The Devils continued their offseason makeover on Saturday’s Day 2 of the NHL Draft, freeing up some salary cap space—and roster slots--for whatever General Manager Tom Fitzgerald has up his sleeve when the league opens for free agency business on July 1.
No Devils fan should quibble over Fitzgerald’s move earlier this month when he acquired goalie Jacob Markstrom from Calgary. However it pans out, this team desperately needed a netminder with a track record of making difficult saves. As it has for nearly a decade.
However, some of Fitzgerald’s more recent deals, including Saturday’s trade of 2020 No. 7 overall pick Alexander Holtz and 2023 playoff hero goalie Akira Schmid to Vegas for depth forward Paul Cotter and a 2025 third-round pick, make me worry about the direction Fitzgerald wants to take this team.
Fitzgerald was actually quoted about how he wants the Devils to line up with “a different looking bottom six.” He has been obsessed over the phrase “difficult to play against” since New Jersey was defeated by Carolina in the 2023 Eastern Conference semifinals. Fitzgerald became convinced that his team built on speed and skill could never advance in the grueling Stanley Cup tournament.
Forget for a second that: A) The playoff run was a new experience for so many of New Jersey’s young players--this was the first time the franchise reached that far in 11 years; and B) The goaltending stunk. No, the Devils were bested by the Hurricanes because they weren’t gritty enough. The solution: Sacrifice speed for physicality.
How’d that work out?
Fitzgerald used his team’s scuffling through an injury-plagued reversal of fortune last season as an excuse to double down on his toughness theory by adding goon Kurtis MacDermid in advance of the March deadline. MacDermid responded by registering 1 assist in 16 games where he averaged a whopping 4:21 of ice time per game. In that limited sample, the Devils posted a 31.19% expected goals for percentage when he was on the ice, according to NaturalStaTrick.com.
But MacDermid was willing to hit people legally and illegally (50 penalty minutes in 16 games), so he was rewarded in May with a 3-year extension at a $1.15 million AAV. I wouldn’t have given $1.15.
Cotter, 24, is significantly more skilled at hockey than MacDermid, but it hasn’t really helped his production (22 goals and 23 assists in 138 NHL games). He has zero playoff experience, a healthy scratch during the Golden Knights’ first-round loss to Dallas in April and throughout their run to the Stanley Cup during his rookie campaign. If grittiness was so important in the postseason, how come Cotter sat despite ranking 23rd in the league in hits per 60 minutes among the 552 players who saw at least 50 games of action last season?
To make matters worse, the return for Cotter included the admission that Fitzgerald whiffed on a lottery pick. Holtz, 22, is admittedly a polarizing prospect, but was he that much of a lost cause? He scored 16 goals last season despite only playing 103:34 on a power play that could have found better use of his plus shot.
Fitzgerald and the coaching staff have been openly critical of Holtz’s misadventures, but I found it unfair that they allocated so much of the blame to him for the team’s demise. Play him with guys like Chris Tierney and Tomas Nosek and, yeah, the Devils are often going to be pinned in their own zone. But, according to NST, a line of Holtz, Erik Haula and Dawson Mercer registered positive puck possession metrics, including a whopping 67.31% in generating high danger scoring chances. I’ll take that from a third line any night.
Here's what’s frustrating me about Fitzgerald’s worldview: He seems to not understand that Cup-winning teams like Vegas and Florida succeeded not because they employed legions of muckers; it’s that those club’s most talented players also bought into the work ethic. Matthew Tkachuk, Alexsander Barkov, and Carter Verhaeghe were all hell to play against, relentless on the forecheck, AND could produce points by the bushel for the Panthers.
The Devils’ organization may have had other reasons why they felt they couldn’t get through to Holtz, so they cut bait early like they did with defenseman Ty Smith, a 2018 first rounder who brought back defenseman John Marino. That trade proved to be a crucial step in advancing a culture of accountability; the Holtz dumping, on the other hand, seems more vindictive.
As for Schmid, he probably needed a change of scenery after a rough 2023-24 campaign. The Devils have been bringing goaltenders into the program from every direction over the last four months—they drafted two more on Saturday, including Mikhail Yegorov, the highest-rated goalie in the class, in the second round. That had to make Schmid wonder where he stood with the organization. Oh well, he’ll always have the Rangers series in his mental scrapbook.
Given what the Devils are becoming since that brief moment of glory, the memory is fading fast.
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Speaking of Marino, the Devils quietly engineered a trade earlier in the day where they sent him and a fifth-round pick to Utah in exchange for a second rounder (that netted them Yegorov) and a 2025 second round pick.
Marino had three more years at a $4.4 million AAV on his contract and was coming off an uneven season where he played through an upper body injury. In his first season in New Jersey, he was outstanding, a sublime dispossessor and transition passer. Like he was with Pittsburgh, though, it wasn’t sustainable, The Devils obviously felt they needed to do a little better at his spot, and now they have more money to throw at the vacancy.
However, this trade won’t look as fine should Carolina defenseman Brett Pesce sign elsewhere in free agency.
According to several reports, the Devils are in the mix for the righthanded backliner who could get a long-term deal for as much as $5.5-6 million AAV. CapFriendly.com has the Devils with about $19.8 million in cap space with just Mercer as a must-sign (restricted) free agent, which puts the Devils in a prime position as a bidder. Remember, though, teams in low-tax states have an advantage, so that’s a risk.
Overall, though, the two 2s were a solid return for Fitzgerald, who needed that dash of sunshine on a cloudy day.
I love the Silayev pick. Big fan of Buium (and Dickinson) but I think that Anton is going to be great. And of course I knew that Fitz had to love the guy even if the only stat he saw were his height and weight. The rest of the draft was pretty vanilla but there was definitely a pattern of the type/size of the pick that they were looking for. The Marino trade was a good return. The whole Holtz disaster is a bit troubling and confusing. Either there is something seriously wrong with his attitude or work ethic (which should have been taken in to account before drafting him) or it's NJs inability to develop young draft choices. Either way it's not a good sign of the inner workings of the FO. Whether it was the public down talking or absolute refusal to give him better/more ice time it was just very, very poor asset management. A little scared of the Pesce contract but I think Dillon will be a real solid add to the young D. Oh, well on to free agency! Hold on to your butts!