Injuries and inefficiency have affected the forwards of the New Jersey Devils over the past month. As call ups have had to be made, a glaring weakness in the Devils’ system has continued to be apparent.
When the 2024-25 NHL season started, there were already concerns about the forward group of the New Jersey Devils. A couple of moves were made to augment the group, namely Paul Cotter being traded for and Tomas Tatar being brought back via free agency. Even on paper as training camp opened, the group appeared to be short an impact forward or two. There was concern as well that a repeat of the injury woes from the season prior could spell the end of the team this season, even with the defense and goaltending being bolstered. Beyond the NHL level, it just didn’t seem there was anything that could help propel the Devils forwards further.
Well, as of right now, a lot of that is still true.
The good news here? There’s not the same level of injury issues plaguing the Devils; yes Nico Hischier is week to week at the moment and Erik Haula is on IR, but that’s nowhere near the depletion levels from different points last season. With only four games left until a break for the Four Nations Face-Off, even if Hischier and Haula miss all of them, they should have some time to rest and hopefully be available when the schedule resumes on February 22nd. While not a forward, the hope would be Jacob Markstrom returns after the tournament as well, as the Devils come back with the same roster that had so much success in the 2024 portion of the season.
The Devils, however, should be seeing the issues with the forward group as something of a long-term goal. The team has defenders available in Utica who could come up and play (plus Santeri Hatakka still recovering from injury) in the NHL; they also have a handful of goalie prospects that could get a look between now and the next couple of season. But the forwards? I mean Justin Dowling and Brian Halonen are…fine, I guess. They’re the definitions of fill-in players though; they’re not hurting you when they’re on the ice, but they’re not providing any spark or showing any potential to be regular contributors offensively. Maybe it’s a bit too soon to say that of Halonen for certain, but Dowling has four points in 35 games. He’s a fourth line guy at best.
The reason the Devils need to come up with a plan is that these are the first guys they called up to replace injured players. I don’t expect them to be hoarding away abundant talent in the AHL, but they don’t have many, if any, forwards playing for Utica that could be looked at as eventual NHL players right now. Sure, they have a couple of guys outside of North America that are viewed as being those kinds of players; the problem is that doesn’t help when the team is running into injury issues. Having even one player who could be called up on a cup of coffee/injury fill-in basis would give the Devils a boost. Bringing up players who don’t provide offense to attempt to replace missing offense just isn’t going to work.
Maybe Tom Fitzgerald already has recognized this and plans to use whatever draft capital he still has once the 2025 Draft comes around to take a step towards rectifying this. It’s not going to be an overnight fix; talent will not only need to be drafted, but then signed after the junior careers finish and developed. The Devils are probably a couple of years away from being able to fix this, especially when you consider that unlike Devils teams of the past, they won’t be selling off veterans for picks and prospects at the deadline. Nevertheless, the forward pipeline needs more than just warm bodies; maybe they just get one prospect and a fringe guy into the AHL. In the end, that would still be better than call-ups of fourth line/13th forward type players.
The Devils could certainly use an outside boost right now; at the same time, it doesn’t hurt to look inward and have a solution for the long term as well.
What are your thoughts on the Devils’ forward pipeline; do you believe they are in need of a useful forward who can be called up and possibly have an impact? Are you okay with all of their best forward prospects currently being outside of North America? Do you think this is overblown and that all teams who are trying to compete are in a similar situation as the Devils? Leave any and all comments below and thanks as always for reading!