The New Jersey Devils have been a fascinating team over the past several seasons. There has been a lot of change, with the previous administration overcorrecting and trying to put the right puzzle pieces together in order for the team to be successful. That overcorrecting, along with other missteps, cost Tom Fitzgerald his job, forcing the organization to a new general manager in Sunny Mehta.
Mehta, who grew up a Devils fan in New Jersey, was part of the organization in the analytics department before moving to the Florida Panthers to be an assistant general manager. He was part of the brass that put together a roster that won back-to-back Stanley Cup Championships. But he set a blueprint in Florida of taking risks on players who had value but were underutilized on their current team, or plucking them from the waiver wire.
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Some of those Panthers acquisitions during Mehta’s tenure in Florida included Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Gustav Forsling, Seth Jones, Sam Bennett, Brandon Montour (now in Seattle), Jesper Boqvist, Brad Marchand, Carter Verhaeghe, Oliver Ekman-Larsson (now in Toronto), Dmitry Kulikov, Niko Mikkola, Evan Rodrigues (now in New Jersey), Eetu Luostarinen, among others.
Sunny Mehta is bringing that logic and strategic planning to the New Jersey Devils, reshaping how things are done. The Devils are one of a handful of teams that have taken a page out of the Panthers’ playbook, taking a chance on players that are low risk but have high reward.
During an appearance on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio, Jim Biringer of NHLRumors.com, Full Press Hockey, and TheDevilsNation.com was asked how Sunny Mehta has already put his fingerprints on the New Jersey Devils.
TheDevilsNation.com Transcriptions
Were Expectations Too High for the New Jersey Devils This Season?
Host: “I have so many questions about this team. You mentioned the GM, one of the new breed in the NHL, already making their mark. Explain to me how you’ve already seen him putting his fingerprints on the Devils.”
Jim Biringer: “So he’s coming in, and he brings in a little bit more beef. I know we’ve talked about this the last couple of years on the Power Play Summer Edition, how they need to get a little bit bigger. Well, you make the trade for Evan Rodrigues; that guy was a piece of the Florida Panthers Stanley Cup championship teams back-to-back years. That’s a guy Sunny Mehta marked when he was in Florida, and who wouldn’t?
He’s a consistent goal scorer, plays deep in the corners, Swiss Army knife can play in your top nine, right? So that’s perfect, right there. Again, Simon Nemec was a young player that Tom Fitzgerald and the Devils picked second overall. He had to make a decision on that back end. He needed some growth. Well, he wasn’t going to really get in New Jersey. You ship him out, you get some assets for him. Two first-round picks again. There are conditions with those first-round picks; however, you have those assets to trade to make the team better.
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You move out a goaltender. You give Nico Daws a chance to play behind Jake Allen or become the starting goaltender, which you hope he does in New Jersey. And he’s just using his analytical data and his scouting, and he’s bringing something, and I asked this to him in his opening press conference.
I asked him about, like, the pro and amateur scouting, and what happened in Florida with Bill Zito. He said it was just a collaborative effort from everybody to pick out the players, and he put in that offer sheet for Barrett Hayton (Utah ended up matching the offer sheet).
That’s the type of player the Devils need: a big, physical center. That’s the type of beef you need on the team that the Devils just don’t have right now.”
While the offer sheet didn’t work out for Mehta and the Devils, he looked at his roster and understood that having the right pieces is more important than the names themselves. In addition to Rodrigues, Jesper Boqvist, and Ben Steeves, Mehta signed Anthony Mantha, coming off a 30-goal season in Pittsburgh, to provide depth scoring.
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In addition, he acquired Amadeus Lombardi from the Detroit Red Wings and defenseman Declan Chisholm from the Washington Capitals, hoping to give them better roles to help the New Jersey Devils get back to the playoffs.
You can clearly see it is no longer just a patchwork mentality in New Jersey. There is thought, logic, and numbers behind what Sunny Mehta is doing. Will the Moneyball approach to the Devils goaltending of Daws, Allen, and David Rittich work? That remains to be seen. But there is purpose to every move now in New Jersey.
With every good general manager, the work is never done. Expect Devils GM Sunny Mehta to keep trying to find those players with low value and high upside to help them get back to the playoffs and improve. But in just a few short months, he is leaving his fingerprints all over the team.
