Devils GM Sunny Mehta: Anything Short of Stanley Cup Will Disappoint

Sunny Mehta, general manager of the New Jersey Devils, says any improvement on last season will count as a success, but that he will be disappointed with anything short of the Stanley Cup.

The Devils missed the playoffs last season. Mehta worked for the Florida Panthers from 2020 to 2026, three of those years as assistant general manager, and he sees a likeness between his present job and the way the champion Florida side was put together.

Asked which of Florida's methods would work in New Jersey and what would have to change, he began with the players.

"The main difference is in the players themselves," Mehta said. "Jack Hughes plays differently from Aleksander Barkov. Nico Hischier is somewhat similar, but he is unique in his own way. Matthew Tkachuk is not like anybody else. Every core has its own strengths."

The likeness, he said, is in the starting point. "When we began work in Florida, the key players were already there: Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, Aaron Ekblad, Sergei Bobrovsky. Here we have Jack, Nico and Jesper Bratt. The task is to surround them with enough good players to build an effective team. You have to identify talent, manage the salary cap well and find players on favourable contracts. Florida did very well on that front with Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Gustav Forsling and Carter Verhaeghe. Some luck was needed as well."

Mehta named four New Jersey acquisitions as the same kind of work: Amadeus Lombardi, Declan Chisholm, Luke Evangelista and Anthony Mantha. "It is a similar process, even if the teams will play in a different style," he said.

This may mean the Devils' season will be judged on how much those four add around Hughes, Hischier and Bratt, since that is the part of the Florida model Mehta himself points to.