New Jersey Devils Top 25 Prospects ahead of 2024-25 preseason

It can be incredibly hard to judge these European prospects. It’s not unusual for a top prospect to have less than a point every three games in professional leagues and still become a very competent NHL player. Sometimes, it even happens rather quickly. That’s why we're not concerned about Petr Hauser’s seven-point season in the Czechia league. He’s big, standing at 6’4 and 205 lbs. This is what Tom Fitzgerald has been looking for as of late, so we might see some focus on Hauser, and he might even get a chance to meet with Devils management since they are playing in Czechia to start the season.

Chase Cheslock is truly a complete flier by Tom Fitzgerald and Company. Cheslock was a 19th-round pick in the USHL Draft out of Minnesota. Yet, he worked his way into the conversation for NHL Draft pick, and the Devils took him in the fifth round. He put up eight points for the Omaha Lancers in the USHL before joining the University of St. Thomas. He’s returning there this season, and he hopes to prove himself to the Devils as a large body who can put up points. 

Max Graham is a player who could really rise among the ranks for prospects this season. That happens most often when a player with a ton of juniors experience returns for one more season. The Devils 2024 fifth-round pick is going into his fifth season of WHL hockey. It will be his fourth season with the Kelowna Rockets, so he should be able to put up career-high numbers. Last season, he had 42 points in 67 games. This season, he could easily break a point per game. However, we have to see it before he moves up on this list. He was one of the many larger forwards the Devils drafted this season. If he can be a point-per-game player at 6’3, the Devils might sign him to play in the AHL next season.

Daniil Orlov seems to be dealing with a demotion to start this season. After playing 60 games with the Moscow Spartak of the KHL last season, Orlov started this season in the VHL, their equivalent of the minor leagues. He’s a really good skater, which usually makes life easier for defensemen in the Russian league. However, we have to see how this develops before assessing his development. If he spends the entire season in the VHL (which seems unlikely), then it’s a lost season of NHL development. He gains nothing in the VHL. However, he has a good skill set and could grow into an NHL player with the right development.

It’s hard to predict where Tyler Brennan will end up by the end of this season. He has shown promise in the past, but he’s kind of stuck behind quite a few other prospects. Even with Akira Schmid going the way of the Dodo bird, at least when it comes to the Devils organization, he’s still behind at least six options both on the roster, the Comets roster, and elsewhere in the prospect pool. Still, he’s going to be the starter for the ECHL Adirondack Thunder. He has a chance to show he shouldn’t be forgotten about. However, if he doesn’t do it this season, there’s a chance he ends up with another organization entirely.

Samu Salminen is another prospect with whom we don’t know how to properly evaluate, but it’s for a completely different reason than anyone else. His situation is unique because he’s finally going to where he was supposed to develop two years ago. Salminen was supposed to leave his native Finland for the powerhouse University of Denver. However, admissions issues caused him to be deemed ineligible (or at least it appeared that’s where this was heading), and he was forced to commit to the University of Connecticut. To his credit, he gave it two years to work out, but the highly-touted prospect had two underwhelming years at the non-traditional hockey school, and now he’s transferred to Denver to play under head coach David Carle. He was literally getting NHL interviews (including possibly with the Devils), so he knows what it takes to get him ready for the next level.

Ethan Edwards was once surrounded by the best of the best prospects in college hockey. He was often an afterthought on that Michigan team when it comes to coverage. Who could blame a journalist who is watching Owen Power, Luke Hughes, Seamus Casey, and a list of others? However, Edwards has quietly put together a productive college hockey career that includes many important games, including Frozen Four games. Now, Edwards is going to be an alternate captain for the Wolverines, taking a leadership role on top of his defensive defenseman role to stop Big Ten offenses.

Jakub Malek is a player the Devils are intrigued by. He had a .914 save percentage with Ilves in SM-Liiga. What’s not to like? He was signed by the Devils this offseason, but they are loaning him back to Liiga as there isn’t room in the Devils' goaltending room. He should get some important experience this season, and he could play in North America as early as next season. Is he on an NHL trajectory? It’s too early to tell. He has some good intellect and his skill set could lead to NHL experience, but it needs to seriously develop this season.

