What will life for the New Jersey Devils be like after Taylor Hall?

The New Jersey Devils are a hockey team in a state of flux after trading away top forward Taylor Hall. What does the team’s future look like post-Hall?

The New Jersey Devils of December look a lot different than the team we had envisioned just a mere six months ago. The Devils of the 2019 offseason were making shrewd moves to land P.K. Subban and Nikita Gusev, while selecting Jack Hughes with their second No. 1 overall pick in the NHL’s entry draft in three years. Heading into the 2019-20 season, the Devils looked to be on the rise as a team to make a possible postseason run.

Fast forward nearly halfway through the season, however, and the Devils have lost their head coach, are the NHL’s second-worst team by a large margin, sent veteran netminder Cory Schneider to the minors and have traded away the team’s star forward, Taylor Hall. The 2019-20 NHL season was not supposed to play out like this for the Devils, and yet the team has fallen flat on their faces with yet another failed season looming large.

The Devils trading away Hall to the Arizona Coyotes on Monday is likely the move that will have the biggest impact on the team in the long run. During his time with the Devils, Hall had 208 points in 211 games played over the course of three and a half seasons, winning a Hart Trophy in 2018 and dragging the team to the postseason that same year.

Hall was the player the Devils seemed likely to build around as the team assembled a young core of draft picks — Hughes and Nico Hischier — with veterans such as Kyle Palmieri and Subban to help guide the team into a new era. However, things have come apart at the seams for the Devils quite rapidly this year as the team looks to pick up the pieces of their shattered season.

While the 2019-20 NHL season is lost for the Devils, New Jersey is no doubt thinking of the team’s future plans to get back to contending with a new group of players. There’s no better place to start than looking at the trio of prospects the Devils landed in the trade that sent Hall to Arizona: Nate Schnarr, Nick Merkley and Kevin Bahl.

The three prospects all have NHL potential, with defenseman Bahl being the most exciting of the trio as a tall, hulking defender with the tools to possibly anchor a defensive pairing in the future. Schnarr and Merkley are forward prospects that have varying degrees of potential offensively, but are pieces that can be homegrown to help fill out the rest of the Devils’ roster.

As for the future of the Devils’ current lineup, the team could trade Subban — who has struggled this season on both sides of the puck — but giving up on the defender less than a year after their big trade to nab him feels like a failure waiting to happen. There are other players the Devils could trade away this season, though at this point New Jersey is unlikely going to get a major piece in return that would be of use to them.

What the Devils really need to go after, however, is a starting goaltender. Schneider was sent to the AHL in November and has not looked great during his time in the minor leagues with an .829 save percentage in four games played. MacKenzie Blackwood, the Devils current starter, is only 23-years-old and can’t be relied upon as the team’s goaltender of the future at this time. Louis Domingue is an average backup NHL netminder at best and is no where near a starter of caliber the Devils would need to build around.

For the Devils to have any sort of future success, New Jersey will need to find an above average starting goaltender who they can rely upon in the way they thought they could rely on Schneider. If a netminder can’t be found through free agency or a trade, the Devils will likely have to draft and develop one, which takes time.

Thankfully, the Devils’ young core of Hughes and Hischier down the middle means New Jersey has room to work with in terms of building up a contending team over the seasons. Finding goaltending, however, is an absolute must for a team that has blown multiple big leads over the course of the 2019-20 NHL season. Young, promising talent will only be able to get the Devils so far if their goaltending can’t help them.

Whatever path the Devils’ rebuild of sorts takes, it’s not going to be an easy one. New Jersey believed themselves to be a contender this season with the moves they made this past summer, but it was clear that was not the case. This season will be a tough pill to swallow, especially without a fan favorite in Hall, but persist they must in order to get through to the other side.

This transitionary period will be crucial to the Devils’ overall success in the future and if they can get themselves back to being touted as contenders once again. Though the team’s immediate future looks bleak without Hall on the roster, the Devils should be focused on making the right moves to secure a competitive future.