A Low Key New Jersey Devils Season Ending Press Conference by GM Tom Fitzgerald and HC Sheldon Keefe

On Thursday, the New Jersey Devils 2024-25 season was fully closed with a press conference with General Manager Tom Fitzgerald and head coach Sheldon Keefe. This post summarized what was said in what was a low key “OK” press conference.

Just as Memorial Day Weekend is the unofficial start to the Summer for New Jersey, Thursday’s press conference by New Jersey Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald and head coach Sheldon Keefe was the unofficial start to the 2025 offseason for the Devils. Granted, the offseason for the Devils started earlier but the larger point is the same. From here on to the 2025 NHL Draft, business will likely be kept to re-signing restricted free agents and prospects. Something the Devils have done with Arseni Gritsyuk, and, as revealed during yesterday’s press conference, Lenni Hämeenaho. (Not to mention a new NHL contract for Utica forward Nathan Légaré.)

For those who missed the press conference, you can watch a recording of the stream on the Devils’ YouTube channel here. A partial transcript of the presser is up at this page on the team’s official website. This post is going to focus on the highlights from the press conference.

As a whole, it was Fine. It was OK. There was nothing Earth-shattering as a surprise or as news. There a few smaller surprises and one area where I think GM Tom Fitzgerald would have wished he re-phrased some things. There was nothing objectionable or outrageous stated. No shame was brought to the People Who Matter from the press conference. Unfortunately, a different NHL team did so on Thursday. I will not elaborate as that was not this organization – which is the focus of this whole blog.

I will also point out that the press conference did not move any proverbial needles. If you were not a fan of Soft Tom and/or Keefe, then nothing stated would have likely changed your mind. Likewise if you are a fan of Fitzgerald and/or Keefe. I do think they made some statements that would provide common ground for the majority of the People Who Matter. Let me break down the good, the bad, the somewhat odd, and points on various players.

The Good: The Season Wasn’t Good Enough Message.

This is what the team’s social accounts and other league-covering accounts are running with. And it’s a fair statement. Both Keefe and Fitzgerald came out with that message in response to the first question. They reinforced that in response to others. They even acknowledged that the first half of the season went very well. Keefe, in his own initial answer, stated he will look into what happened beyond “surface level things that come to mind.” Keefe did point out that sustaining their game was an issue and that is a difficult thing to do in this league. Fitzgerald was more soft about it, stating that the season was good in that they made the playoffs but it was not great and being eliminated in five games was a disappointment. Fitzgerald also spoke to a standard being set.

I can respect this messaging. This is a results-oriented business. The results after those 40 games were not good. Getting bounced by the same team in 2023 (Carolina) in the same number of games (5) should be treated as a shortcoming and not a point of celebration. Yes, the Devils succeeded in making the playoffs after missing it last season. Job done. But hearing from the people directly in charge that it was not good enough is heartening in that they are not going to rest on their laurels.

Fitzgerald was more pointed about that last part. In response to a question about what moves he would make to get the team “over the hump,” Fitzgerald opened by stating he liked his group and then, two sentences later, stating “We won’t be coming back with the same group, I could tell you that, ‘cause it wasn’t good enough.” I know Jared’s hopes for this presser did not come true but I would like to think he would agree with the “wasn’t good enough” part. Fitzgerald elaborated about the deadline about how he made “quality offers,” which I did not feel he needed to really defend. The initial response was more than enough.

I will add, on my own, that any look into the fall off the team had in 2024-25 really should have been done within the season. I can understand and appreciate Keefe and the front office wanting to do their own analysis. However, I cannot help but think if a similar even shorter assessment could have led to some more meaningful changes than whatever Fitzgerald did by March 7. Meaningful enough to have the team possibly perform better than he did. The best time to do it was arguably during the 4 Nations Face-Off break. The second best time to do it is now.

Still, I can appreciate that the GM and the head coach were open that they were not pleased about how the season went. Their tone and body language reflected that in the video. Their answers were clear about that. They have higher expectations. The large underlying question remains: Can Fitzgerald fix a roster that he put together? He admitted that it was a problem and acknowledged it was not good enough. Can he correctly identify what that was and take the actions to address it? Talk is one thing, but actions speak more loudly. We will find out what they say by early July.

