The New Jersey Devils have a certain centerman that hasn’t reached his potential offensively, but he is still a really good player.
The New Jersey Devils are probably never going to get exactly what they thought they’d get from Pavel Zacha. He was the 6th overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, a year in which lots of great players were taken. Zacha is one of the lower-tier players when compared to the likes of Matthew Barzal or Mikko Rantanen, but he still provides a decent amount of value to the Devils.
This is especially true due to the fact that the Devils have won the NHL Draft Lottery twice since drafting Zacha, so Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes can take some pressure off of as far as centers go. Zacha can play his game in the bottom six and be effective while doing it.
Some fans want Zacha gone. The fact of the matter is that they would not get anything of equal value for Zacha in a trade. The Devils have four of the top 60 most penalized players over the last three seasons. Miles Wood is 11th, Blake Coleman is 16th, Wayne Simmonds is 29th, and Kyle Palmieri is 57th. If they don’t clean it up, they might be killing lots of penalties over the next year. They will need Zacha for that role especially. He is an elite penalty killer, so this is definitely an area he can help.
It isn’t like Zacha is completely irrelevant offensively either. In 2018-19, his third full season, he had 13 goals and 12 assists for 25 points in 61 games. The goal total was his career-high and he played fewer games than in the first two years. It is possible that Zacha still has a little bit of offense left to unlock based on those numbers. If he can do that, combined with his penalty killing and defensive play, the Devils will have a really good bottom-six center.
He is also decent at faceoffs and has gotten better as he got older. In his first full year, he was 40.3 percent, in year two he was 43.9 percent, and then last year he was 48.9. The numbers increase every season so maybe he can get over 50% next year. These are all little things that can help the Devils win hockey games.
They have players now like Hischier, Hughes, Palmieri, Jesper Bratt, and Taylor Hall that can make plays and score. There is no reason to worry about Zacha’s offensive numbers anymore with guys like that in the lineup. He needs to just be a steady contributor and keep up his elite penalty killing and being solid in his own zone. Zacha has value to the Devils and he can be one of the low-end core players of this team long term if both sides see it that way.