On the Last Day of the Devils Season: Team Award Nominees and Loose Thoughts From a Difficult Year

VANCOUVER, CANADA - JANUARY 23: Nico Hischier #13 and Jack Hughes #86 of the New Jersey Devils talk during the second period of their NHL game against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena on January 23, 2026 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. (Photo by Derek Cain/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Good morning, Devils fans. Today is a rougher day than it should be, marking the end of Devils hockey in the 2025-26 season. The Devils have undeniable talent at the top of their roster, and that was on display down the stretch, once they were a bit too far out of the playoff picture to claw back. But an array of issues from Jack Hughes and Brett Pesce’s injury troubles to the end of Tom Fitzgerald’s tenure in New Jersey after a weak performance in the trade market heavily anchored the team this season. Could the team have made the playoffs? Sure, but instability in the net and a relative lack of coaching adjustments until late in the season seemed to make the difficult situation into an unwinning one.

As always, I will miss watching Devils hockey over the next five months, as I am sure many of you, the readers, will. I do not think the Devils have a terrible roster. It is somewhat unoptimized, and there are plenty of players I would like to see back next season. Of course, Tom Fitzgerald’s proclivity for handing out no-trade clauses means a lot of these guys will be back, but everything is not all bad.

My eye turns now to the future of the team, and a hot topic this offseason could certainly be Anton Silayev’s future. With a lot of doubt over his last season in the KHL, I thought of what the Devils would look like if Silayev had someone like Kevin Bahl to watch as he progresses towards an NHL career. Bahl was well-respected by junior coaches as a prospect, but it never seemed like he got very much credit from internet hockey spaces before being traded to Calgary. Keep that in mind when you see people opining that Silayev has not been making enough strides in the KHL: people often have hard times evaluating teenaged defensemen. Sometimes, you have to look more at their toolkit than how polished they are. I was looking back at an article I wrote in 2020, arguing for the consideration of Kevin Bahl making the NHL roster. And, man, the defense was rough back then. I was writing about Bahl being able to push someone like Mirco Mueller out of the lineup, calling Will Butcher their best left-handed defenseman on the roster. I actually promoted the idea of signing Brenden Dillon at that time. So, even though guys like Ty Smith did not work out and Fitzgerald traded Shakir Mukhamadullin and Kevin Bahl away, who now look like third and second pair defensemen, respectively, Tom Fitzgerald left the Devils’ defense in a significantly better place then when he rose to his job. I’ll give him credit for that. Still, with all of the money the Devils invested into defense this season, they should have been able to pull off more than five wins where they scored two goals.

Yes, the roster built to win 2-1 games only won five such affairs. Two were actually shootout wins, and one was in overtime, leaving just two wins over the Mammoth and Oilers as regulation 2-1 victories. They did not win a single 1-0 game. Diving into that a bit, the Devils:

• Had two shutouts, but were shutout seven times
• Held opponents to one goal 14 times, but were held to one goal 16 times
• Held opponents to two goals 13 times, but were held to two goals 10 times
• In total, scored two or fewer goals 33 times, but held opponents to two or fewer 29 times.
• In games where the Devils scored three goals, they had a 10-6-2 record, requiring overtime or shootouts in four of those ten victories. So, the defense and goaltending even had struggled to generate victories in general when the team scored fewer than four goals.

These Devils were often frustrating to watch, especially from November to January with their total lack of offense on top of a defense that underperformed its financial compensation in front of an incredibly shaky goaltending situation. Now, Fitzgerald’s successor will have to balance the needs of the younger defensemen in Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec, along with Anton Silayev and possibly even Seamus Casey with the contracts that older veterans have signed. It is not an easy situation with all of the trade protection around the roster. Of course, rumors will be ceaseless over the next few months, but I do not think anyone should make proclamations about trades being imminent while the Devils lack an active general manager. Personally, though, I would strongly doubt that an analytically-minded GM would be as eager to move Dougie Hamilton as Tom Fitzgerald was supposed to be this season. On the forward end of things, I would cast even more doubt that any GM that values analytics would give into these latest rumors that the Devils could trade Nico Hischier if he does not have a contract signed on July 1.

Annoying rumor-based reporting aside, there are some things to celebrate this season. The Devils have announced their award nominees for the Bill Masterson Memorial and King Clancy Memorial Trophies. The Masterson is awarded annually to a player in the league that best exemplifies perseverance and dedication to the game, usually being awarded to someone who has overcome a significant circumstance or injury. The King Clancy is a humanitarian award for players who make charitable contributions in the community.

Bill Masterson Nominee — Brenden Dillon

Brenden Dillon has had a hectic year. As noted in his award nomination release, Dillon had an artificial disc replacement surgery as a result of a neck injury sustained in Game 1 of the 2025 playoffs against the Hurricanes. Coming back from a serious surgery like that is not an easy task, but Brenden Dillon will play all 82 games this season. He will have played 82 games despite being injured in his 1,000th NHL game, jumped after a whistle by Dmitri Voronkov, who continued to punch Dillon after he was unable to fight, leading to Dillon being helped off the ice before shockingly returning later in the game for a short time. It was a deeply worrying situation, but Dillon persevered and played out his season.

Dillon has made this career for himself despite being undrafted. He’s had many years of excellent, physical defensive play in the league, and I wish that his time in New Jersey would have been better up to this point. He was robbed of playing a hard series against Carolina, and will now miss the playoffs after getting ready to play another season and putting his body on the line again for 82 games. He exudes locker room leadership, and I am glad he has been a Devil for a time. As noted in this article, I wanted him around here years earlier! If this is his last game with the team tonight, I would miss him.

King Clancy Nominee — Jack Hughes

Jack and Luke Hughes have been getting more involved with the local community of late, as Jack has is approaching the later stages of young adulthood. As he shifts from being a young superstar to more of a veteran one in the league, it is nice to see that he is also increasing his community involvement and stringing Luke along as well. The Hughes Brothers’ Pucks & Pages program promotes youth literacy in New Jersey, and I can appreciate anyone who tries to get kids (or anyone) to read more. Per the release for Hughes’s nomination, Jack and Luke also work closely with Hockey in New Jersey, with whom they organized the reading program. Supporting both youth hockey and youth reading and literacy is a great combination for someone like Jack, who probably had every peewee and squirt-aged hockey player in New Jersey looking more and more up to him after that Golden Goal in February.

The End of the Season

This brings us to the end. I am not happy that it is ending this way, but so goes the life of a fan. Later in the week, you can expect to see the annual All About the Jersey awards, voted on by the writing staff. Additionally, with the playoffs starting on Saturday, there will be a Round One open post that goes up that morning. There is still some hockey to watch.

Personally, I will be on the lookout for news on the Devils front office while mostly focusing on learning about the 2026 NHL Draft class. I will be using your responses from the Feed post I made a couple months ago to order the first prospect profiles that get posted. Some writers on the staff will also be doing UFA and RFA profiles, dives into the roster situation, and the like.

But in the meantime, I will be tuning into tonight’s game, and I hope the Devils go out with a win. They already got the important one on Sunday, when Nico Hischier scored two goals and hammered home the overtime winner at the front of the crease off a point shot by Jack Hughes, sending the Prudential Center crowd out with a nicer note and another reminder of what this team should have been looking like all season. But I still want to see players like Topias Vilen and Nico Daws audition for bigger roles next season. And, while I would have preferred to see more prospects, maybe the veterans who get in the lineup after the reassignments of Lenni Hameenaho and Brian Halonen will have a good last showing in their difficult seasons.

Until that last gamethread of the season, have a good day. Better years of hockey are still ahead.