New Jersey Devils: Will Butcher Should Focus On Offense Again

The New Jersey Devils should do something about Will Butcher’s regression.

There is a lot of opinions about some specific advanced statistics and how they actually impact the on-ice game. Corsi has a limited impact but definitely shows what a player is doing on the ice over a long period of time. Fenwick is similar in many ways. One stat that’s interesting for the New Jersey Devils is offensive zone start percentages. This is especially important when it comes to defenseman Will Butcher.

Butcher was awesome during his rookie season. He was asked to be a point producer, and he eventually became the quarterback of the Devils top power play in 2017-18. His 26 power-play points led the Devils to have a top ten power play in the entire league. Butcher was the best offensive defenseman on the team, and the team still had Damon Severson and Sami Vatanen on the roster.

Things have not gone as well in the two years after, and they went off the rails last season. The Devils wanted Butcher to focus more on the defensive side of things, and they coddled him a lot less. Then, towards the end of last season, they completely threw that plan out the window. He ended up taking the faceoff in the offensive zone more than 60% of the time, about the same as his rookie season.

He still didn’t get much power playtime. He was 12th on the team in power-play time according to Natural Stat Trick. He was just ahead of Miles Wood and Travis Zajac while trailing players like Taylor Hall (despite being traded in December), Sami Vatanen (injured for much of the year), and Pavel Zacha. Butcher needs to be on the power play for him to contribute to his value.

Butcher is coming into this season in the second year of a three-year contract. The Devils need to start getting more of a contribution from him on offense. The power play can help him build confidence, then the 5v5 points will follow. He had 17 points at 5v5 this past season, which is only two less than he had in his rookie season. His power-play production is where things fell off. Playing with a less-than-MVP Taylor Hall might have hurt, but he just wasn’t setting up his teammates on the ice.

Butcher is a very important player next season, who’s about to enter his prime as a defenseman. He’s 25 years old, and the Devils should be able to rely on him for a minimum of 40 points from the blue line. He fell in each of the past two seasons, but it’s time for him to step up. It will be interesting to see what the Devils do with him when the expansion draft comes along because he seems like the type of player the Seattle Krakken would target. The Devils just need to know what they have in the former University of Denver product.