New Jersey Devils: Should We Be Worried About Jesper Bratt?

The New Jersey Devils had so many surprise players throughout the 2017-18 season, but none a bigger surprise that that of Jesper Bratt. Despite his hot start, he fell off a cliff. So, should we be worried?

Jesper Bratt was great for the first half of the New Jersey Devils season. He was a first-line forward all the way through January. On February 1st, Bratt was sitting with 31 points with more than two months remaining. Then, things went very badly.

In the month of Feburary, Bratt had two points total. Both those points came in the form of assists in an overtime win against the Philadelphia Flyers. Besides that, he was shutout of the score sheet for the entire month.

Still, he was given chances to succeed. While Kyle Palmieri was on the shelf, he found himself on the top line with Taylor Hall and Nico Hischier. There’s no other place a 19 year old would rather be than on a line that could produce offense in its sleep. It didn’t work, and he eventually found himself in the owner’s box.

One could see Bratt’s confidence waining, as he wasn’t taking as many shots and the ones he did take weren’t very good. He wasn’t able to use his speed to make a play like he could early in the season.

This is a sixth-round pick that’s playing as a rookie. It’s obvious that he hit a rookie wall. One could throw out his bad play as being exhausted. Never in his life did he play more than 48 games with one team. He did that with his Junior 20 SuperElit team in Sweden in 2014-15. This season, he played 73 games. That grind, along with plane rides and bus trips all across the U.S. and Canada, is hard to get used to for someone so young.

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Here’s what worrisome. Bratt was never the player he proved to be earlier in the season. During that 48 game season against youngsters in Sweden, he scored 17 goals. That could be his ceiling.

He’s not even old enough to drink, and he proved he could at least provide some offense from a lower role. However, we may need to temper our expectations going forward. He had a great rookie season. If he was more consistent, and spread his points throughout the season, we’d look at this season as a success. It’s just the complete inconsistency that was his season that has some biting their nails. He has talent, and can use that talent to be a prolific scorer, it’s just that he’s never done it before.

Bratt is one player, along with Pavel Zacha, that the coaching staff should spend the most time with this offseason. If he’s able to regain the confidence he had to start last year, when he took an invitation to camp and turned it into a full season with the big club, then he will be a huge part of the future. If not, he might be one of those weird blips on the radar that becomes a good story to tell years later.

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