Process will be more important than results for Mehta’s Devils
The New Jersey Devils are beginning a new era with a man who’s bringing in a new outlook on what he wants from his team.
The Devils hired former Florida Panthers assistant general manager Sunny Mehta to become the sixth GM in franchise history. The hometown product helped Bill Zito build a roster in Sunrise that won back-to-back Stanley Cups.
Now, he looks to revitalize the team he grew up cheering for, as the Devils are coming off a disappointing 2025-26 campaign. However, Mehta expresses that he isn’t taking a “win-now” approach, rather orchestrating a long-term process that’ll set the franchise up for success for years to come.
On Thursday’s edition of The Sheet, Mehta joined host Jeff Marek to explain that sticking to the plan will be more important than wins right off the top.
Sunny Mehta: In the end, you care about the result. Everyone cares about the result. I guess I would say that in part because of the things that I my path to get to where I am and the things that I’ve done in my life the last 20 years or whatever, and including the last, well, probably 25 years or whatever, but including the last 15 years even in hockey, I think I’m a little bit probably different than most in terms of really, really trying to focus on the process and really trying to ignore short-term results if I feel that there’s nothing predictive in them.
I think even if you probably talk to some of my colleagues in Florida, they would laugh about my demeanor when watching games and things like that. For example, I can remember people constantly asked me how nervous I was during the first time we won the Stanley Cup in that series that went seven games against Edmonton, and I can honestly recall that I really wasn’t that nervous. Part of the reason was because, I remember thinking, ‘Well, prior to the series, we had about a 57% chance to win.’ We won Game 1. It went up to probably 67%. Game 2, we won. It went up to 77. We went up to Game 3. It probably went up to somewhere around 89, something like that. Each step of the way it was just a continuum where I saw that probability never hitting 100 and never going to zero. … So, I guess my brain just wouldn’t let me get ‘too nervous’ or too far away from thinking in that way. I guess it’s just hard for me not to think in that way because it’s ingrained in me.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…