New Jersey Devils: Weird Lineup Decisions Ahead Of Tampa Bay
The New Jersey Devils are going to use a different lineup against the Tampa Bay Lightning and it doesn’t seem like the greatest idea.
At 2-5-2, the New Jersey Devils are in trouble. Their coach John Hynes is presumably on the hot seat and they haven’t gotten the results they thought they would have up to this game. Their nine games are the least played by any team in the league, but they still wake up today with the worst record in the National Hockey League. They are not a team that should be in the Draft Lottery sweepstakes again, but if they keep it up they will be.
They play the team that is coming off a historic year in the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning struggled a little bit out of the gate, but they have pretty much the exact same team as that ridiculous team from a year ago. The Devils are going to look to try and keep them down which is definitely a daunting task. It may be even more daunting with some of the coaching decisions that are being made. A lot of the blame goes on the players but some of them that are in should not be in the lineup in favor of some who are not.
They are getting Jesper Bratt back in the lineup which is good news because he deserves to be there, but they are making Nikita Gusev a healthy scratch. Gusev hasn’t been great at doing anything other than creating offense but he is tied for the team lead with three goals in nine games which is a 27-goal pace over 82 games. He is also coming off one of his only two games that he had positive outlying numbers. It is a weird decision to do this now, but we will see how it works out.
There are a lot of things at stake in the game against Tampa. If they lose that means they lost eight out of their first ten games and if they win then that would be a huge and potentially momentum-building win for them. This is a team that believes it is good and right now they are not good. If they are going to be good then they need to turn it around and fast.
If their lines in Tampa Bay match those of practice, then expect to see:
Taylor Hall – Jack Hughes– Kyle Palmieri
Pavel Zacha– Nico Hischier – Jesper Bratt
Blake Coleman – Travis Zajac – Wayne Simmonds
Miles Wood – Kevin Rooney – John Hayden
light. Related Story. The New Jersey Devils are nowhere near done
The goaltender that will start this game is still to be announced. The lineup does look a little better than what we have become accustomed to, but it would be nice to see Gusev in the lineup and it would also be nice to see Jesper Boqvist get some playing time. If he wasn’t going to play, why is he on the roster? Either way, they need to get a win vs the Lightning in the worst way.