The New Jersey Devils ended the season with most of their team missing. The injuries were piling up, and they started to lose count over who was missing from a nightly lineup in the playoffs. Then, it was revealed that even more players were injured and playing through it. This offseason, Jesper Bratt, Jack Hughes, Luke Hughes, Brenden Dillon, and Brett Pesce are all on the road to recovery.
All five of those players are expected to be fully healthy by training camp, if they aren’t already recovered today. One player who will not be at training camp is Johnny Kovacevic.
The Devils’ surprise defenseman is in his first year of his five-year extension. He was given a big raise after playing his heart out last season. However, the Devils will start the season without him.
It’s honestly a good situation for the Devils, who need this opportunity to see if Simon Nemec is ready to be a full-time NHL player. It also gives them a little cushion in case they need to go over the salary cap for Luke Hughes. While going into their LTIR pool would hurt them for future trades, the great GMs figure that out.
Johnny Kovacevic might miss more time than is being let on
However, nobody has reported that Kovacevic is missing this entire season. All we know is that this is a knee injury that Kovacevic is recovering from. If it’s going to keep him out for more than six months, one has to assume something is torn. While we don’t have the facts, we can assume a torn ligament is the most likely injury to the knee that would keep him out into the season.
Connor Brown, the Devils’ newest forward, tore his ACL in 2022 and didn’t return until the start of the 2023-24 season. That was an 11-month timetable. Some of that was the offseason, but Brown wasn’t even back to his old self when he returned. Former Devils MVP Taylor Hall tore his ACL in November of 2023 and return to the ice the next September, more than 10 months later.
If Kovacevic is dealing with an ACL injury, we should expect him to miss at least eight months. It’s probably safer to assume he should be out for at least nine. Nine months from April would keep him out until January.
Saying that Kovacevic is out to start the season might be an understatement. There’s a possibility that the injury is much better than an ACL tear, and maybe he will be back in November, but the reality seems more bleak.
However, as we just said, the Devils could use time to figure some things out. They might be over the salary cap once the Luke Hughes deal comes in. Ondrej Palat and his $6 million is still on the cap sheet. Nemec needs the time to prove himself, as the Devils have Brett Pesce and Dougie Hamilton on the roster, too.
Obviously, if the Devils don’t have Kovacevic until 2026, it’s not like they don’t have to figure these things out then. Sure, if someone like Pesce gets injured, it solves that “problem,” but it sets them up for another one. In an ideal world, where no defensemen get injured, they likely have to make a move to send a contract out the door. For now, though, the Devils probably have more time to figure this out than many expect.