New Jersey Devils: Time For Mirco Mueller To Step Up
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils have been surprisingly great this season up and down the lineup. The one position of need is the final spot on the defense.
New Jersey Devils fans really can’t complain about how the season has gone so far. Despite sports fans need to find something wrong with their team, it’s been mostly positive. One position the Devils haven’t figured out is the final spot on the defense.
To be fair, most team’s don’t really have a great defense from one to six. In fact, the Toronto Maple Leafs just signed Roman Polak to play a bruising role at the back end. Even the best teams in the league have a similar hole. The Devils, however, have a talented individual who should be seizing the role.
Mirco Mueller came to the Devils in a trade with the San Jose Sharks. The team gave up a second and third-round pick for him, and protected him in the Vegas expansion draft. Clearly, Ray Shero and John Hynes were high on him to start the season. Since then, he’s seen his ice time go to the likes of Dalton Prout and Ben Lovejoy.
Both of them have been borderline awful to start the season. Mueller should easily be able to fend them off to keep from getting a healthy scratch, but that hasn’t been the case.
Mueller is a first round pick that never found his footing with the Sharks. He showed an extreme confidence in the preseason, especially with his shot. That doesn’t seem to be the case to start this season. In four preseason games, Mueller took seven shots and scored two beautiful snipes from the blue line. So far this season, he’s taken one shot in five games.
Mueller will never be mistaken for Scott Stevens. He isn’t a shut down guy. What he brings to this team is a two-way game that can produce offense with a rocket for a shot. If he isn’t shooting, there isn’t much he’s bringing.
Rookie Will Butcher should be a catalyst for what Mueller can bring to this team. Butcher has been a creator in his first season in the NHL. It would make the Devils offense move even better if Mueller can find his offensive touch.
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The Devils have been scoring some of their goals by having a great net-front presence. We’ve seen it about a dozen times where players like Brian Gibbons, Nico Hischier and Jimmy Hayes stand in front of the net and clean up the point shot. Mueller needs to find confidence in his shot again, and he will make the lineup every night.
The biggest worry coming into this season is whether Hynes would be willing to sit Lovejoy due to his contract and pull with Shero. Hynes showed he is willing to sit him nightly, but Mueller hasn’t seized his role. I mean, even Lovejoy has more shots than him this season. This is Mueller’s chance to step up. He can work on the confidence in his shot after a week of practice between games. That could round out the surprising Devils roster that will lead them the rest of the season.