Devils' GM Candidate Deep-Dive: John Chayka
Examining what John Chayka may bring as a possible candidate to take over the New Jersey Devils' now-vacant General Manager position.
With Tom Fitzgerald’s departure from the New Jersey Devils organization, there is now a vacancy for both the General Manager (GM) position and the President of Hockey Operations (POHO) position. A new era is about to begin for the Devils, and for good reason. Hockey has become more and more comfortable with being data-centric in recent seasons, and the best teams in the NHL have consistently hired analytically inclined individuals to run the ship — I’m hoping that the Devils follow suit.
With that, it seems prudent to explore what options New Jersey has in terms of picking their new GM and POHO. I’m excited to share with you my thoughts on the candidates!
Already-covered candidates: Sunny Mehta (GM) | Tyler Dellow (GM) | Brendan Shanahan (POHO)
The Devils’ GM search is heating up, with interviews likely in full swing and the search presumably narrowing down candidate-wise. Sunny Mehta, Tyler Dellow, who have already received their deep-dives, have been confirmed to be of interest to the Devils’ ownership group by major pundits.
Another name who has been circulating in rumors of the Devils’ GM search is John Chayka, former GM of the Arizona Coyotes.
Chayka’s pre-NHL career is a short one — he founded the hockey analytics company Stathletes with his sister, Meghan Chayka, and graduated from the University of Western Ontario’s business school before getting offered a spot as the Assistant General Manager (AGM) of the Coyotes in 2015-16 at the ripe age of 25.
Just one season later, J. Chayka became the youngest General Manager in professional sports history, assuming the role for Arizona in May of 2016.
Under Chayka, the Coyotes made the postseason for the first time in eight years in 2020, though he abruptly resigned from the organization just prior to the postseason beginning due to some friction in the relationship between him and ownership. It was later revealed that the strife was because he was disallowed from speaking to none other than the Devils’ owners about a position that would have seen him overseeing all of HBSE’s sports teams. Chayka’s resignation came with three years left on his contract with the Coyotes, and because of the breach, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman suspended Chayka from the league for the remainder of the 2021 calendar year in January, six months after his resignation.
It was later uncovered that Chayka and the Coyotes held a private combine for potential draftees — a clear violation of the NHL’s rules — and Arizona was penalized a first and second-round draft pick because of it.
That’s an obvious knock on Chayka, but I respect the hustle.
Given ownership’s connection and previous desire to pursue Chayka as a candidate for a different position, and his reinstation to the league quite some time ago, it’s possible that he is as legitimate a candidate as any of the others. With that in mind, let’s talk about what he did while in control of the Coyotes:
Trades
The first thing to note about Chayka’s tenure as it pertains to moves is that, well, he made a lot of them. To be frank, Arizona was an undesirable location for most players in the NHL, so he had to make some unique moves to compensate and skirt around trade protections, desirability, etc. As such, I had to split his trades across two separate pictures because there were so many of them. That said, his resume is pretty great:
The most important trade for Arizona’s future was perhaps the first deal Chayka made as GM — acquiring Pavel Datsyuk and the 16th overall selection in the 2016 NHL Draft in exchange for Joe Vitale, the 20th overall selection, and a second-rounder on the first day of the 2016 NHL Draft. Vitale and Datsyuk never played a game for the organizations they were traded to, but the 16th overall selection went on to be Jakub Chychrun, one of the Coyotes’ most important pieces leading up to his trade to the Senators in 2023. 20th overall? None other than Dennis Cholowski.
In the same off-season, Chayka traded a second and third-rounder for Lawson Crouse and Dave Bolland. Bolland didn’t play a game for the Coyotes, either, but Crouse has been a staple in their middle six since, eclipsing 20 goals in four separate seasons, including 2025-26. The Coyotes also acquired defenseman Tony DeAngelo for a second-round pick before shipping him off at a later date with a first-rounder for stud goaltender Antti Raanta and then-middle-sixer Derek Stepan.
