SUNRISE, FLORIDA - JUNE 24: Sunny Mehta and Bryan McCabe of the Florida Panthers celebrate their Stanley Cup victory in Game Seven of the 2024 NHL Stanley Cup Final at Amerant Bank Arena on June 24, 2024 in Sunrise, Florida. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Good evening.

Nothing but blue skies and Sunny days ahead.

Jersey, we brought Sunny home.

📰: https://t.co/wpT2ELjjhg pic.twitter.com/OqtxOnMgNL
— New Jersey Devils (@NJDevils) April 16, 2026

Please react to the news below! And check out Jared’s article from yesterday where he reviewed Mehta’s candidacy. We will be back in a couple hours with a further breakdown of where the team is going from here.

Better times are ahead.

11:15 PM EDT update below

This hire certainly happened a lot quicker than I was expecting. However, with the New Jersey Devils needing to make tough decisions around the front office and behind the bench this offseason, I think it needed to happen quickly. Had Mehta been hired two weeks from now, the coaching market might look different than it does now, or it at least would have taken him longer to make evaluations of the remaining staff. The sooner Mehta can get to work, solidify his staff, and prepare for the NHL Draft and contract negotiations, the better.

Of course, many in the online Devils sphere have been calling for Sunny Mehta for awhile. Some have been banging the drum all season, and some for even longer. John, in his final post for All About the Jersey, mentioned Mehta by name twice while writing about how the Devils should be building their roster. Tim mentioned Mehta first among non-traditional General Manager candidates in February. Jackson also did so a couple weeks later. Looking back at the mentions of Mehta in AATJ articles, this was the first, by Nate in a Devils in the Details:

The Devils have hired former professional poker player Sunny Mehta to head their new analytics department. YES! [Fire and Ice]

Needless to say, this has been a long time coming. And some of his work while working with the Devils then was pretty impressive! Jared wrote yesterday,

While with the Devils in 2016, Mehta’s model had Jesper Bratt ranked as the #3 player in that year’s draft class. Fast forward a decade later and only four players from that class have had more points in the NHL than Bratt….#1 overall pick Auston Matthews, former lottery picks Matthew Tkachuk and Clayton Keller, and second rounder Alex DeBrincat.
Bratt went 162nd overall in the draft that season.

With the Devils in serious need of not just people who are capable of identifying hidden talent, but people in decision-making roles who seek out the bold move, this puts me at ease for the upcoming Draft. While Mehta has not worked with the New Jersey scouting department up to this point, that might not be a terrible thing. He has been working as an Assistant General Manager for the Florida Panthers, and I am sure he has kept tabs on the 2026 Draft Class in his own right. He will take his analytical mindset to the Draft, and his decisions on the roster will be driven much more by established and significant data than vibes and feelings of what a real hockey team looks like.

In his 6 seaons w/ the Florida Panthers, Mehta worked closely with coaching staffs & scouts on trade deadlines, free-agent evaluations & amateur scouting. He's regarded as one of the NHL's early and most influential analytics executives https://t.co/ddaLPnSbtX
— Mike Morreale (@mikemorrealeNHL) April 17, 2026

But do not be fooled into thinking that Sunny Mehta has his eyes glued to an Excel sheet and does not know anything about the game of hockey being played on the ice. He is not just a poker player turned hockey executive. He is a New Jersey native. He is a Devils fan. He was there when the Devils were not just good, but a dynasty. He knows what good hockey looks like.

#NJDevils GM Sunny Mehta: "This is a dream come true for a New Jersey kid."

Full statement from the press release: pic.twitter.com/SyXSUQoom7
— Amanda Stein (@amandacstein) April 16, 2026

You might still be wondering: surely, the Devils will hire a more traditional President of Hockey Operations, right? Well, according to Ryan Novozinsky (who is leaving the Devils beat), Sunny Mehta has the “decision-making power in hockey ops,” meaning they will not hire anyone with him to guide him in his role.

