New Jersey Devils: Can We Trust Pavel Zacha Now?
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils sent center Pavel Zacha down to the AHL to get his confidence back. After another great offensive effort, it’s clear that it worked. Now, can we trust the young prospect going forward?
The New Jersey Devils put forth another dominant performance, this time against Carey Price and the Montreal Canadiens. The team got scoring from their top two lines. Pavel Zacha had his best game in a long time. It wasn’t just the fact that he scored two goals, he’s done that before, but it’s the fact that he scored for three games in a row.
Zacha has never scored three games in a row. In fact, he’s never scored three goals in four games. He’s scored four goals within one month only one other time. He now has four goals in three games. It’s a completely different Zacha.
More from Pucks and Pitchforks
- Should New Jersey Devils Try Load Management With Vitek Vanecek?
- New Jersey Devils Will Prove That Last Year Wasn’t A Fluke
- New Jersey Devils: Luke Hughes’ Playmaking Will Outshine His Mistakes
- New Jersey Devils: Chase Stillman’s Performance Causes Concern
- Can Devils Fans Separate Zach Parise Heartbreak From Achievements?
Who knows what head coach John Hynes and GM Ray Shero said to Zacha before he went down to Binghamton a few weeks ago. Who knows if it even mattered. Zacha’s issues never had to do with skill. He’s 6’3 and 210 pounds with speed and a wicked shot. The problem is all in his head.
Can we trust Zacha now? That depends, but the fact that it actually happened means a lot. If Zacha goes through another rough stretch, he can look back at this stretch to see what he was doing differently. He didn’t have that before. Now he has a place he can look to see what a successful Zacha looks like.
Zacha is currently on pace to score 16 goals on the season. Sure, that wasn’t ideal coming into the season, but after going the first 12 games without a semblance of a point, we will surely take 16 goals from Zacha’s season. That would actually double his career high. That’s definitely somewhere to work off of for the 21 year old.
To answer the question, yes we should trust Zacha to provide some secondary scoring as a 2B line center. He’s still behind Nico Hischier and Travis Zajac in terms of trust, but he’s no longer a problem on the ice. He’s still a defensive force, but now he’s finally adding some offense. That’s all we ever asked.