Are the New Jersey Devils This Year’s NHL Futures Darlings?

The National Hockey League season is officially underway, sort of. Most of the league is technically still wrapping up their preseason, but for the New Jersey Devils and Buffalo Sabres, the regular season officially got underway on Friday and Saturday as they played a pair of games in Prague, Czechia as part of the league’s Global Series.

The result was pretty one-sided, as the Devils wasted no time and picked up 4-1 and 3-1 victories against former New Jersey head coach Lindy Ruff and his old-is-new current squad. While two games is too early to create new conclusions in the league, it’s enough of a taste to make you wonder if some summer thoughts might come to fruition – and for me, that’s the possibility that the Devils could be a big time team on the awards front, and as such, the betting markets.

We already touched on this a bit in our Metropolitan Division Preview, and loosely in some of our awards posts throughout the year, but let’s take a look at a few interesting picks that are available in connection with the team.

Strong Picks

• Sheldon Keefe to win Jack Adams Award (+650, bet365 or Northstar Bets) – As we talked about in our Jack Adams primer this summer, Keefe checks a lot of the boxes for a winner. The Devils are projected to be among the leaders in year-over-year points improvement this season, they’ve greatly improved their situation in goal, and Keefe has historically been one of the best coaches in recent history at succeeding in the regular season. The biggest thing he needs now is the narrative, and an early NHL.com “experts” poll has him as the preseason front-runner, so we can assume the writers are on his side. Technically, they aren’t the ones voting, but they’re adjacent to those who are – the NHL Broadcast Association.
• New Jersey Devils over 101.5 points (-130, Sports Interaction) – The Devils’ line is a little bit lower than it was last year, due to the struggles they had in 2023/24. But all signs point to that being unlikely to repeat – the team was unluckier than most with injuries, and their biggest positions of weakness have been addressed over the summer. While the line of 101.5 is one of the higher ones in the league, it’s not an incredibly gaudy number – 102 would’ve been 10th overall last year, and 12th the year before. That’s very achievable.

Interesting Picks

• Jacob Markstrom to win Vezina Trophy (+1000, bet365) – A lot goes into winning the Vezina Trophy, including performance, availability, and a good storyline. Markstrom has been among the league’s best for many years and had a few runs at the Top Goaltender award in the past, including a 10th-place finish in 2019, a 4th-place finish in 2020, and a runner-up position in 2022. He was stellar in his Devils debut, stopping 30 of 31 and making an early save-of-the-year candidate. My biggest concern is that the 35-year-old might not play the heavy workload needed to have big win totals, which does still catch the eye of voters.
• Jack Hughes to win Hart Memorial Trophy (+1200, Northstar Bets) – Hughes was a player that I thought had the potential to make a run at this award last year. His 43-goal, 99-point season in 2022/23 showed the level of upside that the 23-year-old has to his game, and had he played a full, healthy year last season, he very well may have been in the mix. Alas, the injury bug hit him as much as anyone on the Devils roster, and he had to settle for “just” 74 points in 62 games. Not quite McDavid, MacKinnon, Kucherov and Matthews numbers, but still pretty lethal for a player recovering from a shoulder injury on a team that had everything go wrong for them last year. Especially given that last year’s four best players now all have a Hart to their name, a big year could put him in contention.
• New Jersey Devils to win Metropolitan Division (+225, Sports Interaction) – The “Metro” is a tough beast to win, given that you have to get through the Carolina Hurricanes and New York Rangers to get there. But the Devils feel like they could be the best of the pack, and improved their roster over the summer while the other two could be argued to have regressed. While a leap from seventh to first feels crazy to predict, it’s important to remember that just two years ago, the Devils were one point shy of winning the division, and had the highest goal differential in the Metro.

Stranger Things Have Happened

• Dougie Hamilton to win Norris Trophy (+5000, bet365) – This one is similar to the Markstrom for Vezina thought, in the sense that Hamilton isn’t a Tier 1 contender, but he’s in the mix and has a good narrative arc behind him. The 31-year-old missed 62 games to injury last season, after a 74-point campaign in 2022/23 where he put up strong possession numbers. It feels weird that he’s never been in the Norris conversation up to this point, but if he can have a year like he did two seasons ago, the “don’t know what you have until it’s gone” factor could lead to a big push. Having some help in Luke Hughes and Brett Pesce (though both are starting the year injured) will certainly help lift the whole group up, and give Hamilton in particular a chance to lean into his strengths. I wouldn’t call him my top favourite, but I like him more than 50-to-1 at this point.
• New Jersey Devils To Win Stanley Cup (+1100, Sports Interaction) – Look, it’s hard to pick a Stanley Cup winner eight hours before the last game of the season, let alone eight months. So much luck is involved, and there are a lot of great teams out there. To do it this early and pick a team that finished 23rd last year seems crazy, right? Well, not as crazy as it seems. The core of Hughes (x2), Hamilton, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt was already enticing, but the adds of Markstrom (and backup Jake Allen), and Brett Pesce are a huge bolstering to the group. Players like Jonathan Kovacevic and the return of Tomas Tatar are sneaky adds to provide depth. Keefe has yet to prove himself in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but he’s had success throughout his career in winter and spring. There’s a reason the sportsbooks have catapulted them to near the top of their order.