New Jersey Devils 2023-24 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings

By Dom Luszczyszyn, Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly projected the Devils’ point total. That chart is updated to project 107 points instead of 103.

The Devils put opponents on their heels with their speedy, puck-possession style last year. A team poised to turn the corner did way more than that, with a successful season and run to Round 2.

But with that expedited progression, the Devils just set the bar even higher for themselves moving forward.

Management responded well to that with another strong offseason. Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt were extended to cost-effective contracts. A third-rounder was recouped for Damon Severson’s rights. The Mackenzie Blackwood saga ended. And some finishing talent was brought in with the Tyler Toffoli trade.

But the Devils are coming into the season with some risk. Two mainstay defenders departed, with slots open for up-and-coming players to earn. And the goaltending was only upgraded by subtraction. While that offseason strategy could work out just fine, this isn’t a team opponents are going to just underestimate anymore.

Welcome to the Contenders Circle, New Jersey.

The projection

The Devils surprised everyone last season with a breakthrough 112-point season. Now the surprise is that they don’t rank any higher going into next season (or ahead of their cross-state rivals for that matter — oops).

No one is doubting New Jersey’s likelihood of becoming the league’s next great power. The core is young, stacked and locked up. There are more promising kids on the way, And they’re already deep as is. The Devils are already a contender.

But there’s a reason they come in at eighth and not higher.

The top of the league is very strong with a lot of contenders that have a much longer track record. The Devils just arrived and will still have to prove they belong at the very top. That, and the team simply has a few more question marks than some of the teams above them.

Nothing wrong with any of that. The Devils still have a strong chance to land in the league’s top five (35 percent) or match last year’s point total (16 percent). No one would be shocked in either event. They’ll just need a few things to go right to get there and it’s okay to have a little market correction in the meantime. Especially after so many things went right for them last season.

Percentiles with the bar graphs are based on each player’s Offensive, Defensive and Net Rating relative to their time-on-ice slot, i.e. the first forward is compared to other first forwards only.

The strengths

New Jersey has a stacked team and it’s no surprise a lot of people expected the team to land higher. The Devils are a team on the rise with a laundry list of strengths that define modern hockey. They’re elite at attacking and defending the rush, they’re elite at creating and thwarting high-danger chances, and they’re elite at carrying and denying zone entries. They dictate the pace and control the puck better than almost any other team.

The roster is headlined by a ridiculously deep top six up front. Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, Jesper Bratt, Dawson Mercer and Tyler Toffoli. Are you kidding?

It’s just unfair from top to bottom and their combined Net Rating of plus-68 ranks second in the league behind only Edmonton (whose rating is a tad influenced by having two top-five forwards). Meier, Bratt, Mercer, Toffoli would make for an average top four. The fact that the Devils have Hughes and Hischier ahead of them feels unfair, especially when everyone’s age and contracts are considered.

Hughes is the offensive leader of the team and everything flows through him. The potential for greatness was evident from the get-go where it was clear that once he learned how to finish it would be over for everyone. Last season he cemented that it is indeed over for everyone after scoring 43 goals and 99 points in 78 games.

Even when Hughes wasn’t scoring he was a three-zone marvel with the puck, already one of the best at bringing up ice and creating in the offensive zone. Last season he upped his personal shot rate to turn him into even more of a dual threat while also furthering his ability to drive play. Next step: Cleaning up his work without the puck.

Whether Hughes ever becomes a capable defensive center probably doesn’t matter much on this team, not with Hischier directly behind him on the depth chart. He takes on the tough minutes for the Devils and it says a lot about his performance last season that a long-awaited jump to 80 points was a secondary headline. Hischier made his debut as a two-way force finishing second in Selke Trophy voting to Patrice Bergeron — which is basically a first-place finish. His 60 percent goal rate and 59 percent expected goal rate was a spectacular showing and he finished the season with a plus-3.8 Defensive Rating. That was fifth among players who faced top competition and the Devils can expect similar results this season.

Meier is the newest addition to the core, a truly elite winger who drives a lot of offense with his ability to put a lot of pucks on net. The production may not have been there as a Devil, especially in the playoffs, but Meier has a strong process that fits well with New Jersey’s two centers. For Hughes, he can be an elite trigger-man who can make the top line more threatening off the cycle. For Hischier he can be an elite play-driver that can push the puck in the right direction. There’s versatility there.

