Travis Zajac Was An All Time Great New Jersey Devils Player

The New Jersey Devils have had a lot of great players. There are legends that won lots of Stanley Cups with them but there have been some really good players in more recent memory as well. One of them is Travis Zajac who announced his retirement on Monday. He walks away after 15 NHL seasons.

All of those seasons have been spent with the New Jersey Devils except the second half of 2020-21. New Jersey traded him with Kyle Palmieri to the New York Islanders around the 2021 trade deadline. He had a deep playoff run with them but never ended up resigning. That led to him retiring from the game after a really nice career.

Zajac signed a one-day contract to retire as a member of the Devils. In his career, he became a top-five scorer in the history of the New Jersey Devils. He did that while being an elite defensive matchup. During his prime, he was great against the other team’s top players and remained reliable during his 30s.

In that role, he had 203 goals and 349 assists for 552 points in 1037 games played. For someone whose main gig was shutting down the opposing star, he wasn’t bad offensively.. He was the kind of player that you could always rely on in all three zones.

Travis Zajac has been an incredible player for the New Jersey Devils in his career.

Zajac was an impressive leader throughout his career as well. He had some great players to learn leadership from throughout his career and it served the organization well until his very last game with them. With young kids coming up like Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, and Ty Smith amongst others, Zajac was perfect for them. Everyone around him on the team is better for it going forward.

There are going to be a lot of nice words said about Zajac as the news of his retirement circles. Everyone seemed to like him as a teammate and a player. He didn’t have 100 point seasons or anything like that but he just played the game right in all three zones. The Devils did a lot of winning with him early in his career. It is largely because of what he was able to do as a center.

Zajac is going to stay with New Jersey in a different role. He is going to have an on-ice and off-ice player development and consulting role. He is also going to be helpful in growing New Jersey’s youth hockey initiatives.

Congratulations to Travis. He was a great New Jersey Devils player for a long time and deserves nothing but respect. Hopefully, he is able to live a happy life post-hockey playing days and is able to help a lot of young players grow their own games.