The New Jersey Devils want to change their roster this season. GM Tom Fitzgerald made it clear he didn’t think this year’s results were good enough. The Devils made the playoffs after missing them in 2024, but they didn’t have much of a chance once they got there. They were one of the biggest underdogs in the first round, and the oddsmakers turned out to be right.
The Devils won just one game in the postseason this year, which most would agree is not good enough. This is a team that’s supposed to be in their competitive window right now. Instead, injuries have derailed another season.
Some would like the Devils to go “big-game hunting” this offseason for a player like Sam Bennett or Nikolaj Ehlers, but neither are considered the top player available this offseason. That honor goes to former Toronto Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner.
Marner is expected to get a contract that will put him close to nine figures over seven years. Someone is going to put all their chips on the Marner basket. And that’s despite how controversial he’s been. Maple Leafs fans don’t seem to mind the notion that they could lose him for free.
Of course, yet another playoff disappointment has them looking for change. Marner has been in Toronto his entire career, but it just didn’t work out like everyone had hoped.
On paper, every team should be in on Marner. He’s a legit MVP candidate in the right situation, and he’s a 100-point forward even in the wrong one. He can lift up a bad team and make them an immediate playoff contender. He should be able to turn a tweener team into a Cup contender.
Since the Devils are one of those tweener teams, they should be in on Marner, right? Well, they aren’t even a consideration for Marner, according to recent reports. The Athletic’s Pierre Lebrun spoke on TSN 1050 and named Anaheim, Vegas, Florida, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles as possibilities.
Obviously, none of those teams are New Jersey. It actually goes one step further. Our friends at Puck Pedia asked Cool Bet Canada to make odds on Marner’s next destination. They put 16 teams on the board, and the Devils did not make the cut.
The Devils don't even have odds in the Mitch Marner sweepstakes
Honestly, it makes sense. The Devils have just $12 million or so in cap space this offseason. The way negotiations might go, giving Marner every dime the Devils have might not be enough to beat out the other teams. It's not a surprise that two of the teams he's targeting are in no-tax states. Anyone from New Jersey can tell you the Garden State is about as far from a no-tax state as you can get.
Also, on top of all that, Devils fans wouldn't exactly welcome Marner with open arms. He's had some rough things to say about the Devils and their fans in the past, including during a game when a few referee decisions caused fans to throw garbage on the ice. Nobody is advocating for that to happen, but the reaction calling it "dangerous" was a little much.
The only real surprise here is that the Devils currently employ Sheldon Keefe. Their head coach was Marner's head coach for most of his career. Would he want to play for the Devil he knows over one he doesn’t? It’s a risk going to a head coach he doesn’t have a personal relationship with. A bad relationship with the head coach can lead to a drop in production.
It still feels like a long shot. Keefe is literally the only reason why Marner would pick the Devils, and we can’t see Fitzgerald putting his money where his mouth is for a guy like Marner. He’d need to clear so much cap space to make it work. They might have to trade one of their stars, which seems counterintuitive to what they are trying to do.
We know Marner is better than Timo Meier, but is he so much better that the Devils would be much better if they replaced them one for one? We can’t say that’s enough. It also takes away important physicality that the Devils need in the postseason.
The move doesn’t work, and everyone is starting to see that now. Marner would be great as a talent on this team, but there are mitigating factors (mainly money and sentiment) that make this move impossible for the Devils.