The biggest and most expensive signing was Brett Pesce, who signed a six-year contract for 5.5 million per season.
The twenty-nine-year-old Pesce has spent his entire nine-year career with Carolina (I could not resist using a picture of Pesce in their throwback Hartford Whalers uniforms) and played in seventy games last season, scoring three goals, and ten assists and finished with a plus ten plus-minus rating.
Pesce is excellent on the penalty kill and at 6'3, 205 pounds, has the size and strength that the Devils often lacked last season.
Pesce was consistently part of the Hurricane's second defensive pairing and will likely take his place in the second group for New Jersey.
While I really like Pesce and what he brings to the Devils at a position of need, I'm not thrilled with the six-year length of the contract but in free agency, often the cost of playing comes with an extra year or two at the end of the deal.
The Devils signed another blueliner when they signed Brenden Dillon to a three-year deal valued at twelve million.
Dillon turns thirty-four in November but is coming off the best offensive season of his career as Dillon scored a career-high eight goals with twelve assists and another career-high, plus-minus ratio of twenty with the Winnipeg Jets.
The Devils will be the fifth team in the veteran's career and brings a physical frame at 6'4, 225 pounds to New Jersey as a basic defensive defenseman.
As with the deal for Brett Pesce, it's not the player or the per-season cost that bothers me about this contract, it's the length.
Three years seems one year too long for a defenseman who will be thirty-seven for the final year of his deal and for whom skating speed isn't a strength.
The Devils made a trade to add a third defenseman as New Jersey obtained Johnathan Kovacevic for a fourth-round pick in the 2025 draft from the Montreal Canadiens.
Kovacevic played sixty-one games for Montreal last season, scoring six goals with seven assists and a plus-minus rating of plus eleven.
Kovacevic is solid moving the puck and is a two-way defender who could prove very helpful as part of the third pairing of Blueliners.
The Devils will send Montreal the highest of the three fourth-rounders they own in the 2025 draft between their own and picks from Dallas and Winnipeg.
New Jersey signed another free agent, former Devil right wing Stefan Noesen to a three-year contract at 2.75 million per year.
Noesen scored fourteen goals with twenty-three assists for Carolina last season and the thirty-one-year-old has played for six teams in his NHL career, four of those since leaving New Jersey in 2019.
Noesen plays a high-energy, physical game that plays every shift like it's his final one and he's found a scoring touch for a third or fourth (depending on the need) line winger.
I'd like this signing more if it were a two-year deal rather than a three only because players that play a hard rough style are known to break down all at once and Noesen isn't a young player.
I don't dislike any of these moves, but I do question if the Devils will look back in two years and wonder if they are getting the value they hoped when making these deals.
I think Stefan Noesen will help this season, Brett Pesce is a quality signing, and I think Johnathan Kovacevic might surprise some people this season.
I'm not sure I love Brenden Dillon's contract, which may have been buying high for an aging player who picked a great time for his best offensive season.
Tom Fitzgerald may have made decisions during his tenure that can be fairly criticized but he can't be criticized for being satisfied with standing pat.
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