The Not So Good: The Responses to Depth Scoring

In my opinion, the low point of the presser was this exchange, pulled from the transcript:

Q: It seemed like the primary focus was keeping the puck out of the net. Defense and goaltending. You said you weren’t worried about offense. So just, in hindsight, looking back on the season, how—what was your assessment of how your offense performed this year?

FITZGERALD: Oh, I think players underachieved, for sure. I think players who have scored enough goals in this league to give assurance that we have depth scoring, didn’t.

I said it just moments ago, scoring goals is extremely tough to do in this league. I bang my head against the wall every day, wondering, really, what is depth scoring?

Taken on its own, it looks bad. In context of the full answer Fitzgerald game, it is not as bad. He was speaking more as a whole about asking his team, his analytics department what does depth scoring look like. He does not think it is 12 20-goal scorers. I think he could aim for that but that’s me.

Fitzgerald continued this answer by re-iterating that scoring was “the last thing on my to-do list” and ended his answer by stating that “ugly goals are worth as much as tic-tac-toe goals.” The last part is true, but I feel like the reality of the 2024-25 Devils does not quite match up with Fitzgerald’s lament about depth scoring.

First, while the season certainly nose-dived since January 1, 2025, the Devils finished around league median in high-danger scoring chance attempts per 60 minutes in 5-on-5 play with 10.66 per Natural Stat Trick. The 5-on-5 play of the season would include the “depth scoring” players as well as the top scoring players. While the attempt count does not go into how they were created, the Devils were by no means allergic to the front of the net. If you look at individual 5-on-5 stats, out of 708 NHL players who have played 200+ 5-on-5 minutes last season, Timo Meier and Nico Hischier finished in the top 100 of all NHL players in individual HDCF/60 rates (meaning the player took the HDCF); Erik Haula, Stefan Noesen, The Big Deal, and Ondrej Palat finished within the top 200; and Dawson Mercer, Jesper Bratt, and Cody Glass finished within the top 300. That is nine players getting attempts better than most of the league in the “dirty areas.”

Second, this is a point Todd Cordell made and I will echo it, who exactly underachieved for scoring in 2024-25 among the depth forwards? Dawson Mercer may have not taken a step forward as you and I may have liked, but he provided 19 goals in 2024-25 after a season where he put up 20. Ondrej Palat has been a consistent scorer in the 15-goal range and he put up 15 goals in this past season. Erik Haula went down from 16 goals to 11, but he also had more time missing due to injury on top of being terrible after returning from injury. The likes of Tomas Tatar, Justin Dowling, Curtis Lazar, and Nathan Bastian were surely not expected to score double-digit goals and they did not. And even if you think they could have done better, two Devils arguably overperformed their production. Stefan Noesen set a career high in goals with 22 after a previous career high of 14. Hit machine Paul Cotter put up 16 goals after just 7 in the past season. I am unmoved by the idea that they performed below an expectation considering their careers up until this past season. If anything, Fitzgerald and his staff should have seen this coming.

I want to believe that Fitzgerald meant they underachieved in the second half of the season and/or the playoffs. Which they certainly did. The bottom six was ghost-like on the scoresheet against Carolina. Even Noesen fell off of the primary power play unit in March, and half of Cotter’s 16 goals took place after January 1, 2025. The production was certainly not consistent and that could be something else Fitzgerald may have meant. Yet, he did not say this. Fitzgerald was very quick to call it underachieving. I can agree that it was actually not good enough. After all, the Devils’ scoring trailed off big-time without Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt on the ice in 2024-25. But it was not due to a lack of high danger attempts or guys performing below expectations. That makes his response to this question the low point.

I will point out that I wish the initial question was about the performance of the depth players instead of just scoring. Scoring is indeed important and a harsh lesson from this past playoff loss is that a team can never have too much of it. But a big issue with the bottom six in the playoffs and even in the final few months of the regular season was how opponents could pick on those players in the run of play. Tilting the ice against the Devils is bad enough. It also put more pressure on the higher-end players on the squad to perform. Knowing the third and fourth lines were not likely to provide enough on the ice to even give them a chance to take a breath. Carolina focused on that and it led to them controlling much of the five-game series. Cody Glass provided some relief for this in the regular season but it did not come to fruition in the postseason. And Daniel Sprong did not end up playing regularly in the postseason, which tells you what you needed to know about what he brought to the table.

