The trade winds are starting to blow in the NHL, and with the New Jersey Devils recent skid, cries have started coming out from all corners of the internet and the Devils fanbase for GM Tom Fitzgerald to do something before these recent struggles derails the season.
Elliotte Friedman reported Saturday that Fitzgerald is indeed looking around and gauging what the market looks like. Not only have the Devils been linked to Quinn Hughes, but they’ve also been linked to Ryan O’Reilly and Steven Stamkos of the Nashville Predators.
I don’t really have much more else to add about the Quinn Hughes situation, as I’ve said my piece on that matter last week. Fitzgerald wouldn’t be doing his job if he wasn’t checking in on the availability of one of the best defensemen in the NHL….never mind the fact he’s also the brother of two players already on the Devils. The Devils having interest in Quinn Hughes isn’t some manufactured thing that is just being thrown out there willy nilly for clicks. It’s a very real possibility that it could happen, so of course Fitzgerald is going to check in there.
With that said, I haven’t said much about the Ryan O’Reilly and/or Steven Stamkos situation, aside from what I wrote about those players last season. But I think if it came down to one or the other, the choice is clear.
The Devils should prioritize O’Reilly over Stamkos.
The Lack of Center Depth Has Hurt This Team
The Devils went into the season with a plan of having Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, and Cody Glass as their Top 3 centers, with Luke Glendening apparently winning the 4C job over Juho Lammikko after impressing in training camp on a PTO.
After free agency came and went, I figured that the Devils plan was to make Dawson Mercer the 3C and have Cody Glass be the 4C, but apparently I was wrong.
All of this was always a questionable plan at best.
Say what you will about Jack Hughes’s injury history, and say that you will about how fluky this year’s injury was with Hughes getting injured at a team dinner of all settings. Considering Hughes’s history, it would not have been unreasonable for Fitzgerald to come up with a better alternative than “just shift Mercer to center” in case Hughes missed time again. And sure enough, Hughes missed time again. It might be the flukiest of fluky flukes to ever fluke, but its still a failure from an organizational level to properly prepare for this potential scenario that had a realistic chance of happening.
Add in the fact that the Devils nearly let Cody Glass walk away in free agency before they thought better of it when it was apparent he would be scooped up quickly if he hit the open market. Add in the fact that Glass has his own injury history since coming to the Devils. Add in that Nico Hischier bears the brunt of playing in all situations and playing the toughest minutes of anyone on the roster. And add in the fact that the Devils plan for 4C was taking a flier on the winner of a training camp competition between a player who had been out of the NHL for a few seasons and a PTO signing.
Not a great plan.
This might be a bit of a simplistic take on my part, but its not a coincidence or an accident that when the Devils have looked their best this season, it has been when their centers were healthy and available. The top lines worked and all showed cohesion. It’s also not a coincidence or accident that Mercer himself has looked the best he’s looked when playing on Nico Hischier’s wing rather than centering his own line.
No, there’s no replacing a player like Jack Hughes when he misses time, but you give yourself a better shot of treading water when you have an NHL caliber option who can slide into that spot. Adding a player like O’Reilly would make a huge difference for this group. And what about when you get Hughes back? All of a sudden you have an embarrassment of riches at a critically important position. Where Ryan O’Reilly is an overqualified 3C and Cody Glass is an overqualified 4C.
Go back and look at the center depth on the most recent Stanley Cup champions. Where the Panthers had Anton Lundell as their 3C throughout their run. Where the Golden Knights had some combination of Jack Eichel, Chandler Stephenson, and William Karlsson down the middle. Where the Lightning won their Cups with Yanni Gourde as their 3C, but they were also deep enough to move Anthony Cirelli or Brayden Point there when needed. Where until this season, the Avs weren’t the same after losing Nazem Kadri. I’d keep going on and on but you understand the point I’m trying to make.
You need to be deep down the middle if you want to be taken seriously as a championship contender. You need to be deep down the middle if you want to maximize the wingers you’ve brought in. The Devils are not.
Adding Another Quality Two-Way Center Can Take Some Pressure Off of Hischier’s Plate
I’m not suggesting that Ryan O’Reilly is the same two-way player he was when he won a Selke trophy in St. Louis. He turns 35 years old later this season and while he’s still effective, he is approaching the 1200 game milestone.
That said, with 21 points in 28 games, he’s still more than capable of chipping in offensively. He’s more than capable of playing in all situations and holding his own.
I’m also not suggesting that Nico Hischier isn’t capable of handling everything that he handles in his on-ice role. But wouldn’t Hischier potentially be more valuable to the Devils if the team had another alternative who could take some of those defensive obligations off of his plate? Jack Hughes is better defensively than he gets credit for, but nobody is going to confuse him for Patrice Bergeron in terms of being a Selke-caliber defensive forward. Cody Glass doesn’t contribute much on the penalty kill (he’s only played 2:58 there this year). Luke Glendening does play on the kill, but he’s a fairly limited player at this stage of his career. Anything you get from him offensively is a bonus.
Adding a player like O’Reilly and leaning on him to play those minutes should have a positive impact on the Devils penalty kill, which ranks 17th in the league as of this writing. And it should give the Devils another option at 5v5 as well.
Stamkos Can Still Score the Occasional Goal, But He Doesn’t Do Much Else Positive Anymore
Steven Stamkos was already on the decline when he left the Tampa Bay Lightning, and things haven’t looked better through his first season plus as a member of the Nashville Predators. He’s not really a center anymore, despite Predators coach Andrew Brunette shifting him between center and wing in an attempt to give them a spark. He doesn’t drive play anymore, he’s not shooting as much as he has in the past, he’s no longer an elite level skater, he’s not much of a defensive forward, and he no longer has elite level players alongside him like he did in Tampa.
Yes, Stamkos could potentially chip in a little bit offensively on the power play. And yes, he might look better playing with better players than Luke Evangelista on his line. I would guess that the Devils envision him playing alongside Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt and burying the feeds that he used to get from elite level playmakers like Nikita Kucherov.
But the Devils don’t really need another overpaid player who barely does anything at 5v5. They already have one of those in Ondrej Palat, and Stamkos’s contract is even worse.
Final Thoughts
The 2025-26 Devils need stability down the middle more than they need a scoring winger. They needed this before Jack Hughes got hurt and that need is only exasperated the more we see they don’t have an answer at such a critically important position. And even if one believed the opposite was true, the last thing the Devils need is a soon-to-be 36-year-old Stamkos, who is under contract for $8M AAV for two more seasons after this one. I don’t even know how the Devils would make that contract fit given their current cap situation, but I know I want no part of that.
On the flip side, O’Reilly is under contract for $4.5M AAV for one more season after this one, which is more than reasonable for a middle six center. I get that with him being a year younger than Stamkos, he’s not exactly a spring chicken either, but I think its clear that O’Reilly has more left in the tank than Stamkos, and its not nearly as onerous a commitment either.
Obviously, this is all dependant on asking price, and there might wind up being other options that make themselves available as the season rolls along. But it certainly sounds like the Predators are open for business, and with how tight the NHL standings are, the teams that separate themselves from the pack are likely going to be the ones who are proactive fixing their issues with their rosters rather than being reactive and waiting until the deadline for prices to go down.
What gives me pause is sitting by and doing nothing isn’t going to do anything to fix the issue. Not only is it not acceptable for this team and where they are on their timeline, I think we’ve seen enough mediocre to bad hockey to know that its not going to magically fix itself. I pointed out when I broke down every trade Fitzgerald has made that only once did he go out early in the season and make a trade to address a glaring hole. It was a bad one. It was acquiring Jon Gillies.