Should Tom Fitzgerald Be on the Hot Seat?
An in-depth discussion on whether or not the Devils' General Manager should be worried for his job anytime soon.
Yesterday, on Jeff Marek’s podcast, The Sheet, he and Greg Wyshynski discussed Devils’ GM Tom Fitzgerald and whether or not he should be considered “on the hot seat.”
To speak bluntly and not waste time, no. Fitzgerald is not on the hot seat. The Devils are in the playoffs despite missing half of their important pieces, and didn’t look out of place against a tough Carolina team in Game Two. The framework for a perennial playoff team is there and isn’t likely to change at all.
Should Fitzgerald be on the hot seat is the better question. Have his actions as general manager warranted the perpetuating message among the Devils fanbase that he should be fired this offseason?
I’ll answer that question with my belief at the end of the piece, but let’s start off by going through his strengths and weaknesses as a GM and where that leaves the Devils.
Weakness #1: Drafting
The most glaring issue in Tom Fitzgerald’s tenure as general manager has unequivocally been his drafting. He has a propensity to draft in two ways: 1) prioritizing perceived need rather than picking the best/most talented player available, and 2) having an over-reliance on size with his hockey man brain.
On point one, things are especially glaring in his first round selections. Chase Stillman, drafted 29th overall, was one of the worst draft selections in recent memory and was picked simply because Fitzgerald wanted a grinder to slot into the bottom six — the belief at the time was that there were enough high-quality forward prospects in the system and he instead opted to select one he thought to be a surefire quality bottom-sixer. There were three names there (Olen Zellweger, Logan Stankoven, and Aatu Räty) that I was vocally for on draft day — if you’re rolling your eyes at that, I put the proof in the original article detailing the Devils’ draft woes. Flash forward to today, and Stillman has never garnered an NHL look (and has been traded out of the system), while Zellweger looks like one of the most dynamic young defensemen in the league, Stankoven is currently demolishing the Devils in the playoffs and was used as the main asset coming back in the Mikko Rantanen trade, and Räty is a quality bottom-six center, which fills the position the Devils need the most help at.
Next up is Šimon Nemec, who I have been a stalwart defender of, who was selected 2nd overall in 2022 over the likes of Logan Cooley and Shane Wright. At the time of the selection, I used the analytical models that favored Nemec over practically every other prospect in the draft to give myself enough deluded hope that he might actually be the best player of the draft, but I was always extremely high on Cooley in particular. Fitzgerald again drafted for perceived need here, wanting a permanent defense partner for Luke Hughes rather than selecting the most talented two players available. I can’t stress how valuable either of Cooley or Wright would be in the system right now — that became especially evident when Jack Hughes went down with injury for the season, and they’ve been stuck with a whole lot of nothing down the middle since.
Finally is selecting Alex Holtz at 7th overall because he simply wanted a sniper to fit alongside Jack Hughes, rather than selecting the best player there in Marco Rossi, who now plays in the Minnesota Wild's top six and has had a spectacular season. Again, this issue became especially glaring once the Devils were in need of a legitimate center to play in the top six, but the point has always been true.
Picking the best pick should always be the ideology, considering you simply don’t know what your team will truly need by the time the drafted player becomes a mainstay in the lineup. It’s not rocket science.
Point two of that is more centric to the 2024 NHL Draft, and, more specifically, Anton Silayev. At the time he was selected, I would say that Fitzgerald’s assessment that Silayev was one of the most talented players available was correct, but he again took a step back from picking BPA to pick the biggest guy there. I understand that Silayev was “previously regarded as a top-three pick,” and the Devils may have had him that high on their draft board, but the reality is that size had a lot to do with that evaluation. The better, more talented picks (and the ones who ended up becoming the two best defense prospects in the NHL) were Sam Dickinson and Zeev Buium, both of whom I was extremely high on on draft day.
The overarching point is that Fitzgerald’s drafting is his weakest facet, bar none. A jarring statistic that I didn’t realize was the case was that Fitzgerald didn’t select a single center for 19-straight draft picks over the course of three years — thank you to CJ Turtoro for that statistic.
That’s a problem, especially given the Devils’ complexion now.
Strength #1: Contracts
Fitzgerald’s biggest strength, in my opinion, is his ability to get players to extend at a reasonable AAV.
The Devils’ core and their contracts are largely the work of Fitzgerald, with the exception of Nico Hischier. Jack Hughes’ miraculously team-friendly $8 million deal that has him locked up until 2030; Jesper Bratt’s contract that has the superstar locked in at a team-friendly $7.85 million until 2031; Timo Meier’s $8.8 million deal that has him too locked in at $8.8 million — and yes, that deal is unequivocally worth it and Meier is a spectacular player. It’s all the work of Fitzgerald, and that’s the biggest reason why the Devils are going to be perennial Cup contenders for a very, very long time. It’s also why I’m not really worried about Luke’s next deal, or any player’s extension, really.
Even role players have generally gotten great contracts — Jonas Siegenthaler’s $3.4 million deal is incredible value; Brett Pesce’s $5.5 million deal is far worth the cost (especially with the rising cap); Stefan Noesen’s $2.75 million is more than reasonable; Johnathan Kovacevic’s $4 million AAV is, despite it’s initial reception, very fair value for a defender who has proven to play extremely well alongside fellow defensive defensemen. It’s certainly set the Devils up for a great amount of success.
Without a doubt, the worst two contracts he’s handed out have been the $6 million AAV deal to Ondrej Palat, to which I have apparently been so mean about on social media that I’ve received a ton of comments telling me that “it’s not that bad”1 and Brenden Dillon’s $4 million AAV deal which was handed out this summer. Dillon has been bad and not worth $4 million in any sense, but the good Fitzgerald has done far outweighs the bad in pertinence to the contracts he’s handed out.
