New Jersey Devils: Finding the Right Line Combinations

The New Jersey Devils are close to being at full strength for the first time this season.  Surviving injuries to Travis Zajac, Marcus Johansson, and Kyle Palmieri on their way to a 19-9-5 record is a solid accomplishment.  Rookies Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt have established themselves as first liners at this point, so the question arises of who plays with Kyle Palmieri.

I’ve written and tweeted about my love of the Pavel Zacha and Miles Wood combination.  The two have been one of the best combos on this young Devils team.  Zacha, who’s found himself scratched multiple times this year appears to find his groove.

Zacha and Wood’s CF% aren’t great, but they are generating high danger chances. Although they’ve given up 99 shots while only generating 73, the quality of those shots is generally low.  Zacha has 3 assists in his past 5 games and had 1 assist removed and a goal taken away at the buzzer. Wood has 3 goals in his past 5 as well.

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These heatmaps from Micah Blake McCurdy, who runs Hockey Viz,  show where these players are generating and giving opportunities up from when they’re on the ice together.  As you can see, the Wood-Zacha combo is generating a ton of chances on the right side of the ice and giving up very few quality chances in their own zone.

On the other hand, the addition of Stafford in their 21 5v5 minutes together has generated some good downlow chances but their defensive zone play has seen a steep drop off.

Zacha and Stafford have shot percentages of 3.85 and 4.55 respectively.  The two are very clearly in a scoring slump.  Both should start finding the back of the net, as Zacha was robbed by the clock recently and Stafford couldn’t get a shot past any opponents stick or the goalie.

With that said, I still believe Stafford isn’t the right fit on this line.

Let’s take a look at where Kyle Palmieri scores his goals from.

It would seem adding a career 12% shooter like Palmieri who’s sweet spot matches well with where Zacha and Wood generate chances is a no brainer.  Palmieri is a great player and while I have no problem with him on the Devils first line this could provide balance and better secondary scoring.

Just imagine this:

Hall-Hischier-Bratt

Wood-Zacha-Palmieri

Johansson-Zajac-Gibbons

Coleman-Boyle-Noesen

That’s a very deep forward group with three lines the Devils should be able to count on consistently for scoring.  Unfortunately, unless Stafford’s game takes off I believe he’ll find himself as a healthy scratch.

However, when you’re scratching a quality player it’s not necessarily a bad thing.