Happy Earth, Wind & Fire Day, and welcome back to New Jersey Devils hockey. On the 21st night afternoon of September, the Devils hosted the New York Rangers in the 2025-26 preseason opener at The Rock. In a game light on regulars, New Jersey fell to their Hudson River rivals by a final score of 5-3.
It’s hard to know just what to make of a game like today’s. As mentioned, there were few regulars in the lineup for New Jersey, so it’s not like we can dissect how the main guys looked on the ice. And even if we could, it’s hard to take preseason results seriously. Remember, this is the same franchise that put up a perfect preseason in 2023-24, only to embark on a listless regular season and miss the postseason altogether.
Still, there are some takeaways we can focus on. Number one to me was the play of Arseni Gritsyuk. After being drafted by the late Ray Shero all the way back in 2019, Gritsyuk has finally made his way to North America. He played on a line with Cody Glass and Paul Cotter this afternoon, the only regular forwards who dressed for this game (unless you want to count Kurtis MacDermid, who was on Matt Rempe duty today).
I thought Gritsyuk started out slowly, but really came on strong as the game progressed. He first got on the scoreboard with a beautiful assist on Paul Cotter’s goal:
It’s not captured in the above tweet, but Cotter actually made a pretty nice defensive play to get the puck moving back the other way. It was nice to see Gritsyuk and Cotter combine on a pretty goal like that.
Then in the dying minutes of the game, with the Devils on a 5-on-3 power play, Gritsyuk showed off what we have all been told is his best asset: his shot:
By the way, New Jersey was on that two-man advantage thanks to Brennan Othmann doing his best Rempe impression by elbowing Calen Addison in the head. Addison’s status is worth monitoring as we go forward, at the time of this writing, I have not seen an update.
In any case, it was nice to see Gritsyuk finish with two points. He also registered six shots on goal, another great sign that he was able to generate offense for himself. And for good measure, he recorded four hits as well. It’s just one preseason game, but Gritsyuk’s debut was encouraging.
Cotter, Glass, and Jake Allen were the only other players who suited up today that are locks for the opening day roster. Allen only played the first period, allowing one goal on 10 shots, including a bundle of saves in a period-ending flurry by the Rangers. He looked solid. Cotter and Glass had up and down performances in my opinion, though I thought Cotter was a little more noticeable. He did have that goal after all.
Elsewhere, there were veterans playing on PTOs such as Kevin Rooney and Luke Glendening. There was other veteran depth such as Dennis Cholowski, Juho Lammikko, Brian Halonen, Mike Hardman, and Nathan Legere. There were younger players looking to establish themselves such as Thomas Bordeleau, Angus Crookshank, Ethan Edwards, and Addison. And there was also Nico Daws, who had a rough second period on the way to giving up four goals on 13 shots over two periods of play. It wasn’t the best outing for Daws, and the Devils need to figure out what to do with him considering he is no longer waiver ineligible. Your mileage may vary on how the rest of the roster performed, but again, it’s the first preseason game so it’s hard to take too much out of this contest.
But despite the loss, and despite a lack of familiar faces, it was nice to have New Jersey Devils hockey back. Here’s to the (unofficial) beginning of the 2025-26 season.
The Game Highlights: Courtesy of NHL.com
The Other Devils Debut
Aside from the new players, today also marked the Devils debut for Don LaGreca. After a sudden and unceremonious end to the Bill Spaulding era of calling Devils games for MSG Networks, LeGreca is now the latest voice of the Devils. Broadcaster taste is largely subjective, but I thought LaGreca had reasonable chemistry with Ken Daneyko and Bryce Salvador in his debut game. I didn’t think he crushed it, and I didn’t think he was terrible. A perfectly reasonable performance.
Although someone needs to help me out here…did it sound to anyone else like he was pronouncing Arseni Gritsyuk’s last name with an “L”? As in, “GritsLik”? I swear it sounded like that to me at times.
Next Time Out
The Devils continue their preseason slate on Tuesday when they host the New York Islanders at The Rock. Puck drop is scheduled for 7:00pm.
Your Take
What did you make of today’s game? Were you encouraged by what you saw out of Gritsyuk? Who were some other standout performances to you? What did you think of Don LaGreca behind the mic? As always, thanks for reading!