Who do the New Jersey Devils sit when they get healthy?

Be sure to join the Discord channel to talk hockey, and everything else, with me and fellow subscribers.

Today’s post was written by C.J. TURTORO. You can find him on Twitter @CJTDevil.

---

In handling the New York Rangers, 5-2, after enduring a long layoff involving several confirmed cases of COVID; and beating Boston (again) on Thursday; the New Jersey Devils looked as good as they have at any point since their playoff run in 2018.

What’s more, they’ve done it while missing debatably their best forward (Nico Hischier), their 2nd highest-scoring forward from last season (Nikita Gusev), their longest-tenured player (Travis Zajac), and their best defensive blueliner (Ryan Murray). 

Coming into the season the “consensus” top-6 was that Hischier and Hughes would center lines of Bratt, Gusev, Johnsson, and Palmieri in some order. It was a fair bet that Zacha, Zajac, and Wood would take up three of the six remaining spots, which left the remaining three up for grabs.

McLeod and Bastian have a long-standing chemistry and have played every game. So, too, have Janne Kuokkanen and Yegor Sharangovich, who both impressed in Binghamton last year and camp this year.

With two lineup spots still open the Devils called on Mikhail Maltsev and Nick Merkley the last few games to fill in.

Let’s take a look at which Devils have produced the most expected goals in the two games they’ve been back (via hockeystatcards.com). Keep in mind that there are basically three roster spots open for the forwards if we take the early-season chalk as our starting point...

Not on this list is Janne Kuokkanen, who was the 1st star of the game against the Rangers (followed by Merkley) and leads the Devils with 6 points in the last 6 games. 

So when healthy, the Devils will either have to sit one of their pre-season locks, or only play three of their five most productive players in recent games.

On the blueline, it gets a little easier because the Devils really only have eight guys to play and one of them (Tennyson) has been terrible.

But the Devils most efficient defencemen over the past three seasons has been Will Butcher who, after being sat for the first nine games of the season, has produced a point in both of the games he’s played.

The other lefties on the team (Smith, Murray, and Kulikov) have all been excellent. There doesn’t appear to be room for him but it’s hard to ignore his play the first two games combined with his pedigree of impact.

I had no idea what the answer to the “who do we sit” question was and so, like any sane person, I turned to Twitter for help. I created a Google Form and did 5 minutes of scrapwork to see what my followers thought. Here was what they thought in graph form. Each bar represents the percent of respondents that chose each player for their lineup.

To try to parse this mess, I think tiers would be helpful. Here’s how I’d bin what ther responses were like for each position:

Forwards

Tier 1 (Unanimous Locks, 100%): Hughes, Hischier, Palmieri, Bratt, Johnsson

Tier 2 (Near-Unanimous, >90%): Wood, Zacha, McLeod, Zajac

Tier 3 (Competing for spot, >50%): Gusev, Kuokkanen, Sharangovich, Bastian

Tier 4 (Outside-looking in, <50%): Merkley, Maltsev, Boqvist

Defenders

Tier 1 (Locks, 99/100%): Severson, Smith, Murray

Tier 2 (Competing, >50%): Subban, Vatanen, Kulikov, Butcher

Tier 3 (Lol, 0%): Tennyson, Carrick

This does clear things up a bit from my perspective. According to the fans, There are a clear “top-9” forwards, with four (Gusev, Kuokkanen, Sharangovich, Bastian) competing for the last three spots -- Bastian being the odd man out.

And, on defense, despite playing every game pre-COVID breakout, Tennyson garnered exactly zero (0) votes, joining Carrick as “not in consideration”. Fans would like to find a way to get Butcher in the lineup, but don’t see an opening, and he’s left in the Bastian spot of “out of the lineup through no fault of his own.”

Now, this isn’t to say that this is THE answer here. I’ve already mentioned how Butcher has a strong case to make as the 6th defender among that group, though the defense will probably iron itself out regardless.

What’s tough is the forwards. Bastian has played with McLeod (who was considered “near-unanimous”) in the OHL, AHL, and NHL -- they have about as strong an on-ice connection as anyone on this young team. What if part of why McLeod has been so good is because of his chemistry with Bastian? You’d hardly want to risk messing with that.

Then who doesn’t make it? Next on the list is Sharnagovich who has not only played on all four lines, but also is the 3rd most used PKer on the team, and is the only player on the team with two game-winning goals.

Next on the list is Janne Kuokkanen, debatably the hottest player on the team right now in terms of production. Do we dare sit the next player up, Nikita Gusev?

As it turns out, while Bastian was not in the 12 most common players overall, he was a member of the single most commonly chosen lineup. I dug into this a little more to see how people got the guys they wanted into the lineups. For both forwards and defensemen, there were only four specific lineup combinations that were selected by more than three respondents.

These are those lineups in order of popularity (specific “positions” or “lines” were not requested so I just put them into hypothetical ones for viewing purposes):

In putting them into positions I also noticed a difficulty that doesn’t seem to have bothered many -- almost everyone picked five centers. You might think “what’s the big deal, just move one of the worse ones,” but the two “worst” centers (McLeod/Zacha) are also our two most efficient (least inefficient) faceoff men at the moment so while I agree with playing the talent, I think it’s a less trivial consideration than it was given by responents. 

As far as the fans are concerned, both the forwards and the defenders have four guys vying for three spots. And in both cases, there is big name player (Gusev, Subban) being pushed by some unexpected sources. This was not a problem we expected to have coming into the season. We assumed we’d be floundering on deck until Hischier and Bratt returned -- instead, we’re wondering which of these players previously considered AHL-level-talent we can afford to keep off the ice.

Perhaps this question won’t need to be answered -- with the toughest schedule in the NHL the rest of the way, these guys are all going to need rest and some may get injured. 

Which is why this is an enviable problem. The Devils, thought at the beginning of the season to be among the shallowest teams in terms of NHL talent, now have something that seemed like a pipedream in the pre-season -- room for error.

---

If you enjoyed this post from C.J. Turtoro, why not share and help Infernal Access grow?