After acquiring him for a fifth-round pick from the Devils, Chayka traded Scott Wedgewood and part of a season of Tobias Reider for Darcy Kuemper, who was in the midst of a season in which he was a top-10 goaltender. Kuemper and Raanta made up one of the best tandems in the league for a number of seasons, playing an especially pivotal role in the season that brought the Coyotes to the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.
In November of 2018, Chayka traded Dylan Strome and Brendan Perlini for now-long-term Coyote/Mammoth player Nick Schmaltz, who will likely end his career in the organization. Schmaltz has blossomed into a point-per-game top-line forward for them, and, though Strome is succeeding with the Capitals now, the Coyotes certainly got the better end of the bargain.
Following the 2018-19 season, he traded Alex Galchenyuk (who he got for Max Domi a year prior) and P.O. Joseph for Phil Kessel, Dane Birks, and a fourth-rounder. Kessel would go on to play three seasons for the Coyotes, where he amassed 42 goals and 133 points in 208 games. In the following season, Chayka made his biggest trade of his career as GM, shipping off three youngsters in Nate Schnarr, Kevin Bahl, and Nick Merkley as well as two high draft picks for then-reigning MVP Taylor Hall. Of course, Hall was a driving factor in the success of the Coyotes during the season they made the playoffs.
Drafting
Under Chayka, the Coyotes drafted solidly, hitting on quite a few pieces in his years pulling the trigger on picks:
The above list is comprised of all players the Coyotes drafted who played at least 20 NHL games. 2016 is, of course, the standout year — they got both Clayton Keller and Jakub Chychrun in the first round. Their first-rounder in 2018, Barrett Hayton, is still on the roster as well (though it can certainly be argued he was not the best pick in retrospect at fifth overall). Past that, P.O. Joesph, MacKenzie Entwistle, Kevin Bahl, and Matias Maccelli were both either key roster players at some point or were used as trade chips in major trades.
Signings
Last on the list are the free agent signings and contract extensions doled out by Chayka while he was GMing Arizona. As I previously stated, the Coyotes were anything but a desirable location. As such, convincing players to sign there was a tall task in and of itself, and yet, there were a number of pivotal extensions and signings that occurred under the Chayka regime:
The three biggest extensions were given to their three most important players: Jakub Chychrun (six years, $4.6 million AAV), Nick Schmaltz (seven years, $5.85 million AAV), and Clayton Keller (eight years, $7.15 million AAV). Chychrun’s contract was an absolute steal and was a driving part in why they were able to nab three picks in the first two rounds from the Senators when he was offloaded there. Schmaltz’s extension ends this season (of course, he received an $8 million AAV extension this past season), and Keller, captaining the franchise, still somehow has two more seasons on his sweetheart of a deal past 2025-26.
Sprinkled in there are heady extensions to the likes of Lawson Crouse (three years, $1.533 million), Michael Bunting (two years, $738,000), and some smart deals for both Antti Raanta and Darcy Kuemper. The only blemish, in my opinion, is the Oliver Ekman-Larsson eight-year deal, though they were able to get off of that contract unscathed, shipping him and Conor Garland to Vancouver for the ninth-overall pick in 2021 (Dylan Guenther).
To me, the interest is threefold. For one, there is familiarity between Chayka and the Devils’ ownership group. He previously expressed desire to work for them, so much so that it eventually got him suspended from the NHL for a breach of contract. Secondly, he is the only candidate mentioned with actual GM experience — the other appealing candidates tied to the organization are all AGMs. Lastly, his actual track record of moves is pretty strong, especially considering the constraints of being in a heavy internal cap system with a completely undesirable market. The moves he was able to make were calculated, his draft resume is strong, and he ultimately GM’d the Coyotes to a playoff berth in the midst of irrelevancy.
To me, behind Mehta and Dellow, Chayka is a clear #3 choice, and one I certainly wouldn’t be mad at. Who knows — perhaps, with the previous position he applied for and the rumored discrepancy between the Devils and Brendan Shanahan, Chayka can be a POHO candidate as well.