New Jersey Devils general manager Sunny Mehta has spent his first two months on the job proving that he has no interest in a quiet offseason, and his latest move might be the boldest one yet. The Devils have officially tendered a one-year offer sheet worth $4,775,000 to Utah Mammoth center Barrett Hayton, a restricted free agent move that immediately puts pressure on Utah’s front office and adds another layer to what has already been an eventful stretch of roster building for Mehta and his staff. Under section 10.3 of the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement, Utah now has seven days to decide whether to match New Jersey’s offer and keep Hayton on its own roster, or let him walk to New Jersey in exchange for a second-round draft pick as compensation. True to form for a front office trying to stay disciplined during a sensitive negotiation window, the Devils have said they will hold off on any further public comment until Utah makes its decision.
The 26-year-old Hayton brings a genuinely useful two-way profile to whichever roster he ends up on next season. He posted 25 points on 10 goals and 15 assists across 67 games with Utah last year, chipping in four power-play goals along the way, while also setting a career high with 54 penalty minutes, a sign of the physical edge he plays with alongside his offensive contributions. He got a brief taste of postseason hockey too, appearing in one game during Utah’s run in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Since making his NHL debut with the Arizona franchise back on October 10, 2019, the 6-foot-1, 200-pound left-handed center has built a career line of 155 points across 358 games, having played parts of four seasons in Arizona before the franchise’s relocation and rebrand into the Utah Mammoth. Whether Hayton ends up staying put or landing in New Jersey, the move underscores just how aggressively Mehta has been willing to use every tool available to him, including one of the league’s rarer roster maneuvers, in service of reshaping this roster on his own terms.
That aggressiveness has been on full display well beyond the Hayton pursuit, with New Jersey locking up a string of depth pieces over the same stretch, several of them tied directly to the trades Mehta has already made this offseason. Goaltender Jakub Malek’s new two-year contract stood out among the group, both for what it signals about the organization’s confidence in a player just completing his first professional season in North America and for the very team-friendly structure attached to it. Malek will earn $850,000 at the NHL level in 2026-27 alongside $175,000 on the AHL side, before stepping up to $900,000 and $275,000, with $300,000 guaranteed, in the second year of the deal. The 24-year-old netminder split last season between Utica of the AHL, where he went 13-14-5 with a .895 save percentage and three shutouts across 31 games, and a brief two-game stint with ECHL affiliate Adirondack. After signing his original entry-level deal with New Jersey back on May 30, 2024, Malek spent the following season on loan with Ilves in Finland’s Liiga, where he strung together a genuinely strong 15-11-6 record with a .910 save percentage. That Finnish loan season followed two full seasons already logged with Ilves, including a standout 2023-24 campaign in which Malek ranked among the league’s top winners and finished sixth in save percentage league-wide, numbers that helped carry Ilves into the postseason. Before his time in Finland, Malek spent parts of four seasons with VHK Vsetín in Czechia’s second-tier league, capped by a 2021-22 season so strong it earned him Best Junior and Best Goaltender honors along with an All-Star Team selection, an underlying track record that goes a long way toward explaining why New Jersey wanted this deal locked in early. Born in Kromeriz, Czechia, Malek was New Jersey’s lone goaltender selection in the 2021 NHL Draft, taken as the seventh netminder off the board that year.
Ben Steeves, one of the pieces New Jersey acquired in the trade that sent Jacob Markstrom to Florida, has already been folded into the organization’s plans with a fresh one-year, two-way contract worth $850,000 at the NHL level and $150,000 in the AHL. Steeves arrived in New Jersey as part of the same June 30 deal that brought in Evan Rodrigues and Jesper Boqvist in exchange for Markstrom and forward Angus Crookshank, joining the Devils just two days after Florida had tendered him a qualifying offer as a restricted free agent. The 24-year-old winger spent his last two-plus seasons with Florida’s AHL affiliate in Charlotte, putting up 45 points on 23 goals and 22 assists last season to go with a physical 100 penalty minutes. Steeves signed with Florida as an undrafted free agent back in March of 2024 following a standout run at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where he scored 62 points in just 72 collegiate games and earned multiple NCHC all-star recognitions along the way, a résumé that suggests New Jersey inherited a genuinely productive depth prospect as part of the Markstrom deal.
Amadeus Lombardi, another name that has quickly become part of Mehta’s broader philosophy around finding value in undervalued players, has also signed a new two-year contract with New Jersey, structured as a two-way deal worth $850,000 at the NHL level and $175,000 in the AHL for 2026-27, before converting to a one-way contract worth $900,000 the following season. New Jersey originally acquired the 23-year-old center from Detroit on June 25 in exchange for a fourth-round draft pick, pulling him away from an organization where he had spent three full seasons developing with Grand Rapids in the AHL. Lombardi put together back-to-back productive seasons there, tallying 42 points last year and 40 the year before, building toward a career AHL line of 109 points across 163 regular-season games, along with reliable postseason appearances in each of his three years with the Griffins. Born in Newmarket, Ontario, Lombardi was originally a fourth-round pick by Detroit in the 2022 NHL Draft, having previously torched the Ontario Hockey League with Flint, where his 102-point season in 2022-23 ranked third in the entire league in scoring.
Rounding out this stretch of roster moves, New Jersey also added veteran goaltender David Rittich on a one-year, one-way contract worth $1,000,000, giving the organization a genuinely experienced presence to pair alongside its younger goaltending prospects. The 33-year-old Rittich spent last season as the primary backup for the New York Islanders, starting 28 of his 30 appearances and posting a 14-10-3 record with a 2.76 goals-against average and .894 save percentage, marking his fourth consecutive season and seventh career season appearing in at least 20 NHL games. Across a decade in the league split between Calgary, Toronto, Nashville, Winnipeg, Los Angeles, and the Islanders, Rittich has compiled a 122-81-29 record with nine career shutouts, with his best individual season coming back in 2018-19 with Calgary, when he posted a career-high 27 wins and represented the Flames at that year’s NHL All-Star Game. A native of Jihlava, Czechia, Rittich also has international experience representing his home country at the 2018 IIHF World Championship.
Taken together, these moves reflect the same underlying strategy Mehta has described openly since taking the job, a combination of scouting and analytical evaluation aimed at identifying value that other organizations either overlooked or could no longer accommodate on their own rosters. Whether it’s a restricted free agent offer sheet aimed squarely at a divisional rival, a cost-controlled extension for a young goaltender coming off a breakout stretch overseas, or a series of team-friendly deals for players acquired via trade, the through line across all of these transactions is a front office unwilling to sit still. With Utah’s seven-day window on the Hayton offer sheet now ticking and a full slate of new contracts already signed and sealed, New Jersey’s roster is continuing to take shape in real time, and Mehta has made clear he considers the job itself never truly finished, no matter how busy any single stretch of the offseason has already been.