I will credit Fitzgerald in that this aspect of the squad was indeed not good enough. When he stated “We won’t be returning with the same group,” it was this end of the lineup I think he was alluding to since most of them are out of contract. However, his answer to the depth scoring even with the context was not encouraging as it could have been. It came off as clunky as best and the facts do not line up with his reasoning. It came across like he knows it is an issue but he struggles to define how much of it is. A struggle to define a problem makes it that much harder to solve it. And it is something Fitzgerald would need to solve. It would have been nice if Keefe offered any insight to this question too. But it is what it is.

The Somewhat Odd: Shoulder Injuries

Several questions at the press conference were about injuries. I can appreciate Keefe stating that it would have been nice to have a 100% roster but that’s rare in hockey and you have to “grind and find ways to win.” I especially appreciated his reference to Dallas, who continues to march through the postseason without Jason Robertson (who returned recently) and Miro Heiskanen. I also appreciate Fitzgerald’s forthright answer to a question about whether there were issues with the medical staff. In my opinion, Fitzgerald was correct in pointing out how injuries happen in a contact sport and most of them are not really preventable. You may disagree but it is possible to just have awful luck with contact. Conditioning and strength are not necessarily going to prevent a shoulder from going awry after an awkward collistion or a neck injury coming off a hit.

Fitzgerald did answer that with one of the stranger parts of the press conference:

Fitzgerald was excited in pointing this out in the press conference video. It sounded to me like he was trying to sell someone on the Devils organization on top of covering for the medical staff. I can agree that a medical staff is not going to make a difference when the injury takes place on the ice. What they should be judged for is how they handle the players with respect to what is in their best interest and not just let the player go as they wish – which is usually back on the ice as soon as they are breathing. Still, Fitzgerald could have made the same point without coming across like he was making a pitch to someone about it. I also do not know if the People Who Matter really bought this message.

I can understand the questions about injuries, I respect how Fitzgerald answered most of them, and I think it was fair for one to question the medical staff as something for Fitzgerald to evaluate. I think Fitzgerald could have been less enthusiastic in defending/promoting his staff. Especially after giving a more sobering answer about injuries in the first place.

Points on Various Players Mentioned in the Conference.

Throughout the press conference, several specific names were brought up. Some were the subject of questions. Others were mentioned as part of other answers. It was interesting as it could give a little insight in terms of how the team views a player. In no particular order:

Jack Hughes: Jack Hughes did not take questions from the media at the locker room cleanout day. He was also not at this press conference. While some have groused about it, I do not think anything was missed. He was injured, he successfully had surgery, he is in recovery. Simple as. One media member did ask if Fitzgerald was concerned about his long-term health with these should injuries. Fitzgerald would not agree in calling it a concern. He stated that “I’d like to think Jack’s shoulder injuries are behind him now.” He noted that he has work to do with his body but JAck Hughes knows that. Fitzgerald’s answer ended with “Probably easier to say I don’t worry about it than worry about it, meaning, ‘cause it’s happened.” Given the tone, I do not think he is being evasive. I genuinely think he is not worried about it. Your mileage may vary.

Jesper Bratt: The most surprising tidbit out of this press conference was Fitzgerald stating that Jesper Bratt has had his shoulder issue for multiple years. This seems off to me. Why commit a large amount of money and term and let him play with a shoulder issue? Evidently, some injuries are played through. Fitzgerald stated that it has been monitored and it was similar to what Timo Meier went through years ago. Bratt elected for surgery this offseason after a MRI revealed that a joint was getting worse and the Devils supported that decision. Good to fix it now, but I still struggle with “multiyear should injury.” I will add that if Bratt put up back-to-back 80+ point seasons with a less than 100% shoulder, then we should be really excited for a 100% healthy Bratt in 2025-26.

Jonathan Kovacevic: Amanda Stein asked for an update on Kovacevic. Fitzgerald was quick with his response: he had surgery on Thursday, it was successful, and he will not be ready for training camp. He did not say the season, just camp.

Brenden Dillon: Stein also asked about Dillon. Fitzgerald pointed out that Dillon is still evaluating options for his neck injury. He even stated he is probably “overloaded with information.” But he thinks the recovery period will be shorter and he should be ready for camp when Dillon makes a decision.