Xavier Parent is a player we expect to make the leap this season. Maybe he won’t become a star, but he continues to progress on the same trajectory, and this is the year he’s suppose to explode offensively. In his third season with Sherbrook Phoenix, he had 106 points. It was an insane output for a player nobody expected to be that good. He’s come to Utica, and as expected, it’s been a slow start. However, at times, he was the team’s best offensive player last season. He finished with 15 goals and 45 points. This year, we expect him to get very close to “point-per-game” status.

There were quite a few trades that really had Devils fans scratching their heads, but one that fell under the radar was the trade with the Minnesota Wild that sent prospect Graeme Clarke for fellow prospect Adam Beckman. They are very different, as Clarke is a third-round pick who is punching above his weight class as long as he stays healthy. Beckman was once the Wild’s top prospect who has fallen off a cliff. After scoring 24 goals in the AHL two seasons ago, he dropped to 19 last season. He’s also had 23 games of NHL experience with zero goals. This could very well be a case of “needing a change of scenery,” but this is hard to quantify when it compares to other Devils’ prospects. That’s why he’s around the middle. 

Cam Squires is one of those players who teams ignore in the draft, and most don’t understand why. The right wing had more than 60 points that season for the Cape Breton Eagles of the QMJHL. He seemed to know where there were high-quality chances and his game should translate to the next level. He was even better last season, putting up 76 points before signing with the Devils this offseason. Now, he will take a well-rounded offensive game to the Utica Comets, where he will try to show he’s a future NHLer. He has a chance to make it to the top-10 of this list by midseason.

This might look like a demotion, and technically Chase Stillman is lower on this list than in years past, but that's not to say anything about what he's shown so far. It actually feels like it has more to do with the path to the NHL. Don’t get us wrong, Stillman hasn’t been outstanding since he was surprisingly taken in the first round of the 2021 NHL Draft, but he has shown some skills that make sense at the NHL level. The issue is Stillman’s role is done better by young players already in the NHL. Newly-acquired forward Paul Cotter is like the rich man’s version of Stillman. Stillman still had 14 goals with the Utica Comets last season, and if he makes that north of 20 this season he might get his first NHL action as early as 2025.

The Devils took two very similar forwards with their third-round picks, and they come up back-to-back here. Herman Traff is an interesting player who went much higher than many expected coming into last season. He proved himself in many aspects of the game, and that has some thinking this could be a steal by the Devils. His mid-to-long-range shooting has been a pleasant surprise for HV71 in the SHL. If he can continue scoring at an adult level, he could be signed by the Devils sooner than many expect. He’s been constantly surprising analysts, so that actually wouldn’t be a surprise. 

Kasper Pikkarainen is the other third-round pick, and while some believe he has a lower upside than Traff, there’s a reason he was ranked higher on draft boards, and the Devils took him first. He has a few lockdown traits that are great for the NHL. He does a lot really well, and the hope is that as he develops, much of that will turn into NHL-level traits. He’s incredibly young, and he has so much room to grow. Speaking of growth, he’s already 6’3, and at 17 years old, there’s a chance he will get even bigger. 

Josh Filmon is the Devils’ surprise of the 2022 NHL Draft. The Devils took him with the 166th-overall pick in the sixth round. To be fair to Filmon, some had him as a top-100 prospect in the 2022 draft, including TSN’s Craig Burton. Most assume that if the pandemic didn’t halt Canadian hockey, he would have a chance to really move up draft boards. Oh well, that’s every other team’s loss. After the Devils drafted Filmon, he immediately scored 47 goals for the Swift Current Broncos of the WHL. His numbers dropped significantly last year (27 goals in the same amount of games), but many believe he should be able to find the scoring touch in Utica again. 

Nolan Foote is one of the only players on this list who could realistically be an NHL player from game number one, barring injury to the regular lineup. Many thought he was going to get an NHL job last season, but he got injured in training camp and he didn’t return until near the end of the season. He was dealing with a lingering lower back injury that he hopes is healed now. There’s more competition for a spot on the NHL roster, especially for a player built like Foote, but he could lose his prospect status by October 4th.

