According to Devils General Manager Sunny Metha, the Devils should feel encouraged about two key players regarding their futures in New Jersey.
Metha, at a season ticket holder Q&A event, was asked for an update on the status of both Nico Hischier and Arseny Gritsyuk and where their extensions were at between both the team and player camps. He established that he is ‘pretty encouraged by developments on both those fronts.’
First off, Hischier, as previously understood by Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic, was in the right direction regarding the extension of the Devils’ former No. 1 overall pick from the 2017 NHL Draft. While he was competing in and for his home country of Switzerland at the 2026 IIHF World Championships, his agent, Allain Roy, made a pit stop to meet with the Devils’ new general manager about Hischier and his future in red and black.
Metha, who had been with New Jersey as their Director of Analytics when the Devils drafted Hischier, revealed he’s spoken with his agent and Hischier himself multiple times in his short tenure as GM since LeBrun’s rumblings. The 27-year-old has a year left on his current contract, which was a seven-year deal signed back in 2020-21, and will ultimately add up to $50.75MM ($7.25MM AAV) in earnings at the end of this upcoming season. He finished last year scoring 28 goals for 66 points in his first 82-game season since his rookie campaign in 2017. Playing 400 games total on this particular contract, he’s amassed 353 points and has seen two playoff runs in 2023 and 2025, adding 11 points in 17 postseason games.
On the subject of Gritsyuk, from a report by James Nichols of New Jersey Hockey Now, both sides are progressing towards a multi-year extension, which, in the case of the rookie, is what his camp prefers.
The 25-year-old Russian finished his first NHL season, giving New Jersey the depth scoring it needed. His 13 goals for 31 points in 66 games nearly produced a half a point per game pace. He was first on the entire 2025-26 Devils roster in cost-per-point, averaging $30K for every tally on the scoresheet, and ended up fourth on the team in relative expected goals for%.
Gritsyuk ideally wants more than two years on his second NHL contract, which comes quickly after his first North American deal as a one-year, entry-level contract paying $925K. The Devils’ forward group has an intriguing future outlook, with mainstay players like Timo Meier, Jack Hughes, and Jesper Bratt all inked to long-term deals through 2031. However, Hischier is a part of six out of the remaining eight forward contracts listed that all end in 2027-28 (aside from Connor Brown, whose $3MM cap hit goes until 2030, and Lenni Hameenaho, a 21-year-old, who has two years on his entry-level contract at $972.5K a season).
If Metha’s encouragement leads to multi-year extensions for both Hischier and Gritsyuk, it would be a huge step forward for the new GM as he enters his first offseason behind the wheel in New Jersey. The Devils hold around $10.9M in cap space this offseason and have around $46MM in cap space to work with on the average salary of Hischier’s new contract, which would kick in next summer before he becomes an unrestricted free agent.
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