​Prior to the Devils hiring Sunny Mehta as general manager, I compiled a list of the pressing matters that needed to be tended to before the incoming GM could actually get to work and try to improve this hockey team.By now, most of those things have indeed been tended to. The Devils are retaining Sheldon Keefe as head coach. Nico Hischier has been re-signed. Simon Nemec’s situation has been resolved in the sense that trading him to the Calgary Flames made his new contract their concern and not the Devils’ concern moving forward. They even managed to move off of Jacob Markstrom’s contract.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBy moving off of Nemec and Markstrom and bringing in versatile forwards like Evan Rodrigues and Jesper Boqvist, the Devils have set themselves up to do something, even though they haven’t actually gone and done it already. They tried to get Barrett Hayton via offer sheet, but that didn’t work out as Utah matched it. They have the two extra first round picks to work with from the Nemec trade and a projected $36M in cap space for 2027-28, a figure that includes Hischier’s new deal.On paper, its a much better situation than the one Mehta inherited.But are they actually better than they were last season?Puckmarks put out an interesting tweet last week where they estimated how many new wins above replacement each team added this offseason. The Devils are surprisingly high on the list, adding 2.1 WAR. That is good for 4th best in the NHL this offseason.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat’s all well and good, but the three teams ahead of them? All division rivals. Washington, New York Rangers, and Philadelphia. And most of the teams directly behind the Devils on that list also play in the Eastern Conference.The Flyers were in the playoffs last season and won a playoff series. The Capitals are a popular pick to return to the playoffs after missing last season. And the other team is the Rangers, but admittedly, the moves they’ve made were designed to remove them from being one of the four worst teams in the NHL like they were this past season. The Rangers might still be bad, but they should be better than they were.The arms race is officially on in the NHL, particularly in a deep Eastern Conference that saw the previous year’s Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers miss the playoffs, but you know they’ll be back with a vengeance. It’s a conference where the Devils finished 13th of the 16 teams one season ago. The Devils are a team that finished 11 points out of the final playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division. Never mind that they finished 26 points behind the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes. Carolina remains the standard in the division, and the Devils have yet to prove they have the answers to solving the mystery of why Carolina has owned them for years now.Making the playoffs is one thing. Showing you’re capable of going on a run once you get there is another thing entirely.AdvertisementAd