Luke Hughes: A question was asked about Luke Hughes’ shoulder injury, specifically whether it was closer to Bratt’s injury or Jack’s injury. Fitzgerald answered that it is closed to Bratt’s injury – which I take to mean that it is not as serious.

Nico Hischier: A question was asked about Nico Hischier’s leadership. Keefe fielded this one and had nothing but praise for the team’s captain.

Jake Allen: Jake Allen was brought up by Fitzgerald as someone they could bring back. He was impressed with his professionalism as the backup and his performance. He said he will speaking with his agent.

Daniel Sprong: A question was asked of Keefe about Sprong claiming he is the best coach he ever played for and whether he would want him back as a potential everyday player. Keefe spoke well of Sprong’s shot and skillset and he did specifically note issues off the puck. He was coy in his answer. I did not get a sense that the Devils were big on bringing him back, but we shall see.

Cody Glass: Glass was only mentioned in passing from the deadline deals as adding depth along with Sprong when Fitzgerald talked about deals to bring the team over the hump. That may not bode well for Glass sticking around, but no one also asked anything specific about him either.

Simon Nemec: A question was asked about Simon Nemec’s situation and his confidence as a player. Keefe fielded this one as well and noted that it was important for him to have it, but stressed that he did not play like it earlier and it showed in his game. Keefe noted he earned his confidence as the season went on, now it is on him to meet the standard regularly.

Arseni Gritsyuk: A question was asked about whether Arseni Gritsyuk will come in and play a prominent role early. I actually liked Fitzgerald’s answer that both noted how talented he performed but that transitioning to the NHL is very hard and a job has to be earned and not given. In a perfect world, he probably replaces one of the outgoing UFAs. But without seeing him perform, the right call is to see what Gritsyuk earns in camp.

Lenni Hameenaho: Lenni Hameenaho was asked about as a future signing. Fitzgerald spilled the beans a bit early stating that they plan to sign him very soon. His ELC was announced after the press conference on Thursday. Fitzgerald namechecked him and Shane Lachance as young players who could be coming up through the organization. Do not be shocked if Lachance gets an ELC soon.

Brian Dumoulin: A question was asked about Brian Dumoulin’s future, knowing that if he is signed that it may block someone like Nemec. Fitzgerald agreed and said that it was a good problem to have. Fitzgerald was very happy with Dumoulin’s performance. He stated that he showed he has a playoff game. But when it came to bringing him back, he said “never say never.” I can understand that Fitzgerald does not want to commit in public before a negotiation. But it seemed to me that he may be accepting that Dumoulin will not be able to come back.

Final Thoughts & Your Take

Overall, the press conference was Fine. Nothing crazy was revealed short of the knowledge of Bratt playing multiple seasons with a shoulder injury. And given how he has played and that he is now addressing the injury, it is hard to call it a problem. I do wish some of the questions Jared wanted to have asked were asked, but we are not in the pool so it is what it is. And that presumes that we would get a direct answer either way. We got updates on several players. Hints that some may be retained (Allen). Signs that others may not (Dumoulin, the bottom six forwards out of contract) were clearer given the more direct answer that the same roster is not returning. I do not think that is a big shock given how 2024-25 happened.

I do wish Fitzgerald gave a more encouraging answer for the depth scoring as well as instill more confidence that he can fix the roster that he created. That is, again, the underlying main issue: Can Fitzgerald address the problems he created by how he handled the roster last year? It will take some serious ego swallowing and bolder moves than what he did by the 2024-25 NHL Trade Deadline. We shall find out by early July whether he has done so. I think there is merit to the idea that Fitzgerald does perform better in the offseason. Let us hope it is true for 2025’s Summer.

One last thing: a good question was brought up about offer sheets given how St. Louis used them to great success last year. Fitzgerald does think there will be more of them this year. My suggestion to the GM: Lock up Luke Hughes ASAP.

Now that you know what I thought of the press conference and highlighted what I thought were the most important aspects, I want to know what you think. Did you think it was fine? Did any of it move the needle for you in terms more or less confident in the front office and head coach? What would you have asked if you were attending the press conference? What did you learn from it, if anything? Please leave your answers and other thoughts about it in the comments. Thank you for reading.