The New Jersey Devils came out of an important road trip going to the best teams in the Western Conference with a 2-1-0 record and a 9-5-0 record overall. They are firmly in the top three in the Metropolitan Division (second by points and third by points percentage), and the team appears to be in that contention window.
New GM Sunny Mehta has done a phenomenal job putting together a winning squad, but he also learned from his days with the Florida Panthers how to manipulate the salary cap to your advantage. When playing on the edges, there comes some risk.
Right now, the Devils are playing with a roster of 22 players. Most teams play with the maximum 23 players on the NHL roster. However, after the Connor Hellebuyck trade, the Devils are right up against the salary cap.
They chose to have an extra defenseman and an extra goalie. They do not have an extra forward. And now, that might come into play.
Devils forward Anthony Mantha got hurt at the end of their most recent game against the Vegas Golden Knights. It’s not confirmed where he got hurt, but the assumption is that it happened when he slid into the goal during the third period.
After the game, Keefe gave an update but we're still missing what is actually happening here.
"No update. We'll have to get back at home and we'll see how he reacts after that. I wouldn't read too much in the fact he didn't return. It's just because there's so little time left, but also, doesn't mean he won't miss time necessarily. We just don't know at this point."Sheldon Keefe, Devils head coach
The Devils are in a pick if Mantha has to miss a little time but not a lot of time. See, if he's not going to miss at least three weeks, then he can only go on regular injured reserve. With that comes no salary cap relief. If he were to miss more than three weeks, he could go on long-term injured reserve with most of his cap hit absolved for the Devils to call up a forward.
Who to call up is also complicated. The conventional wisdom is that the Devils would want to bring Stefan Noesen back up, but he would cost the Devils a little over $1.2 million in cap space. A guy like Lenni Hameenaho would cost less than $1 million.
It only matters if LTIR is used. If not, the Devils are likely going to go with 11 forwards and seven defensemen. That would be a worst-case scenario for Sheldon Keefe, who is trying to run four lines every night. In the past, Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier have volunteered to do double shifts. It would be interesting to see a rotation with the fourth line of Cody Glass and Amadeus Lombardi.
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