6 Moves New Jersey Devils Must Make To Have A Perfect Offseason
By Nick Natale
Set Up for the 2024-25 Season
Putting this season behind as quickly as possible and looking towards 2024-25 is the easiest way for Devils' fans to keep their sanity. The first and biggest task of the season will be finding the head coach. Sullivan is the dream hire, but there is no guarantee. Sacco would be a risk, given he hasn't been a head coach in over a decade, but he provides upside coming from the Bruins organization.
Acquiring Markstrom finally gives the Devils some form of a number-one goalie. A Markstrom/Allen tandem has some potential and would only account for $7.9 million in cap space. Dipping into the free agency market and getting Stephenson, Duhaime, and Ruhwedel fix the other holes in the roster gets them closer to competing for the playoffs while simultaneously making them a much faster team. Those three combined moves leave them with $4.45 million in cap space to do any other minor moves.
It's a big offseason for Fitzgerald, but a plan similar to this keeps the Devils from breaking the bank on any one player and spreads the wealth, allowing for the team to be competitive everywhere on the ice.