Weakness #2: Overcorrection
As much as the Noesen, Kovacevic, and Pesce contracts have worked out value-wise, the general philosophy Fitzgerald applied to this past off-season made the Devils significantly slower, which has generally neutered their rush play outside of their star players. There was an ideology after the 2022-23 playoffs that the Devils weren’t “hard enough to play against,” and the moves that have been made since have largely been in that direction.
The thing that made the 2022-23 Devils so threatening was their speed and skill. The Devils lost some of that in 2023-24, but still had more threatening pieces than the Devils have this season — Tyler Toffoli being of paramount importance there. New Jersey absolutely got “meaner” this off-season in particular, adding Noesen, Kovacevic, Dillon, and Paul Cotter, but they also got slower and less skilled.
One thing I’ve noticed from many parts of the Devils fanbase is that the counter-argument is “well, their moves this off-season largely worked out, whereas the problems offensively arise from the players already in the system — Palat, Erik Haula, and Dawson Mercer are more to blame.” While that notion isn’t wrong in a vacuum, as I noted above, this has been a gradual change since 2022-23, the last time the Devils got bounced in the playoffs by Carolina. Jesper Boqvist got verbally eviscerated by those same parts of the Devils fanbase and is now one of the best bottom-six centers in the league on one of the best teams in the league. The Michael McLeod absence was so obvious and predictable, and instead of solving that with a player of a similar profile, Fitzgerald sat on his hands and was more content making the rest of the team harder to play against.
Their backend is more structured now, to be sure, but there is also less puck movement up-ice. Kovacevic and Pesce have been excellent additions from a defensive standpoint, largely limiting chances against them, but they aren’t helping the Devils move the puck forward in any capacity. Add Dillon to that equation and you suddenly have four defensemen (the three listed and Siegenthaler) who are struggling to give the Devils any form of offensive breakouts. That inherently puts a ton of weight on Luke and Dougie Hamilton, whereas the great teams in the league have three or more players on the blue line who can push the puck up-ice.
Florida has Aaron Ekblad, Seth Jones, Gustav Forsling, and Nate Schmidt. Vegas has Alex Pietrangelo, Shea Theodore, Noah Hanifin, and Nic Hague. Colorado has Cale Makar, Devon Toews, Sam Girard, and Sam Malinski. Carolina has Shayne Gostisbehere, Brent Burns, Jalen Chatfield, and Dmitry Orlov. Tampa Bay has Victor Hedman, JJ Moser, and Ryan McDonagh… you get the point. Every single uber-competitive team has at least three competent puck-movers on the back-end, whereas the Devils simply don’t. Their problem is not and never has been keeping pucks out of their own net — it’s been putting them in the back of the opposition’s. A lot of that boils down to an inability to move the puck from the defensive zone forward, starting with the defense corps.
Perhaps, though, this pattern can be a boon in the offseason — the Devils should probably overreact and overcorrect to their lack of scoring.
Strength #2: Trades
Fitzgerald’s trading has always been a noticeable strength of his as well, and that is as important as anything from a general manager in charge of a perennial playoff team.
I mean, really, name a single trade that Fitzgerald has “lost.”
Sending Yegor Sharangovich and a 3rd for Toffoli? No — Sharangovich has been atrocious in Calgary from practically every perspective outside of the box score in the first season after the trade. Shipping out Zetterlund and Shakir Mukhamadullin, among a couple of other pieces for Meier? No — Zetterlund’s production was always a byproduct of playing top line, top power play minutes and isn’t even remotely close to the caliber of player Meier is, while Mukhamadullin has yet to cement a role for himself on the NHL’s weakest blueline. Sending a 2nd and Herman Traff for Brian Dumoulin? No — I was hard on that trade at first, but Dumoulin’s play has made me eat my words about it, and I’m a huge fan of the player now. The only real arguments for “losing” a trade that I can think of are sending Pavel Zacha to Boston for Erik Haula (but even that probably needed to happen for both the player and the team) and sending Zakhar Bardakhov for Kurtis MacDermid, though that to me is more a testament to his nature of over-correcting than anything else.
The fact is, Fitzgerald has a proven track record of excelling at trades. He acquired Siegenthaler for pennies. He acquired Kovacevic for pennies. He acquired Cody Glass for pennies. He acquired Jacob Markstrom for (relative) pennies. He acquired Jake Allen for pennies. There’s a reason there’s the meme about not letting Fitzgerald trade you a third-round pick.
Hell, even the minor, minor deals have been awesome for this team. Fitzgerald got Shane Lachance, who probably will be the Nate Bastian replacement, for one year of a retained salary worth $575,000.
There really is not an argument I’m willing to hear about Fitzgerald “losing” a trade, because simply put, it hasn’t happened. For a GM of a team with perennial Cup aspirations to have never lost a trade to this point is simply astounding.
The synopsis is that Fitzgerald, in my opinion, is an average NHL GM at worst. I would probably argue that he’s an above-average GM. If they weren’t in the position of a perennial playoff team, the drafting issue would be more prevalent, but with the team in an entirely different position, contracts and trades become infinitely more paramount. If you are one of the fans who believe he should truly get fired over one or two moves that have “neutered” the team, I’d encourage you to take a step back and realize that every GM makes bad moves. Every single one. It could be far, far worse.
With that in mind, though, this upcoming off-season is probably make or break for Fitzgerald. It’s crunch time.
It is. It is that bad.
Great article JP. Fitz’ drafting unfortunately going to limit this team in the long run, had he hit on even 1 of the picks in the Holtz/Nemec/Stillman trifecta we would be in the ECF every year