New Jersey Devils 2024-25 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings

By Dom Luszczyszyn, Sean Gentille and Shayna Goldman

When did the New Jersey Devils’ 2023-24 season go off the rails? You’ve got your pick.

It might’ve happened on Nov. 3, when Jack Hughes crashed into the boards and injured his shoulder. At the time, he had 20 points in 10 games.

It might’ve happened on Nov. 28, when Dougie Hamilton tore his pectoral muscle. That took a point-per-game defenseman out of the line and started a ripple effect down the lineup.

It might’ve happened in the offseason, when they committed to starting another season with Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid as their goaltenders.

Either way, one of the league’s most promising young rosters crashed and burned. Now, with a new coach, a new starting goaltender and the same talented core, the Devils are looking to make up for lost time.

The projection

Last season, everything that could go wrong for the Devils did. Instead of becoming the NHL’s next great power, they took a massive step backward.

While some prognostications are treating the Devils’ upcoming season as a surefire return to glory, last season’s epic disappointment should warrant some ceiling skepticism until proven otherwise. Every indication suggests the Devils have a roster that can rule the league for the next decade and that the 2024-25 season will offer a return to form. But there’s a pecking order to consider. After last season, it’s difficult to put the Devils at the top of it.

A lot of the circumstances — injuries, coaching, goaltending, defensive depth — that led to such a miserable season have changed for the better. There’s no doubt the Devils will improve in 2024-25; they surpass 81 points in 98 percent of simulations. But it does feel like the team is being given a little too much credit right now. A 100-point season feels a lot safer than an immediate return to the league’s apex.

It wouldn’t be a shock to see the Devils hit 110 points, but we’re going to need them to actually prove it on the ice first.

The big question

Can Sheldon Keefe get the Devils back on track?

When the Devils finally reeled in Jacob Markstrom, getting themselves the proven starting goaltender they’d lacked since Cory Schneider’s prime, nobody should’ve been more excited than Sheldon Keefe. There were similarities, after all, between Keefe’s old team and his new one. Some were positive. One in particular — an ongoing parade of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to stabilize in net — was not.

Now, with Markstrom locked in as the best season-opening option of Keefe’s head-coaching career, he’s free to focus on the things he can more easily control. That’s good news for him and good news for New Jersey.

Goaltending might’ve been the Devils’ biggest issue last season, but it wasn’t the only issue. Their ability to play team defense took a step back all around, finishing with the 11-most overall goals allowed against per 60 and 13th-most at five-on-five. Poor play in net exacerbated that, but there was also a clear need for improvement. That was one of Keefe’s biggest wins in his first full season with the Toronto Maple Leafs in terms of process (2.45 expected goals 60 at five-on-five to 2.11) and results (2.71 actual goals per 60 to 2.05). That’s the difference between a bottom-10 defensive team and one in the top 10, and it happened relatively quickly.

Maybe more importantly, Keefe pulled that off without sacrificing offensive production. On the contrary, the Leafs scored more goals with him at the helm than without. At least part of that, of course, is a testament to the players on the roster. At that point in their careers, players like Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner should’ve been improving year after year. They had a coach, though, that put them in position to make the leap.

Now the Devils’ young cornerstones, Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier, can say the same. In Keefe, they have a coach with a track record of coaxing legitimately good defensive performances out of his best players without any sort of giveback on the offensive end. Hughes and Hischier each took backward steps in both phases of the game last season. If Keefe’s regular-season work is any indication, both — Hischier particularly, given his obvious two-way potential — stand to benefit in a big way. Matthews is a Rocket Richard winner and one of the best five-on-five defensive centers in the league. Marner is an elite playmaking winger with consecutive 97-, 99- and 85-point seasons … and he’s also shown up on Selke ballots. You can build well-rounded stars without force-feeding them brutal defensive minutes, and Keefe’s resume is proof.

Keefe also showed a knack for figuring out who should play with whom on the top six. It’s one thing to have talents like Matthews, Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares. It’s another to figure out the right mix. In Toronto, Zach Hyman and Michael Bunting both went from unheralded prospects to 20-goal scorers — and not just because they got regular shifts with elite players.

It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison for the Devils, but they’ve yet to find the right linemates for Timo Meier, who’s been an overall disappointment since the team acquired him during the 2022-23 season. It’s worth noting that Meier improved once Travis Green took over, producing 15 goals in his remaining 21 games, tied for sixth in the NHL in that span. The bulk of that came on the power play, but it was still an enormous upward tick from what he’d managed in his first 48 games (13G, 15A). New Jersey was also a net positive with him on the ice at five-on-five, which was far from the case under Lindy Ruff. It’s important — vital, even — that Keefe gets his highest-paid winger back on track. The same goes for Dawson Mercer, whose points per 60 dropped by more than one (2.47 to 1.44) in 2023-24. Figuring out the best fit for both at five-on-five is the first step.

