The Devils made a simple swap on the wing Tuesday, bringing Connor Brown back from injured reserve and sending Stefan Noesen down to the AHL’s Utica Comets.
Brown’s return comes after he missed New Jersey’s first eight games of the season with a lower-body injury suffered in preseason. He was placed on injured reserve retroactively on September 28th, and now the 32-year-old is set to rejoin the lineup after opening the 2026-27 campaign on the shelf.
Brown, a former sixth-round pick, is in the second season of a four-year, $12MM deal with a $3MM average annual value that he signed with the Devils ahead of the 2025-26 season. Last year, he gave New Jersey the kind of depth scoring it needed, finishing with 18 goals and 43 points in 75 games while posting a -1 rating and logging 17:33 of ice time per night.
That kind of workload probably won’t be there this season if he stays healthy. The Devils have him back now, but the hope is that his role looks different than it did a year ago.
Noesen is headed the other direction after clearing waivers on October 9th, despite being on a one-way contract. That means he still has a ways to go before he’s waiver-eligible again.
Still, the demotion doesn’t erase the fact that Noesen played well after coming back to New Jersey on October 12th. In three games, he put up one goal and three points, finished at +2, and averaged about 12 minutes a night. During his earlier stint with Utica, he went scoreless in his only game there.
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The cost, of course, would be steep, and the framework being discussed would force the Devils to make a real judgment call on their future. Dawson Mercer, Seamus Casey, Brenden Dillon and a 2027 first-round pick is the sort of package that can reshape a roster in one swing, which is why this sort of rumor always lands so heavily in New Jersey. The upside is easy to see, but the bigger question is how much of the current core the Devils would be willing to sacrifice to land a player of Larkins caliber. [Read more 🡒]