New Jersey Devils Offseason of Change Has Just Begun

The New Jersey Devils are going to have a new look to them next season. President and General Manager Tom Fitzgerald vowed to make changes to the roster. He knew it was not good enough. Thus, tough decisions on players he had brought in would have to be made.

“We’ve got a lot of decisions to make on certain players, whether we bring guys back, trade players, we won’t be coming back with the same group. I can tell you that,” Fitzgerald said. “It was not good enough.”

Less than 24 hours after the Stanley Cup was awared to the Florida Panthers for a second straight season, with the Stanley Cup Final coming to an end, instead of buying out the contract of Erik Haula, the Devils traded him to the Nashville Predators for Jeremy Hanzel and a fourth-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.

While Haula was a good fit for the Devils, especially on the penalty kill and in the faceoff circle, the Devils had to move him for salary cap purposes.

The New Jersey Devils were up against the salary cap heading into the 2025 off-season. According to PuckPedia.com, before the salary cap rose to $95.5 million for next season, New Jersey had $5,095,834 in cap space. That was before they signed Arensy Gritsyuk, Lenni Hämeenaho, and Juho Lammikko to deals.

Gritsyuk and Hämeenaho are ELCs, so those will only count against the cap if they make the team out of training camp. Lammikko is making $800,000 on a one-year deal. So that number dropped under $5 million. Even with the extra influx of money ($7.5 million) with the cap going up, the Devils needed to clear cap space to not only sign Luke Hughes but also other potential free agents they want to bring back.

This summer, the list of unrestricted free agents for the Devils includes Jake Allen, Nathan Bastian, Justin Dowling, Curtis Lazar, Tomas Tatar, Brian Dumoulin, Daniel Sprong, and Dennis Cholowski. Not to mention, the Devils have three restricted free agents, including Luke Hughes, Nolan Foote, and Cody Glass.

The Devils are progressing on a new deal for RFA defenseman Luke Hughes. Fitzgerald and the organization want to accomplish that. As Fitzgerald told Mike Morreale of NHL.com, both parties are in agreement that they want to get this done. It’s just figuring out cap space and what’s best for the player.

The most likely scenario is that he signs an eight-year deal in the $7 million to $8 million range. That means the Devils have $5 million to $6 million to fill out the rest of the roster. Thus, tough decisions will need to be made regarding players like Dawson Mercer, Erik Haula, and Ondrej Palat, and deals will have to be made to make things work.

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The Devils needed cap space. Good teams look up and down their roster to find contracts that can be moved. And while Haula was a good candidate to be bought out, the Devils decided to move him and his $3.15 million to Nashville. This has given the Devils, according to PuckPedia.com, $14,394,167 in projected cap space before the Luke Hughes extension.