On Monday night, when the final horn sounded to signal a New Jersey Devils victory over the Detroit Red Wings, it was not your typical celebration. Instead, a brawl broke loose — one minute and 15 seconds of chaos which included goaltender Jacob Markstrom and captain Nico Hischier both as animated as you’ll ever see them. The officiating crew successfully stopped the Devils’ entire bench from spilling over the boards to join the mayhem.
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The brawl wasn’t a random happening — it was instead a fitting culmination to the chippiest game the Devils have played all season, including adequate responses to a hard hit from J.T. Compher on Nico Hischier and an illegal butt-end from Ben Chiarot that knocked the wind out of Simon Nemec.
Chaos.#NJDevils pic.twitter.com/8E9xZxhwId
— Daniel Amoia (@daniel_amoia) November 25, 2025
Devils Are Family
In the postgame interviews that followed, a couple Devils players made very similar points:
“We’re all brothers here,” said defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler. “If someone gets pushed around, we stand up for each other and we’re there for each other. And I think that’s what we showed tonight.”
Forward Connor Brown gave an almost identical notion: “We’re a tight group in here and have a lot of fun together day in and day out. That usually leads to us sticking up for one another.”
Not every National Hockey League team has a tight-knit bond. There have been various instances in history of “toxic” locker rooms, which can wear a team down no matter how talented. In the Devils’ case, viewing just one practice session would show you all you need to know: when the time calls for it, there’s all the laughing, smiling, joke-cracking and fist-bumping in the world.
And that’s not a substitute for hard work; when it’s time to grind, they grind. Tuesday’s practice was a perfect example of such. It had a rapid pace but when a drill was executed to perfection — or a nice goal was scored — there were tons of “Woo”s, “Oh Yeah!”s, cellys, and everything in between. Just for a few seconds though…then right back to work.
While the Devils’ 14-7-1 record is good for fourth in the NHL, it hasn’t come without their share of adversity, from a barrage of injuries to rough stretches. Yet they’ve continued to stay afloat, finding ways to win more often than not.
But if we’re being honest — especially in a league where the 4th-best and 23rd-best teams are separated by just four standings points — adversity will continue to hit every team at different points. So, that led The Hockey Writers to pose the question: How does a tight-knit bond benefit a team when they do go through adversity?
“It’s everything,” said head coach Sheldon Keefe. “You know, these guys, whether it’s the players themselves or the coaching staff, and the training staff, the reality is over the course of an NHL season, you spend more time together than you do your own families. So you’ve got to hope that the guys enjoy their time together and can coexist. That’s a huge part of it, and that usually transfers to the ice. So, we’re fortunate. We’ve got lots of great personalities, great character, great leadership, [it’s a] very welcoming group. We’ve got players here from different cultures [and] countries, and it’s come together nicely. And that’s really, really important…just because of the volume of time you spend together — and then what the league and the schedule, practices and the games demand of each individual — you get a lot more out of everyone [and] it’s a lot easier when you really care for the guy beside you.”
It goes beyond just the locker room: the New York Times recently published a feature on how the Devils have a monthly day where they serve authentic Swiss meals, helping their Swiss contingent (Hischier, Siegenthaler and Timo Meier) feel a little closer to home. (from ‘How the Devils’ Swiss meals connect players to their roots,’ New York Times, November 19, 2025)
The Devils’ organization is widely said to be first-class through and through. When everything from food to family is taken care of, it helps the environment by default. Forward Jesper Bratt echoed a similar sentiment:
“I mean, it’s super key,. If you have a group that fights for each other and all that stuff, you can create a lot of things. We spend so much time together [that] it becomes a family. You know, especially now early in the season, we’ve had a lot of road trips and we’ve gotten to spend more time with each other than we normally would this early into the season, just because we see each other so many hours a day. So it really brings you together. And yeah, when scrums and stuff happen, we stick up for each other. We’re always there for each other. And I think that’s what good teams and good groups do.”
Of course, being a close group doesn’t guarantee any specific level of success. But it’s a quality that nearly every championship team has carried…and one the Devils are lucky to have in 2025-26.
