What type of players does Mehta want on the Devils?

The New Jersey Devils are entering a new era. With the recent hiring of first-time general manager Sunny Mehta, the Devils are hoping to turn around a franchise that has won just one playoff series in the last 14 years. Not everything in New Jersey will change, as star players such as Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier figure to remain as fixtures, but the team will certainly embark on a new direction under Mehta.

The question becomes, what type of team is Mehta intent on building? We can make educated guesses based on his time as an assistant GM with the Florida Panthers, but until he’s the one with final say, we won’t know for sure.

On Thursday’s episode of The Sheet, host Jeff Marek was joined by Mehta to discuss the qualities he’ll look for in players as the Devils’ GM.

Jeff Marek: What are the characteristics that you would see for players that you say “This player could be a New Jersey Devil”?

Sunny Mehta: I don’t know that for me it’s necessarily a stylistic thing. I’m pretty matter-of-fact that the point in hockey is to win, and you win by outscoring the other team. You can do that by allowing fewer goals and you can do that by scoring more goals. Frankly, what I want is to outscore the other team. I want players that help us outscore the other team. I want a roster full of players that, in the aggregate, outscore other teams.

I think there’s a lot of different ways to do that, I don’t think there is one way to do that. We had a pretty idiosyncratic style in Florida, obviously, but I don’t think that’s the only way to win. We’ve seen that. The Chicago Blackhawks under Joel Quenneville and that group played a certain way, Tampa Bay played a completely different style than us and they won two Stanley Cups, so for me it’s less about style and it’s more about the end result, which is that I want to win.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Thursday’s episode here…