Dougie Hamilton’s future in New Jersey may be settled, but the bigger question around him is still wide open.
On Monday’s 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman said it appears increasingly unlikely the Devils are looking for other homes for the $9 million AAV defenseman. That lines up with weeks of reporting from Chris Johnston that New Jersey’s front office values Hamilton highly and would rather keep him.
So the debate is no longer whether Hamilton belongs in the mix. It’s not even really about the price tag anymore.
At $9 million per season, the answer there is a clear yes. The real issue is whether he can still be the kind of defenseman who anchors a Stanley Cup contender.
That’s a harder standard to meet.
Hamilton did make a real jump in his first season working under Brad Shaw, the Devils’ defensive assistant coach. His positioning sharpened.
His discipline jumping into the play improved. Shaw has built a reputation for getting veteran defensemen to clean up those details, and Hamilton responded with the strongest defensive numbers of his career while taking on the toughest minutes of his career.
And he did it without sacrificing his offense once he was used the way he should have been after that puzzling benching.
Still, there was a slight dip in his offensive profile from an underlying standpoint, even though he continued to lead New Jersey’s blue line in nearly every major offensive category while carrying more defensive responsibility than ever before.
That matters because Hamilton no longer fits The Athletic’s Stanley Cup checklist as a true No. 1 defenseman. That model includes “franchise defenseman” as a requirement, and it expects that type of player to post a total net rating of +12 between offensive and defensive impact.
The Devils’ top defenseman in that model was Luke Hughes, who came in at a total net rating of +3.6. Dom Luszczyszyn, who created the model, said the two were close, with Luke holding the edge offensively and Hamilton better in his own zone.
That leaves New Jersey with a pretty clear road map. At 33, Hamilton may still be worth his contract in today’s cap climate, and a new regime that believes in him could even squeeze a little more out of him. But he probably profiles better now as a No. 2 or No. 3 defenseman than as the outright driver of a contender’s blue line.
If the Devils are going to get a true No. 1 from within, it likely has to come from Luke Hughes taking a major step forward. He’s the same age as Hamilton in terms of salary structure, and the expectation now is that he starts taking over as the team’s workhorse defenseman.
There are reasons to think that could happen. Hughes will have a full training camp without contract distractions, another season and offseason of experience, and a system that could better suit his strengths and those of the roster around him. He also had a stretch after the Olympics when he looked like a real game-breaker, which makes the possibility of a breakout hard to ignore.
If Hamilton isn’t the answer at No. 1, the Devils still have a path to finding one. It just may depend on Luke Hughes becoming exactly what New Jersey needs him to be.
In Other News...
Devils Just Lost Out On A Young Center They Clearly Wanted
The Devils made a run at Barrett Hayton, but Utah moved quickly to keep the young center in place by matching New Jerseys offer sheet. Hayton stays with the Mammoth on a one-year deal carrying a $4.775 million cap hit, a sign they were not interested in letting a 25-year-old piece of their forward group walk after targeting him as part of their next step.
For New Jersey, it is another reminder of how thin the margin can be when trying to add a center through the offer-sheet route. Hayton, the former No. 5 overall pick, is expected to remain in Utahs lineup and is now off the board for the next year, leaving the Devils to keep searching for the kind of middle-six help they clearly had in mind. [Read more 🡒]