NHL’s New Jersey Devils Part Ways With GM / President Tom Fitgerald

With five games remaining in the 2025-26 NHL season, the New Jersey Devils announced that they've ended their relationship with their general manager and president of hockey operations, Tom Fitzgerald. (Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images) NHLI via Getty Images There’s an unusual pattern forming in the NHL. Coaches are losing their jobs on Sundays and general managers on Mondays.

One week after the Toronto Maple Leafs cut ties with GM Brad Treliving, the New Jersey Devils followed suit on Easter Monday. In a statement, managing partner David Blitzer announced that the team had decided to move forward without GM and hockey operations president Tom Fitzgerald. After a 1,097-game playing career as a forward, Fitzgerald, now 57, got his start in management with the Pittsburgh Penguins organization in 2007.

After eight seasons, he moved to New Jersey in 2015 in tandem with the former Penguins GM, the late Ray Shero in 2015. Fitzgerald served as an assistant general manager in New Jersey and GM of the AHL Albany/Binghamton Devils for four and a half seasons. When Shero was fired in January of 2020, he was elevated to interim GM, with franchise legend Martin Brodeur serving as a hockey operations advisor.

Six months later, Fitzgerald was promoted to full-time GM, then added the president of hockey operations title in 2024. Under Fitzgerald’s watch, the Devils made the playoffs twice, in 2023 and 2025. After setting a franchise record with 112 points in the 2022-23 season and then following up with a thrilling seven-game first-round win against their arch-rivals, the New York Rangers, the team looked like it was charting a course toward perennial contender status.