Whoever Meier plays with, the other center will happily have Jesper Bratt as a wingman instead. Bratt has been a consistently efficient scorer over the last five seasons for New Jersey and has held up that production well as he’s moved up the lineup. Like the other three core pieces, he’s also elite at creating chances and bringing the puck up ice — he’s a vital part of New Jersey’s attack. Defensively he has struggled at times, but he’s still an absolute luxury as a fourth forward, a top-five option in that role.

Mercer and Toffoli round out the top six with near identical ratings, an impressive plus-five despite neither likely to figure on the top power play. It helps that both are strong producers at five-on-five with Mercer at 2.04 points-per-60 last year and Toffoli at 2.41 — that should mean a 50-to-60-point season for the duo. Mercer still has a bit to show as a driver, but is young enough that he can take a jump this year. Toffoli is already there and works as a “Meier light,” a pure shooter who thrives off the forecheck.

There are a ton of great combinations that have the potential to work well here as the Devils are blessed with a lot of versatile pieces. That extends into the top nine where the speedy Erik Haula, the malleable Ondrej Palat and the exciting Alex Holtz can all fit somewhere too. That trio can form their own strong third line behind a loaded top six, or the Devils can spread the wealth with a deep top nine. Either configuration works with the key being whether Holtz can finally make the full-time NHL jump. He only scored 0.76 points-per-60 in 19 games last year while being a massive possession drag, but his AHL numbers the last two years have been strong. The pedigree is there for a Mercer-like leap which might be exactly what New Jersey needs to put the Devils over the top.

Dougie Hamilton skates in his 700th NHL game. (Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

The blue line isn’t quite as impactful, but there are still some strong elements throughout. That obviously starts with the team’s number one: Dougie Hamilton.

He’s one of the best offensive defensemen in the league and he showed it last season with a return to form scoring 74 points while generating chances at an elite rate. His Offensive Rating of plus-14.4 was right in line with where he was in his final two seasons with Carolina, and he had a big bounce back defensively too where he was above average for the third time in four years. Hamilton made huge strides in his ability to defend the rush, a huge development for a player who still has a shaky reputation without the puck.

Basically, he looked like the same old Dougie where it’s safe to call the 2021-22 season an aberration. The Model doesn’t view it that way for the 30-year-old defenseman, baking in some risk that he can drop off at any moment. After seeing him come out stronger than ever last season that downside feels minimal. Hamilton’s Net Rating has paced north of plus-15 in three of the last four seasons and if he simply does that again, the Devils would move from ninth to fourth.

That’s all it would take and that sort of upside is all around New Jersey’s lineup — the model just wants to see the Devils do it again.

That applies to defensive rearguards John Marino and Jonas Siegenthaler, two strong shutdown types who were at plus-two and plus-three respectively last season. Both were excellent at defending zone entries and earned identically strong chance suppression numbers for the Devils.

It’s Marino that gets all the press though and looking at Corey Sznajder’s tracing data tells us exactly why. He may not be much offensively, but he is incredible at breaking the puck out and bringing it up ice. He’s excellent at retrieving pucks and defending the rush and is probably one of the better in-zone defenders in hockey. That’s all in tough minutes too and he made our Top 125 Players list for good reason — he’s a lot better than the model currently gives credit for.

If those two can sustain or add to what they did last year, and Luke Hughes can bring dynamic offense as expected, then the top four will be a huge asset for New Jersey.

The weaknesses

When it comes to New Jersey’s weaknesses, we’re mostly nitpicking. That’s going to be the case for a lot of teams in this tier and the Devils are no exception. No team is perfect.

The Devils enter the season with colossal expectations and those aren’t always the easiest to live up to, especially for a young team. There can be growing pains, especially when there are big questions coming on the back end.

GO DEEPER

Devils' big question: Can New Jersey prove last year wasn't a fluke?

