There’s a reason why you didn’t see any new defensemen signed by the New Jersey Devils this summer. The long and short of it is their blueline is simply bloated. There’s a surplus of quality defensemen when the team is fully healthy. However, the Devils will already be without a key defenseman at the start of 2025-26, which is an ironic twist when reflecting on last fall’s training camp.
READ MORE: Some Bad Luck Might Save Simon Nemec’s Devils’ Future
Johnathan Kovacevic was a diamond in the rough last year. He turned out to be one of the Devils’ most stable defensemen all season, and was continually one of the best shutdown pairings alongside Jonas Siegenthaler. But it didn’t start that way.
The belief was that Kovacevic was going to come in as a depth piece, perhaps a seventh defenseman, maybe even a candidate to spend time in the American Hockey League. Instead, he took advantage of an opportunity laid out before him.
The Devils had an open spot on the blueline as the result of injury in training camp last September. Brett Pesce wasn’t going to start the regular season as a result of a previous injury suffered as a member of the Carolina Hurricanes. Luke Hughes was also shelved to start 2024-25.
However, those spots were gobbled up by others, such as Brenden Dillon and Seamus Casey, who made himself known quickly out of training camp.
Yet, the player who Kovacevic swept the rug out from under directly was Simon Nemec.
Nemec came into training camp last fall banged up after he was recently injured as well, competing in an Olympic qualifying match for Slovakia in August 2024.
As a result, the then 20-year-old defenseman looked like a shell of his rookie self after scoring three goals and 19 points in 60 games during his first NHL season. Nemec wasn’t without his flaws, however, the lapses in Nemec’s game were bearable given the fact that the Devils weren’t playoff-bound, and he oozed a confidence that was easily identifiable and growing.
Nemec was all but penned into the 2024-25 roster, until a poor training camp and handful of games to start the season went poorly.
He spent nine games in the NHL before he was reassigned to the American Hockey League to polish his game. Even in the AHL, Nemec didn’t quite look like himself.
New Jersey Hockey Now caught up with the sophomore defenseman in February 2025, to which Nemec admitted the injury from the Olympic qualifier derailed the start of his season.
“Yeah, I was dealing with my confidence,” Nemec told NJHN. “It’s hard to get the confidence in the NHL if you’re hurt, and then you’re not playing, obviously, the big minutes, on the power play, and all that stuff.”
Once Nemec clarified what he was dealing with, and shooed away some pesky trade rumors, the Slovakian defensemen’s game began to turn the corner.
By the end of the season, the confident rookie defenseman began to show himself as a sophomore, and he even admitted healing from the injury helped a ton with his psyche.
That confidence in Nemec boiled over into the postseason, resulting in a few memorable games for the 21-year-old, including an overtime winning goal in Game 3 versus the Hurricanes.
The Devils were eventually bounced from the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. However, Nemec made his mark, and restored faith in him as the defenseman with high ceiling the Devils drafted him to be at second overall in 2020.
“Watching him the last few games of the regular season, and obviously the playoffs, you just you saw the upside,” Tom Fitzgerald said in May. “You saw what he can be. But it’s up to him right now. He’s got a huge offseason. He’s not going to worlds, he’s conditioning, and his off ice training will start soon. We’ll monitor that from here, and have people over there visiting him, but it was very encouraging. So we’re real happy for him.”
So, the irony here? As the result of injury, Kovacevic stole a spot in the Devils’ lineup last fall and never looked back. Going into this fall, Nemec has the same opportunity, to steal the spot back as it appears Kovacevic is going to be shelved for the beginning of the 2025-26 season.
The plethora of defenseman in New Jersey is a good problem to have. And Nemec playing his way into a full-time role is a development Fitzgerald and head coach Sheldon Keefe are hoping for.
The opportunity is there for Nemec. It’s up to him to take it.
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James is the New Jersey Devils beat reporter for New Jersey Hockey Now on Sportsnaut and the PHWAs New … More about James Nichols
