The New Jersey Devils have the best Big 3 in the NHL

CJ Turtoro explains why Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, and Jesper Bratt give the Devils a top-tier three-headed monster.

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By CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil)

Nathan Mackinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar? Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner? Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Jake Guentzel? Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Evan Bouchard?

The modern NHL is absolutely littered with teams that have at least three big names that all seem deserving of being all-stars most years.

As much as depth matters in the NHL – and it does – you fundamentally still need elite talent at the top of your lineup to go anywhere.

One guy can normally be schemed out. If you have two or three, it causes matchup problems eventually that become impossible to keep off the scoresheet.

And when it comes to that, the New Jersey Devils are positioned as well as anyone.

Now, before I get into it, let me make a confession…I lied in the title.

See the thing is, whatever team Connor McDavid is on is going to have the “best” big three because Connor McDavid is a lot better than the best guy not named Connor McDavid and no two other guys will be enough to make up for that.

Hell, last year we saw that the next 20 guys on the roster weren’t enough for 30/31 teams. But that’s not really what “best big three” means in conversation.

At the barbershop, the way the conversation is more likely to go is one by one comparing each top three guy to another team’s one by one. Whichever team has more wins in those comps is the better big three. 

So, in that spirit, the way I’m approaching this is by taking Evolving-Hockey’s projections for GAR/60 (value in goals per hour) and I’m taking the average ranking of every team’s top three guys as a proxy for who would win the most matchups (caveat: goaltenders don’t have projections so they’re not included).

(Note: some players may not be on updated 2024-25 teams due to Evolving-Hockey’s database).

In average rank of their top three players, the Devils are the top team in the NHL. In fact, they are the only team in the NHL that has three players in the top 32 – in other words, three separate guys that would each be the best player on a team in a perfectly distributed league.

I think that, given the performance of the team last year, many may be skeptical of these so let’s just walk through each player’s claim briefly.

The top spot does not, as many may expect, go to Jack Hughes, but to Jesper Bratt. This is likely because the projection model is being trained on Jack Hughes’s performance while not 100% healthy. But is it fair to assume he’ll be 100% healthy this season? I’m not sure.

If I’m betting on one of them to play 82, it’s Bratt. Time is up on the Bratt-doubters. He was 11th in GAR last season, due to the variety of ways in which he impacts the game. He impacted his team’s goal scoring (RAPM GF/60) at the 4th highest rate at even strength (McDavid/Hyman and Mackinnon), and 12th highest on the power play.

He was also top-30 in 5v5 expected goal impact and a positive contributor on the penalty kill. At 19+ minutes a game, the book on Bratt as a complementary scoring winger is now shut for good. He’s a member of the NHL elite.

And the more idiots that keep him out of their top 20(?) wingers, the more we get to laugh in their faces. He’s not a 1st line winger…he’s better. He’s a star.