That starts with a blue line that will be missing Damon Severson and Ryan Graves, key pieces from last season. Severson crushed third pair minutes and led all defenders in expected goals percentage by a huge margin at 59 percent. He’s a great puck-mover who provides a ton of offense that helped win the Devils a lot of minutes lower in the lineup. As for Graves, he was a solid dependable type that could soak up tough minutes, looking strong next to Marino.

Those aren’t easy gaps to fill and while Hughes has all the talent to step in and do so — and certainly looked dynamic in the playoffs — it’s a tall ask for a rookie. Defensively, there are likely to be some growing pains and there will be a lot of pressure for him to immediately jump into the top four. That could work out well, he has a skill set that should pair well with Marino, but the Devils don’t have a backup plan if it doesn’t. Colin Miller and Kevin Bahl probably won’t cut it.

It’s an even bigger point of emphasis because the team’s goaltending grades out as average, mostly due to a short track record.

Vitek Vanecek was great for the Devils last season saving 13.3 goals above expected, a mark that ranked 14th in the league. That’s roughly where he’s expected to land this season as an average starter, but his previous work with Washington looked below average. He has the potential to regress and showed as much during the postseason where he was a serious liability.

Akira Schmid came to the rescue there with a .923 save percentage, saving 4.5 goals above expected in nine games, but his work during the regular season has been uneven. Some may want to forget his awful six-game audition in 2021-22, but The Model doesn’t and that is part of the reason he starts the season with such a low projected value. There’s a ton of potential there and he may be the goalie of the future, but we’ll have to see it to believe it first.

As far as weaknesses go, it’s easy to see a lot of them fixed in short order. The Devils have a clear path to the top of the standings with just a few things going as many reasonable people would suspect. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of risk at play that could push the Devils a little lower than some might expect.

The wild card

Can Luke Hughes step in to fill the void of Damon Severson?

On the Devils’ side of things, Hughes, aside from his last name, immediately has something going for him that Severson does not: He’s on a rookie deal. Severson wound up signing with Columbus for eight years and $6.25 million annually. That was … not an option for New Jersey. They got a third-round pick for Severson’s negotiation rights and moved on.

While Columbus ultimately seemed to overpay the 29-year-old Severson, the contract doesn’t change who he showed himself to be with the Devils, a second-pair defenseman who could succeed in those minutes, post strong underlying numbers and move the puck well. That’s valuable. It also seemed to be Severson’s ceiling.

There’s no such issue with Hughes, who has remarkable skating, textbook size and easy top-pair upside. The Athletic’s Corey Pronman has him as a “bubble elite NHL player” and All-Star, Scott Wheeler ranked him the No. 7 drafted prospect. He showed some of that last season, when he jumped straight from the University of Michigan to the Devils’ lineup as a 19-year-old shortly before the start of the playoffs. In his fifth career game — the Devils lost to Carolina and were eliminated in the second round — he played more than 25 minutes. The writing was on the wall.

Hughes’ transition into a full-time, everyday NHL player probably won’t be seamless. When is it for anybody, really? He’s also a player whose ability often leads to big, obvious mistakes, which might be an obstacle — but the Devils know a thing or two about insulating defensemen who struggle in their own zone. That, combined with the skill he’s shown so far and the shutdown presence of Marino to his right, has Hughes set up for success.

The best case

The Devils’ top nine proves to be one of the deepest in the league, led by an MVP-level season from Jack Hughes. Entry-level talent thrives in mainstay roles and management proves wise not to get too splashy back in net, as the Vanecek-Schmid thrives during a deep playoff run.

The worst case

New Jersey struggles to live up to expectations with a more up-and-down season. The Devils struggle to establish the forecheck and opponents are better prepared for their rush-based attack. Some key players take a step back, the kids are overwhelmed at the NHL level and the goaltending wilts. The Devils make the playoffs, but don’t last long.

The bottom line

If expectations for the Devils stay at even quasi-realistic levels, and if the goaltending remotely holds up, this season should be successful in one way or another. There are simply too many high-end pieces, starting with Jack Hughes, to expect things to go off the rails. We’re not saying it’s impossible, just that it’s unlikely.

They’ve got star power and substance throughout the lineup to thank for that, plus an early arrival last season that gave them a taste of life as a playoff team. The future is very bright, even though it may not fully arrive in 2023-24.