New Jersey Devils fans may not have given Riley Tufte much of a second glance when he arrived this offseason, and the resume explains why. The former Boston Bruins forward has appeared in only 28 NHL games across five seasons, with three goals, one assist and a minus-7 rating. On paper, that’s not the profile of a player who jumps off the page.
But Tufte does bring one thing that keeps him in the conversation: size. At 6-foot-6 and 234 pounds, he fits the mold of a heavy bottom-six winger who can handle the grind of that role.
He has also produced in the AHL, including a breakout 2025-26 season with the Providence Bruins, when he scored 32 goals and added 24 assists. He’s not going to be a 30-goal NHL scorer, but the idea is that a player with that kind of minor-league scoring touch can sometimes settle in as a useful depth forward who chips in 10 to 15 goals.
The real question for the Devils is whether Tufte can make that jump, and his time in Boston offers two very different readings.
When he signed with the Bruins ahead of the 2024-25 season, he looked like the kind of player Boston tends to like: big, physical, and capable of pushing for a roster spot in camp. The Bruins gave him only six NHL games that season, though he did post 42 points in 58 AHL games.
The next season brought a much clearer obstacle. Don Sweeney loaded up on bottom-six options, bringing in Tanner Jeannot, Michael Eyssimont, Sean Kuraly, Alex Steeves and later Lukas Reichel. That left Tufte with little room to force his way in, especially with a two-way deal that made it easy to keep him in the minors.
He did get a brief NHL look because of injuries, skating in four games and scoring once. But when the lineup got healthy, he was back in Providence.
That’s where the hopeful Devils case starts: maybe Boston never really gave him a fair shot. But the counterpoint is hard to ignore. The Bruins had him in the building in 2024-25 and still chose to spend heavily on other bottom-six forwards rather than hand him a bigger role.
And there’s another wrinkle. Don Sweeney and Cam Neely have always liked big power forwards.
They would rather make room for that type of player than for smaller, more skilled options. If Tufte couldn’t win them over in Boston, there’s no guarantee he’ll suddenly do it in New Jersey.
In Other News...
Quinn Hughes Just Got More Expensive For Devils Fans
Cale Makars new eight-year extension with the Avalanche did more than reset the top of the defenseman market. It also put a fresh price tag on the kind of player Quinn Hughes is likely to become when his current contract runs down, which matters plenty in New Jersey given the Devils long-running interest in adding a true franchise blue-liner to their core.
Hughes has one more season left on his current deal, and the expectation is that his next negotiation will land in the same stratosphere as Makars. The Devils do have cap space lined up for the 2026-27 season, so the accounting can work, but the bigger question is still the same one hovering over any Hughes watch: whether he ends up staying put or becomes the kind of swing piece that could reshape the market for a team like New Jersey. [Read more 🡒]
Ilya Kovalchuk Still Sparks One Devils Debate Fans Never Settled
Ilya Kovalchuk still occupies a peculiar place in Devils history, the kind of player who can be remembered as both a brief burst of offensive firepower and a lingering source of frustration. In three and a half seasons in New Jersey, he was everything the team hoped for when it committed to him, a prolific scorer who led the club in goals in 2010-11 and gave the roster a star turn during an era that often needed one.
But the debate around Kovalchuk never really ended because his Devils run ended so abruptly. He signed the massive 15-year, $100 million contract, then left after the 2012-13 season to play in Russia and never came back, with 12 years still left on that deal. Even now, his place in the franchise record book is hard to reconcile with the memory he left behind, since he ranks 44th in career points and is not viewed as one of the top five forwards in team history. [Read more 🡒]
Devils Prospect Mikhail Yegorov Is Already Framing His Case For The Future
Mikhail Yegorov is already thinking like a pro, even while hes still at Boston University. The Devils prospect and goaltender has launched a website built around his performance, giving fans and evaluators a deeper look at his game than the usual box score can offer. The platform tracks more than 150 metrics from every game of the 2025-26 season, and Yegorov plans to keep it rolling throughout his college career.
For New Jersey, it is another sign that the 2024 draft pick is not only talented but also unusually intentional about how he presents his development. Goaltenders can be hard to read from the outside, which is part of what makes this so interesting for the Devils as they watch his progression at the college level. The broader story is still unfolding, but Yegorov has clearly decided to put his case for the future in plain view. [Read more 🡒]