New Jersey Devils stock report - Dec. 21, 2021

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With the New Jersey Devils going into an extended holiday break – due to a league-wide spike in COVID-19 cases – we have a little extra time to dive into what’s going on with the team right now.

I figured it’d be fun to look at players as stocks and isolate their performances of late. Which players are trending upwards and helping the cause? Which players, like the team they play far, are drowning?

Let’s dive right in.

Trending upwards

Jonas Siegenthaler/Damon Severson

I really couldn’t pick between the two because their profiles are very similar. Both are key parts of a penalty kill that has played at a high-end level for quite some time. Their defensive prowess has also shown through at 5v5, where they’re 1st and 2nd among Devils blueliners in suppressing expected goals over the last 10 games. They have also posted positive xG shares. Nobody is even close to this pairing.

What’s especially impressive is they have played more, and tougher, minutes than any of the other blueliners. They’ve essentially served as the top unit at evens and they’re still out-performing everyone else. Not to mention, with Kevin Bahl and Mason Geertsen in the lineup, they’ve been forced to play an absurd amount of minutes; more than you’d generally see from a top pairing.