New Jersey Devils: Ideas For Line Combinations
The New Jersey Devils have a lot of good forwards that still need a lot of development. How could they line them up to get the most out of them?
The New Jersey Devils have done a lot of their building through the center of the ice. That has come because of their lottery luck. They selected centers Nico Hischier in 2017 and Jack Hughes in 2019 with the first overall pick. If those two can truly reach their potential, that really makes things easy to build around as they fill out the team. They have Pavel Zacha and Travis Zajac to be bottom-six centers for now which should form a pretty nice group.
They do, however, need to fill out the rest of their forwards. Since Taylor Hall is gone, you can say that Kyle Palmieri has been the most consistent player on the New Jersey Devils. He only has one year left on his current deal so you never know how long he stays. As long as he is on the team, however, he will remain in the team’s top-six.
As the 2019-20 season came down the stretch, Nikita Gusev and Jesper Bratt formed a very nice duo with Pavel Zacha in the middle. That could remain a trio going forward but they could also use Bratt and Gusev with Hischier and Hughes to bump up the top six. There are also some younger more inexperienced players like Joey Anderson, Jesper Boqvist, Michael McLeod, Nathan Bastian, Janne Kuokkanen, and Nolan Foote that are in the mix.
Miles Wood is a player that the fans love to hate but he is probably going to be in the forward lineup as long as he isn’t traded or injured. There are players like Kevin Rooney and John Hayden that may or may not be back too. These are all forwards who probably won’t make much of a difference on whether or not the team is successful or not. Rooney is an okay defensive fourth line center at times but provides almost zero offense.
The fourth line of Wood-Rooney-Hayden might not be ideal going forward. It would probably be better to start using some of the younger players on a nightly basis. The ones that are going to help get this team over the edge into the playoffs are the most important ones. Seeing Nathan Bastian play there would be much better than Rooney or Hayden because of his long-term potential.
If they keep the third line of Gusev-Zacha-Bratt together then you would hope they are able to fill Nico and Jack’s wings with capable players. They could always use the young guys mentioned above or they can add via free agency. There are some pretty good ones out there for the taking. Taylor Hall probably isn’t coming back so you can look at guys like Mike Hoffman, Evgenii Dadonov, and Mikael Granlund. You never know who comes and who goes but there are some solid options.
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As for the top-six internally, it would be good to know that whoever wins the jobs next to Hischier and Hughes stays there. Palmieri is an underrated winger in terms of his defensive game. For that reason, he might be good for Jack Hughes. Hischier is sound defensively so he doesn’t need anyone there that is specifically there to help him with that. There are so many possibilities with this group as long as they have the proper coach.