New Jersey Devils GM Talks Jack Hughes' Health While the Quinn Rumors Simmer

The New Jersey Devils didn't add a player this week, but their general manager gave fans plenty to chew on anyway. Sunny Mehta sat for an extended Q&A with The Hockey News, published Monday, and addressed the subject hanging over this entire franchise: Jack Hughes, his health, and what it means that so much of the team's ceiling rides on one player's availability. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away, Jack's brother Quinn opened contract talks with the Minnesota Wild — and the slower those negotiations go, the louder the daydreaming gets in New Jersey. Throw in a behind-the-scenes look at the team's draft strategy and the first credible projections of the 2026-27 lineup, and the New Jersey Devils packed a fair amount of substance into a quiet stretch of the calendar.

Mehta on Jack Hughes, Leadership and the McDavid Problem

The Hockey News interview was the week's centerpiece, and Mehta was more candid than GMs usually are in July. Asked about the narrative that the Devils only go as far as Hughes' health allows — a fair question after the freak finger injury at a team dinner cost him two months last season — Mehta didn't dodge. "If you take Connor McDavid off of the Edmonton Oilers, they are a significantly worse team," he said, arguing that dependence on elite players is universal, and that his job is to insulate the roster with depth rather than pretend the dependence doesn't exist.

He was just as interesting on leadership. Mehta compared Hughes to Matthew Tkachuk and framed his vocal, spotlight-friendly personality as the natural complement to captain Nico Hischier's quieter lead-by-example style. "Not only do I not think that it is a bad thing, I think that is a good thing," he said of Hughes embracing that role. Hischier, for his part, has already set the offseason tone: "I want to be part of the solution because I believe we have a great team... little details matter." For a team coming off an underwhelming season and a spring front-office change — Mehta replaced Tom Fitzgerald back on April 16 — that reads like an organization trying to make accountability the brand.

The Quinn Hughes Watch, Minnesota Edition

The other Hughes storyline is the one the Devils have no official part in — yet. Per Michael Russo, contract negotiations between Quinn Hughes and the Wild were set to begin this week, and the framing around them has shifted. Minnesota once talked about an extension as a formality; now the reporting describes a team actively pitching Hughes on reasons to stay, with teammates publicly lobbying him. Devils-focused writer James Nichols put it bluntly: "the longer this takes, the more of a chance there is of a wedge being driven" between the Hughes family and Wild management.

Let's be clear about what's verified here: nothing connects the New Jersey Devils to Quinn Hughes beyond geography, genetics and hope. But the hope is not irrational. Quinn and Jack are famously close — they hit the ESPYs together in mid-July — and every week the Wild fail to close an extension is a week the reunion scenario stays alive. Mehta has already shown he'll swing big; he tendered an offer sheet to Utah center Barrett Hayton at one year and $4.775 million in early July, which the Mammoth matched. A GM willing to weaponize offer sheets in year one is not a GM who would sit out a Quinn Hughes sweepstakes if one ever materialized. File it under "watch this space" — but watch it.

How the New Jersey Devils Roster Actually Shapes Up

While the rumor mill hums, the actual roster is largely set, and this week brought the first serious lineup projections. The Hockey Writers' Wednesday breakdown has Timo Meier, Hischier and Dawson Mercer running the matchup line, with Hughes centering Jesper Bratt and new arrival Anthony Mantha — who signed a two-year, $9.5 million deal on July 15 after a career-best 33-goal, 64-point season in Pittsburgh — on a second unit built to score. Evan Rodrigues and Jesper Boqvist, both acquired from Florida in the June 30 trade that sent Jacob Markstrom to the Panthers, headline a bottom six Mehta deliberately built around versatility. "The best players," as he put it, not stereotypical fourth-liners.

The blue line is the bet. New Jersey traded Simon Nemec to Calgary on June 23 in a stunner that brought back two conditional first-round picks, a second and prospect Etienne Morin, and otherwise kept the group intact — Dougie Hamilton, whose departure many assumed was coming, unexpectedly stayed. Mehta told reporters he expects the largely unchanged unit, led by Hamilton and Luke Hughes, to bounce back after underperforming last season. That's a defensible position and also the roster's biggest risk: if the defense repeats last year, the Nemec haul will be cold comfort. In goal, the Markstrom trade handed the net to Jake Allen and Nico Daws, with veteran David Rittich signed as insurance. On Daws, Mehta was blunt: the trade created "an opportunity," and "it is up to him" to take it.

Draft Desk and the Pipeline

The team's own content mill added something real on Wednesday, publishing a behind-the-scenes look at the draft-floor process that produced Alexander Command, the center New Jersey took 12th overall in June. The pick remains mildly controversial in the fanbase — at least one Devils blog called it an outright mistake — which makes the front office pulling back the curtain on its reasoning a smart bit of transparency. Second-rounder Matias Vanhanen, a Finnish winger taken 37th overall, rounds out the top of a draft class fans will get their first live look at in September's rookie games.

The development staff will do that work with one fewer familiar face: longtime assistant and three-time Cup winner Sergei Brylin left the organization in July to become head coach of Dinamo Minsk in the KHL, ending one of the last daily links to the championship era. Meanwhile, deadline addition Amadeus Lombardi and college-and-junior depth signings give Utica an interesting mix, and Arseny Gritsyuk — signed to a three-year deal on July 3 — is the wild card most likely to force his way into the NHL top nine.

Key Dates for the New Jersey Devils

The 84-game schedule, released July 16, gives the runway some structure:

• September 13 and 15: Rookie camp games against the Islanders, in Newark and East Meadow.
• September 20–26: Preseason, including home dates with the Islanders and Rangers.
• October 1: Season opener against the Philadelphia Flyers at Prudential Center.
• October 3: First road trip, a short one — the Islanders' home opener at UBS Arena.

Opening at home against Philadelphia and immediately turning around for a rivalry game on Long Island is a nice early test of the depth Mehta spent all summer assembling. It also means the two biggest questions — the blue line's bounce-back and the Allen-Daws tandem — get stress-tested from night one.

Where This Week Leaves the New Jersey Devils

Strip out the noise and this week's New Jersey Devils news was really about posture. Mehta spent his first summer trading a former second-overall pick for futures, offer-sheeting a division rival's center, and stacking the middle of the roster with players who can move up and down the lineup — and then spent this week explaining the philosophy out loud. The team he's built is deeper than last year's, healthier at the top if Jack Hughes stays in one piece, and positioned with picks and cap flexibility if a star ever shakes loose, in Minnesota or anywhere else. Two months out from opening night against the Flyers, the Devils' plan is legible. Now the season gets to grade it.