There’s a major caveat to all this, of course: Keefe’s teams — as you might have heard — badly underachieved in the playoffs. Why that happened, outside of a failure to consistently score more goals than their opponents, isn’t worth delving into here, and it might not be relevant, either. Keefe, if nothing else, knows how to get the most out of his players during the regular season, goaltending and bad luck be damned. You can’t fail in the postseason if you don’t make it in the first place, and that’s a step the Devils need to retake.

The wild card

Is Markstrom the answer?

For much of the last few seasons, goaltending has been a thorn in the Devils’ side no matter who was in the blue paint. And then, in a breakout 2022-23 season, the team started trending upward in goal — until it started crashing down at the worst possible time in the playoffs.

Goaltending wasn’t all that went wrong in 2023-24, but it was far from a strength. That’s why the Markstrom trade was such a big moment for the Devils.

If the Devils can build on their 2022-23 heights with a possession-heavy game, they may not need a goaltender to carry them. But they will need someone who can provide reliable saves in the case of any defensive breakdowns from their speedy attack and rush game (though Keefe may emphasize a more methodical approach).

Markstrom seems like a more than capable answer to that. He’s coming off a bounce-back season in which he finished third in the league in goals saved above expected through his 48 appearances, despite some post-deadline struggles and absences. Evolving Hockey’s model gave him a boost for saves made within 10 seconds of a giveaway or defensive breakdown, which bodes well for the Devils stylistically.

Should the Devils expect a game-breaking franchise player? Probably not, as Markstrom has had some up-and-down seasons as recently as 2022-23. But at his best — which the Flames experienced through stretches of last year — Markstrom has shown he is a top-10-caliber goaltender who can provide timely saves in a starting role. On paper, that’s exactly what the Devils need.

The strengths

Everything starts with their dynamic one-two punch down the middle: Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier. The Devils are one of three teams with two franchise centers (along with Edmonton and now Toronto thanks to William Nylander’s move there) according to our Player Tiers project. Naturally, the combined Net Rating of Hughes and Hischier ranks third in the league behind those two teams.

There was some grumbling regarding those placements which is natural given the drop-off for both players last season.

Hughes struggled to drive play to his usual degree and wasn’t nearly as effective at five-on-five as a result. While his transition game and passing were still electric, he didn’t generate his own chances to nearly the same effect which contributed to drops in his Net Rating (plus-15 pace). In 2022-23, he was at plus-20. Hischier’s drop-off was even more pronounced, going from plus-21 in 2022-23 to plus-13 last season. The big issue came on the defensive end where Hischier drowned in tough minutes and went from Selke finalist to liability with a major decline in his ability to retrieve pucks and exit the zone cleanly. It was a strength in 2022-23 that turned into a significant weak point last season.

If that’s the performance New Jersey gets this season out of those two, the Devils won’t be a safe playoff bet. We’re expecting a bounce-back for both parties (hence the steadiness in their placement in the Player Tiers) and it’s part of what puts the Devils back in the playoff driver’s seat.

A clean bill of health should also help. While we do bake in some time missed for oft-injured players like Hughes (74.6 projected games), the Devils should see both Hughes and Hischier in the lineup more regularly this season. Last year the Devils played just 56 games with both players and went 29-23-4 in those games, a 91-point pace. That’s obviously still not good enough, but it’s much better than the 26 games they played without the two going 9-16-1, a 60-point pace that sunk the season. The team’s expected goals percentage dropped by five percentage points in those games.

We’re expecting especially big things for Hughes with a jump to 110 points potentially in the cards for the 23-year-old superstar — if he can play a full 82. One key change: better offensive support on his wings. Last season, Hughes spent just 32 percent of his minutes with Jesper Bratt, 17 percent with Timo Meier and less than 10 minutes with both. That means half his minutes were spent with someone else, namely Tyler Toffoli and Erik Haula. No disrespect to Toffoli, but he’s not Bratt or Meier.

This year, the trio should open the season on the same line, one that projects to be the league’s very best. There is something to be said about fit and chemistry and it didn’t seem like Hughes had a lot of it with Meier last season. Still, these are three good players who should be able to find a way to dominate together. If not, Hughes should still have one major weapon next to him, which is more than usual.