Topias Vilen is exactly why teams take a chance on upside. He was drafted as a player known as a defensive defenseman. Then, he showed his offensive flare last season with the Utica Comets. He clearly worked on his passing, which was his weakest trait when he was drafted. He ended up with 27 assists last season. We expect to see Vilen grow this season. If he does, it puts the Devils in an interesting position. They already have young defensemen on the roster, and they have some defensive prospects ahead of Vilen. But at the end of the day, what will drive who plays is production. If Vilen produces again this season in Utica, he might see himself on the Devils roster at some point.

And this is one of those defensemen in Vilen’s way. Santeri Hatakka is one of those defensemen in Vilen’s way for a spot on the NHL roster. If any defenseman gets injured on the Devils this season and they decide to call someone up, Hatakka will go first (in all likelihood). He was brought over from the San Jose Sharks in the Timo Meier trade, and he’s grown from there. He proved he could handle the NHL speed when he had a cup of coffee with the Devils last season. Now, he has to survive training camp, or he has to go on waivers. We’ll see where he ends up, but the Devils should do everything they can to keep him in this organization.

The New Jersey Devils surprised many when they made the draft-day trade of John Marino to the new Utah Hockey Club. They got two second-round picks for him, and we learned later that Martin Brodeur was begging for a pick to select goalie Mikhail Yegorov. The big Russian has been playing in North America to prepare for his eventual career in the NHL. That type of commitment will make any team fall in love. His numbers weren’t great with Omaha, but that’s because he was peppered on a nightly basis. The Devils likely what they saw in his mechanics and that’s why they drafted him so high and why he was ranked so high just about everywhere. 

Lenni Hameenaho always felt like a decent pick as soon as the Devils made it. He was their first pick, as they didn’t have a first-round pick last year due to the Timo Meier trade. They took a guy who would fit into their mold. However, he exceeded those expectations in year one. Many talk about his intelligence, and he showed it at Assat, putting up 31 points as a teenager. He also almost had a point per game at the World Juniors Championship playing for Finland. The Devils would love a player like this to eventually step in for Stefan Noesen when his contract ends. 

He’s big. The Devils took him because he’s big, he will make the NHL because he’s big, and we will always have high hopes for him because he’s big. Anton Silayev is 6’7 and north of 200 bills. He had zero points in the KHL last season, and he’s expected to get zero points this season with Torpedo. His team isn’t one of the best, but it gives him an opportunity to play top-line minutes at the number-two professional league in the world. The Devils didn’t think he’d even be available at number 10, as most had him going third overall, but the Devils got themselves a really solid defenseman. 

We still believe in Nico Daws. We still think he is going to be the future of this team in net. The Devils think that too based on the contract they signed him to, giving him a one-way deal in the second year of his new contract. Daws always looks like a great goaltender for like three of four games. Then, he has a disastrous performance, usually after playing too many games in a row. With Lindy Ruff now in Buffalo to ruin those young goalies, we expect Daws to have a fantastic season. He will also likely get a full year to play in Utica, which will also help his development.

The Devils grabbed a superstar defenseman in the second round of the 2022 NHL Draft. Seamus Casey had all the makings of an offensive powerhouse. His skill is unmatched at his position in college hockey, and now he’s coming to the AHL. He played with some amazing defensemen at the University of Michigan, including former first-overall pick Owen Power and future NHL teammate Luke Hughes. Of course, the reason he made it to the second round was that he is around 5’9 and slight in frame. He will need to gain significant muscle is he’s going to truly make it to the NHL. Most analysts have him as their number one prospect on the Devils, but this one concern has him second. We’ll see how he handles the size in the AHL.

Arseni Gritsyuk is the New Jersey Devils best prospect. He has the highest ceiling, has the highest likelihood he becomes a star, and he might make a massive impact on the team from Day 1. There’s a nonzero chance that he signs with the Devils after the SKA St. Petersburg season ends and immediately plays with Jack Hughes. Anything is possible with Gritsyuk. He could also end up being Nikita Gusev and totally not worth the hype, but the Devils exhausted their guarantees in the prospect pool. Gritsyuk is the next best thing. And he could be a fantastic scorer. He already has two goals and four points to start the KHL season. The season is two games old. With a bigger role, Gritsyuk should put up 30 goals this year.