Recent addition Anthony Mantha had his introductory press conference Friday morning, where he was asked a myriad of questions surrounding both his excitement to join the Devils and his experience negotiating with Sunny Mehta.
For the most part, the questions (and his answers) were standard. He's excited to join the team, thinks there is a lot of potential, and had a pleasant experience working with Mehta. That's all fine and dandy, but perhaps the most telling answer about the future of the entire organization was within a retelling of a conversation he had with Mehta.
Mantha detailed that, prior to signing, Mehta made a comment about how he "didn't even know how many goals [Mantha] scored last year" and that he only cares about the under-the-hood metrics.
Of course, there is a ~zero percent chance that a poker-playing data analyst who has made a career out of understanding metrics is actually unaware that Mantha scored a career-high 33 goals in 2025-26, but the tongue-in-cheek comment is more about one ideology: process over results. That supposed conversation should be comforting to anyone who has been frustrated at the plethora of knee-jerk overreactions from the previous Devils regime that have happened in the last few years.
The philosophies are simple. Production isn't a predictive metric -- there are factors independent of a player's actual on-ice play that lead to it: lucky or unlucky bounces, goaltending blunders or heroics, et cetera. Underlying metrics are predictive, though; there is a direct correlation between underlying success and actual results.
Anthony Mantha's signing shows this is a different Devils' philosophy
In theory, then, accumulating a bunch of players with strong underlying impacts should result in better on-ice results. If the Devils are consistently winning the possession battle, the scoring chance battle, and the expected goals (xG) battle, they should be winning the actual goal battle too. Overreacting to results rather than focusing on the process is exactly how one sends serious assets for 20 games of Brian Dumoulin, extends Jacob Markstrom to an albatross contract, or prematurely gives Johnathan Kovacevic a long-term deal.
Reading the process and reacting accordingly, and getting players who match and support that process is how a team like the reigning champion Carolina Hurricanes is built, with the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning echoing the same values.
For Devils fans fed up with the status quo, this is certainly a breath of fresh air. It's exactly why Mehta was hired in the first place, and will be precisely why the Devils return to relevancy.
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