Starting season in Prague makes Tom Fitzgerald’s job harder

The New York Rangers are playing their first regular season game for the 2024-25 season on October 9th against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Philadelphia Flyers don’t start until October 11th. Meanwhile, the New Jersey Devils are scheduled to start their season a full week earlier than that, taking on the Buffalo Sabres in a back-to-back on October 4th and 5th.

Why so early? The Devils are starting their season in the NHL Global Series. They fly to Prague Czechia before their preseason games are even over, which brings us to the topic at hand. Tom Fitzgerald has one of the harder training camps on his hands. 

Now, there are certain positives going in his direction. In previous years, this would hurt because he’d have two fewer preseason practices and fewer training camp days to evaluate the roster. That’s not the case this season. Barring no injuries, the Devils already have too many players on the roster as is. They don’t have room for a prospect or PTO to make the roster. 

That does make training camp a little boring, but boring is probably what new Devils head coach Sheldon Keefe is looking for after a career in Toronto. Having easy decisions when everything felt hard is a nice change of pace. Still, there are moves that Tom Fitzgerald has to make earlier than others, and that could lead to players moving to other franchises. 

Players like Shane Bowers, Max Willman, and Santeri Hatakka are no longer waiver-exempt. If the Devils don’t keep them on the roster, any team can claim them, and it’s a known fact that teams are more likely to claim a player in the middle of training camp rather than right before the season starts when rosters are pretty set and coaches have already fallen in love with the currently lineup. 

The Devils don’t have that luxury. Their NHL lineup needs to be set in stone while other teams have five or so days to make roster decisions. That’s plenty of time to claim a guy on waivers, try him out for a few days, then decide on his future.

If the Devils face an injury, that’s another reason why things will be even harder for them. If they actually have to try players out, they have a truncated timeline to make it work.

Then there’s the problem we mentioned earlier. The Devils have 24 NHL roster players. If they were hoping to trade one of the “extras” based on who plays well in training camp, they have basically a day or two to negotiate a trade. It took Fitzgerald nine months just to get a goalie trade done when everyone knew he needed a goalie. We’re going to think a Nathan Bastian deal (if he were the one) would happen smoothly when the NHL knows the Devils are held feet to the fire?

The Devils should be happy they get to play on a global stage. Simon Nemec, Ondrej Palat, and Tomas Tatar were all born in that area and likely have family still there. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them. It’s a stressful experience for Fitzgerald and Co.