Devils fans will love Sunny Mehta. To succeed as GM, he might become unpopular in a hurry.
New Devils GM Sunny Mehta won’t let his love of the team stop him from making some difficult and unpopular decisions.
Sunny Mehta introduced himself to Devils fans on Tuesday afternoon with a fantastic quote: “I have been you for 40 years. ” This is not an exaggeration. The team’s new general manager is the kind of Devils fan that even other Devils fans might try to slip away from at parties.
He moved to New Jersey as a 4-year-old boy in 1982 — the same year, he points out, as the Devils — and frequently watched those early Devils teams practice at the old Ice World in Totowa. He has a photo of himself, then a 120-pound teenager in the late ‘80s, wearing a Devils bomber jacket that looks like it was roughly seven sizes too big. “That was the style back then!
” he laughed. The former Florida Panthers assistant GM can’t name just one favorite Devils player when asked, but instead, rattles off one from every generation. (He isn’t picking the stars with their numbers in the rafters, either.
Pat Verbeek and Alexander Mogilny received votes. ) He believes the 2001 team, which lost in the Stanley Cup Finals to Colorado, is truly the best team in franchise history. Mehta was even in the nosebleed seats at Game 7 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals, and he will tell you — unprompted!
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