Sunny Mehta is the one hire, I'm told. So no two-person structure up top for the #NJDevils.

He has the decision making power in hockey ops.https://t.co/8zJh4ernJe
— Ryan Novozinsky (@ryannovoNHL) April 16, 2026

Perhaps this was a request by Mehta in negotiations, who might not want to be in the shadow of a former player or NHL legend, such as Brenden Shanahan, who was linked to the Devils in rumors for that role. Perhaps the Devils valued the fact that Mehta has already been an Assistant General Manager for a few years, and that he has been in front offices for 12. Or, maybe, the two-headed operation rumor was just a rumor, and the Devils had no intention of doing something like that after Tom Fitzgerald was fired. I could have seen them keeping him around in a President, but I think the idea loses most of its utility when expanding the field of candidates. Having a GM who is comfortably implementing their vision was always the most important aspect of this search, and someone else in the President role could complicate that. So, I am rather unbothered by this particular development.

Mehta is scheduled to be introduced at Prudential Center on Tuesday at 3 p.m. I assume it would have been Monday, but Bruce Springsteen is scheduled that evening at The Rock so it'll be a tad busy in Newark.
— Mike Morreale (@mikemorrealeNHL) April 17, 2026

When Sunny is introduced to Devils fans next week, I hope that he lays out a vision for the team. He already mentioned in his first statement that he believes the Devils have a good, young core. Knowing that he built his career in hockey through analytics, I highly doubt that he is going to be someone who wants to move Nico Hischier for an older, likely declining player or a winger. The Devils still have one of the best top six center duos in the league, and Sunny does not read to me like a guy who would give that up for a mere identity change. Rather, he seems like someone who is going to look for players to match Nico Hischier’s and Jack Hughes’s skills. (Never mind that Nico takes a million faceoffs and takes a ton of contact in those dots, and that he is one of the most prolific board battle winners in the league, for those advocating for a Tkachuk trade.) Additionally, I would expect the answers on the blueline and in net to be largely driven by analytic profiles.

Still, Mehta was a fan of the 1990s and 2000s Devils and has helped build the present-day Florida Panthers roster. I would expect him to keep the roster plenty capable of handling themselves in the physical game. The way I see Sunny, given his time in Florida, is someone who can find the players who can handle the NHL game while having solid analytic profiles. There is a balance to skill, athleticism, and physicality that is needed for players to reach their full potential in the league, and Mehta seems to understand that.

Too often, the Devils teams of the last three years have seemed imbalanced. Jack Hughes only just recently started playing on a line, with Jesper Bratt and Connor Brown, where both wingers can keep up with his speed and decision making. Too often, one of his wings just has not fit on the line well. Ondrej Palat’s struggles were well-documented. Fitzgerald gave a good shot with Tyler Toffoli, but his much-slower pace made that line a bit suboptimal (and looking back, to this point, Toffoli probably should have played with Hischier, who does not always want to go at a breakneck pace). Erik Haula slowed down too much to play a top six wing role. And Timo Meier has not been a fit there, either.

The problems have only been worse in the bottom six, except this season when Arseny Gritsyuk and Cody Glass got hot down the stretch. The third and fourth lines of the last few years have generally lacked identities, often reduced to just trying to play survival hockey, which came to a head this season when Paul Cotter and Luke Glendening had some of the worst defensive results in the league among fourth lines. I would expect to see lines that look like they are playing on the same team as 13 and 86. I would expect to see wingers who are defensively responsible enough to allow players like Luke Hughes, Dougie Hamilton, and Simon Nemec to play aggressively in the offensive zone. If you feel like 2022-23 was the last time the Devils had a bottom six with an identity, I think you might be relieved soon. I might not think Mehta will build a roster as focused on grit as someone like Jamie Langenbrunner, but the days of bottom six floaters who play to pray that they can block shots at a standstill in the defensive zone should be well-behind us.

With that, I look forward to Tuesday’s conference.

Simon Nemec

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