3 early predictions for Devils offseason after Hurricanes series loss

The New Jersey Devils were the first team eliminated from the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, bowing out to the Carolina Hurricanes in five games in Round 1. While it was a disappointing result, the Devils were hamstrung by a plethora of key injuries in 2024-25.

After roaring out to a 24-11-3 record at the end of the December, the squad had to reckon with long-term injuries to two of the team’s most important players in Jack Hughes and Dougie Hamilton. Although Hamilton returned for the postseason, he failed to make the kind of impact he did when fully healthy.

Things started to fall apart without Hughes and Hamilton; the Devils limped into the playoffs with a 42-33-7 record, losing four of their final five regular season games before only managing to beat the Hurricanes one time in five tries in the postseason.

And general manager Tom Fitzgerald made some very interesting comments at the end-of-season media availability, making it clear that changes would be coming this summer.

“We won’t be coming back with the same group. Because it was just not good enough,” the executive said on Thursday. “I like our group, my job is to continue to better the group. And we’ve got a lot of decisions to make on certain players, bringing guys back, trade players.”

The Devils still project as a playoff team in 2026, but it’s not at all surprising that a couple of key changes could be coming in Newark this summer. Ahead of a long offseason, here are a couple of predictions before opening night.

Devils move on from a couple of underperforming forwards

The most obvious thing New Jersey will do this summer is move on from a couple of forwards who didn’t move the needle in both the regular season or playoffs. The Devils have five forwards who are set to be unrestricted free agents on July 1, and it wouldn’t be overly surprising if all of them — Tomas Tatar, Nathan Bastian, Curtis Lazar, Daniel Sprong and Justin Dowling — aren’t re-signed.

The most glaring is Tatar, who signed a one-year, $1.8 million contract last free agent frenzy and didn’t live up to expectations whatsoever. He finished the 2024-25 season with just seven goals and 17 points in 74 regular season games, averaging just 11 minutes per game in the process. The 34-year-old didn’t manage a single point in the postseason through four games, and it’s safe to say he’s as good as gone.

The same can probably be said for all of Sprong, Dowling and Bastian. The trio combined for 11 games in the postseason and managed a whopping zero points. That’s just unacceptable, and the money being used for those three players could be better utilized elsewhere — especially if it means using it towards targeting a top-six forward in free agency.

None of the three were very noticeable in the regular season, either, while Lazar struggled with injuries and didn’t play at all in the postseason. There’s just no reason for Fitzgerald and the front office to bring any of them back, especially with pending RFA’s Luke Hughes, Cody Glass and Nolan Foote all needing new contracts this summer.

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