuse for this team’s failure. Even the team’s recent 12-7-1 run since the Olympic Break couldn’t save his job.
There were so many chances for Fitzgerald to make some type of change throughout the course of the season, but he stuck with the people he assembled. Again, some type of change the players were looking for that could help them snap out of their funk earlier than after the Olympic Break.
Now, nobody saw Jack Hughes’s injury coming, but Tom Fitzgerald failed to properly insulate this group to help them succeed in the absence of their top offensive threat. The New Jersey Devils are too talented to miss the playoffs and be in this position.
There are only so many times ownership can hear their team’s general manager take accountability for why the team is missing the playoffs yet again. Fitzgerald acknowledged that the group’s failures were on him. However, he failed to correct the mistakes he made during his tenure in New Jersey.
New Jersey Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald: “Where We Are At is on Me“
Again, you can point to the 13 players with no-movement and no-trade clauses, the inability to clear cap space to get Quinn Hughes, failed contract negotiations with young players that dragged into training camp, failure to insulate the top six to compete when injuries, the whole Dougie Hamilton saga, and the constant overcorrecting and changing the identity of the Devils did him in.
However, when your competition gets a leg up on you, change is necessary. As a team, the New Jersey Devils don’t want to be left with the third-best candidate, as Frank Servavalli stated last week on Frankly Speaking on Victory+.
But I believe time is of the essence because you’re now dealing with two other ongoing searches. The last thing you want is to be left with getting the third-best candidate available if you’re going to be reinventing your hockey operations department, and I’m not saying that that’s absolutely going to be the case. It’s not set in stone, of course, and that decision needs to be made, but it has felt for the last little while like it’s been trending toward that for Tom Fitzgerald, who, after six seasons, the Devils are on track to miss the playoffs for the fourth time, and they’ve won one round total in six seasons. Their points percentage of .513 over a six-season run is about an 84- to 85-point pace, which is not very good.
There is a good group assembled to support Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, Luke Hughes, and Dawson Mercer (if he remains part of the future), along with Simon Nemec (the same goes for him), Brett Pesce, Timo Meier, and Connor Brown. Not to mention the drafting of Arseny Gritsyuk and Anton Silayev, to name a few.
Tom Fitzgerald: “We Are Not Coming Back with the Same Group“
However, when there is an opportunity to acquire a top NHL player or assets to put the team over the top as a consistent playoff team, the general manager should start considering his future. Too often, he failed to give up necessary assets to upgrade the team, which would have helped them show progress not only in the regular season but also in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“This is a critical offseason for our franchise, and we will explore all avenues that best position the Devils to compete for a Stanley Cup once again,” Blitzer said in a press release.
Now, a new chapter will be charted for the New Jersey Devils as they look to bring a fourth Stanley Cup to the Garden State.