That will likely be Bratt, who was New Jersey’s best player last season and has shown a consistent ability to drive offense over the years. Keefe loved having a dynamic offensive duo at the top of Toronto’s lineup and it’s likely he’ll try to make the same magic happen here.

Meier is a bit more of a concern after the season he had, but it’s worth noting he started to be himself post-deadline. He was a key shot threat on the top power play and getting that usage again should spark a return to some dominant scoring totals.

Further down the lineup, Keefe should have the makings of a solid checking line with Ondrej Palat and Stefan Noesen flanking Haula. All three carry strong Defensive Ratings and can help alleviate some of the burden from the top six. Last season, Haula and Palat were the team’s best forwards at suppressing scoring chances while Noesen should carry over some of what he learned in Carolina to that effect.

Improved team defense was a major priority across the board for the Devils, as it wasn’t just goaltending holding the team back last year. Adding Markstrom solves a lot of issues and he projects to be an above-average starter, but it also helps that the team added Brett Pesce and Brenden Dillon to the fold.

Both defenders bring a defensive slant and experience handling tough minutes. Pesce is the major addition here; he can stop a rush in its tracks as one of the league’s best zone defenders year after year. His active stick makes him a huge plus in the defensive zone as well. He should be exactly what Luke Hughes needs in a partner on the second pair — a steady presence (once both return to the lineup, of course). Ditto for Simon Nemec on the third pair with Dillon, a more appropriate place for where Dillon’s current ability lies.

That should free up both Luke Hughes and Nemec offensively to flaunt their gifts with the puck. Hughes looked a bit more polished in that regard with much stronger transition numbers in retrieving pucks, exiting the defensive zone and especially entering the offensive zone. His 55 percent controlled entry rate already ranks in the 95th percentile in the league and speaks to his already strong plus-4 Offensive Rating. While both had comparable on-ice numbers (in equally sheltered minutes), Hughes showed a bit more individually leading to the higher rating.

In any case, both project to deliver top-four value this season, though the Devils might need a larger leap in order to reach Cup contender status.

The weaknesses

One defenseman not mentioned above is Dougie Hamilton, the team’s best. Offensively, he’s one of the most dominant defensemen in the league with his ability to facilitate in-zone offense. He was seriously missed last season and his presence is an obvious plus to the team. He should provide an especially big boost on the power play.

The question is where he stands relative to other No. 1 defensemen and that’s where things get a little murky. His plus-8 is a touch below average and that’s mainly due to the Devils’ defensive issues which have grown more worrisome. They’ve allowed more expected goals (2.62 per 60) and significantly more actual goals (3.03 per 60) with Hamilton on the ice since he joined the team.

That’s a bit concerning for a defender who doesn’t get the matchup minutes, more so if his partner is Jonas Siegenthaler who took a dramatic step back last season. As far as “top pairs” go, New Jersey’s could be a liability if both defenders can’t recreate the magic of 2022-23.

And that could continue to be a problem across the board here as only Pesce grades out as above average defensively. Dillon may be fine for his role, but the bar isn’t high on the third pair. The Devils are projected to earn a combined Defensive Rating of minus-5 from their defenders, which ranks 24th in the league. That’s last among playoff teams who are plus-4 on average. It’s not a massive gap, but it keeps the Devils away from a top-of-the-division projection.

The problem last year wasn’t just goaltending, it was the situations the goaltenders often found themselves in. Keefe could clean that up — he did a great job to that effect in Toronto — but it will require the blue line to step up.

Otherwise, there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Markstrom, who is good but not exactly a slam dunk. Few goalies are and he’s not in that tier, especially given his lack of year-to-year consistency. Having Jake Allen behind him also isn’t ideal as he sinks the team’s crease rating to just average. That’s a massive step up from last season, but it may not be a strength outside of brand-name value.

Up front, the Devils have some serious scoring potential, but they do look to be a winger short in the top six. Mercer is better served as a support winger on a second line, not the feature guy. He’s another player who needs to channel the 2022-23 version of himself, and that might be hard to do with Tomas Tatar on the other side. As underrated as Tatar used to be, he looks closer to a third-liner these days.

The Devils don’t have a lot of faults, but last year did show they weren’t an invincible powerhouse. Not yet. With those numbers on the ledger, there’s creeping doubt regarding how some players stand going into the season. After a disastrous 2023-24, the onus is on the roster to prove they’ve still got it.

The best case

Pesce and Dillon provide the defensive fortitude necessary to stabilize the blue line, putting Markstrom in the right environment to succeed. The team’s lethal core takes another leap as the Devils forget last season ever happened and cruise to a division win. Their present and future look as bright as ever.