New Jersey’s favorite son has returned home. 

Tuesday afternoon, at Prudential Center, the New Jersey Devils formally introduced the sixth General Manager in team history, Sunny Mehta. It was a homecoming for Mehta, who grew up in New Jersey as a Devils fan, despite being born in Michigan.

“I have been you for 40 years,” Mehta said. “It’s really not an exaggeration when I tell you this is my dream job. I grew up 20 miles from here. I played high school hockey in New Jersey. I’ve been following this team since I was a small kid. It’s funny ’cause I was born in Michigan, but I moved here at four years old in 1982. 

“You know, who else moved here in 1982? The Devils. With that being said, listen, I’m up here in this chair now and there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s gonna be times where fans disagree with me. And there’s gonna be times where they might question my decisions. But the one thing they’ll never be able to question is my sincerity, my passion and my loyalty to this franchise.”

“A GM has many responsibilities,” Mehta continued. “We have to deal with the media. We have to create a culture. We have to manage up. We have to negotiate with agents. But, I think it’s somewhat safe to say the main objective is to put a winning team on the ice. And I take that seriously. To me, putting a winning team on the ice, that function of a General Manager is about decision-making, taking in information of all different sorts, assessing risk and making decisions; decisions that are gonna have inherent uncertainty with them. 

“Thankfully, I have literally studied and practiced that decision-making under the cloud of risk for the past 25 years. First, as a poker player, then as an options trader. And for the past 15 years, as a hockey executive. My goal for this front office is quite simple. I wanna make smart, objective and educated decisions. And I want to do it over and over and over again.”

Given Mehta’s background, that decision-making is not something he’s going to be nervous about. He’s going to lean into the experience and skills he’s acquired to make informed decisions. One thing that will help inform him is his background in analytics. More to the point, it will be his merging of analytics with the human nature of the game of hockey that will help him make his decisions. “I’m actually glad you brought up the analytics thing. The ‘A’ word,” Mehta quipped. “So, I totally understand why I get kind of put in that analytics bucket, labeled as the analytics guy. But it’s really funny. I think, if you actually look at my path, my background, even my own path to analytics, is considerably different than the typical analytics person in sports, in the sense that I never really ever set out to be in academia or be a mathematician or anything like that. 

“Even though I ultimately kind of went back and got a Master’s in data science, just to fill in gaps, but truly, where I learned statistics was on the job, like at the poker table, on the trading floor and in the hockey front offices. 

“To me, the reason that I ever even cared about analytics, statistics, probability, is ’cause it helped me win. It helped me win in poker. It helped me win on the trading floor. And it’s helped me win in hockey. So that’s why I care about it. And the blending is, of course, that’s important, in the same way that in poker, it’s not just numbers. 

“You have to have a feel for your opponent. You have to understand the subjectivity of bluffing; you have to understand the psychology. And the same thing was true in trading, right? You have to have a feel for markets. You have to understand how news affects things and subjectivity. Human emotion affects things. And, of course, it’s the same. “Yes, data does undoubtedly give a huge advantage in hockey, in terms of projecting future performance of players. But you have to understand all those same things: the character, the locker room, the culture, the intangibles. All that stuff matters.”

Intangibles, culture, character and the locker room indeed matter greatly in hockey, as they do in all sports. To that end, Mehta, who repeatedly cautioned that he is only on Day Two of the job, told those assembled at his introductory press conference that everyone, from the players to the coaches to the staff, is under evaluation for now. 

“I’m extremely optimistic about this team,” Mehta said. “We have a lot of talented players and I really, truly believe that these talented players are about to hit an inflection point and get over that hurdle. It’s my job to make sure that this roster’s consistently flush with the necessary amount of talent to be a championship team. And I intend to do that. As for the short-term, going forward, there’s gonna be a period of assessment of all players, coaches and staff. No decisions are made on anything pertaining to that, as David (Blitzer) kind of alluded to. It’s literally Day Two for me. So I’m sure there’s gonna be questions about it, but heads up on that.”

There’s a lot of different ways Mehta can go with this team as currently constructed. He can keep the core and the coaching staff intact. He can break up the core and give Head Coach Sheldon Keefe a chance to lead the new-look team. He can keep the core and bring in a new coach. Or he can break up the core and bring in a new coach. For now, everything is on the table. But his optimism and the level of talent New Jersey currently possesses suggest that Mehta isn’t likely to make too drastic a move right out of the gate. 

“So, most successful long-term poker players are what (we) in the business call ‘tight and aggressive,’” Mehta explained. “Which means, in some ways, you’re more patient than other poker players, in the sense that you don’t play garbage cards. You have the discipline and the patience to wait for your moment. 

“But when you have that moment, you’re extremely, extremely aggressive. You have to have the guts to do what it takes when that moment is right to win the hand. And I’d say that’s exactly kind of how I view this (being a hockey GM).”

That’s a pretty accurate comparison if you think about it. And it speaks to how Mehta, at his core, is going to run the team. He’s going to be patient, possibly more patient than fans would want him to be at times. But when he sees his opening, he’s going to be super aggressive and go after what he wants, be it a trade or a free agent signing. And that should be music to Devils’ fans’ ears, especially after the way the Quinn Hughes saga went down during the middle of this past season. 

“Winning’s hard,” Mehta explained. “In some ways, there’s a lot of parallels to poker in this, where you can kind of do everything right and still lose. I mean, it’s a lesson you have to learn as a poker player. 

“You can study the game, you can do everything right and get your money in as an 80-20 favorite, and you’re gonna lose. You’re supposed to lose 20% of the time. I think there are a lot of parallels to hockey and the learning lesson there is that you just have to focus on what you can control. 

“You have to focus on the process. You have to be really, really good at improving the odds, so to speak. Everything we do is, you can think of it as a bet; we want to increase the probability of that bet over and over and over again. And then, you have to almost somewhat ignore short-term results and just focus on your process and have the guts to stick with it and know the objective that you’re making the right decisions and just keep doing it over and over again and know that success will follow.”

Devils fans certainly hope success will follow. But, for now, Day One – Day Two – is in the books and Mehta is eager and poised to get the puck bouncing on what is sure to be an interesting offseason.