The New Jersey Devils have to find the right partner for P.K. Subban.
There was one thing the New Jersey Devils had to do this offseason, and that was to find the right partner for P.K. Subban. He did not play well last season, and some of it had to do with having nobody to pair with him. They tried Andy Greene, Damon Severson, Mirco Mueller, Sami Vatanen, and others throughout the year. None of them worked.
Coming into this season, Subban has to work out or the Devils are in deep trouble. They might be in deep trouble either way, but with Corey Crawford and Mackenzie Blackwood in net, there’s a chance that they could be decent. Whether they are in the traditional Metropolitan Division or something different, the schedule is going to be brutal. If they are going to compete on a nightly basis, everything has to work.
That means the top line has to be a top line again. The Devils haven’t really had a respectable defense since they went to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2012. They were 8th in goals allowed per game in 2015-16, but that was almost all Cory Schneider. That team’s defense was held together by tape (Seth Helgeson, Jon Merrill, and David Schlemko at least had some level of role on the blue line).
The Devils know in order to get into contention again, they need three things. Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier have to hit their stride. The goaltending can’t be atrocious. Then, the defense has to be reliable at the top. Subban is still the top guy on this unit. Beyond his $9 million salary, his pedigree is so beyond everyone else on this team, the Devils have to give him another shot to be the best guy on the blueline.
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The Devils really have two options now to play on the left side of the top line. This will ignore Severson for now because moving him to the left side makes the right side pretty awful.
The first option is Will Butcher. He was not his normal self last season, and his phenomenal rookie season is moving further in the rearview mirror. He didn’t get much ice time at all with Subban last season, but there was a reason for that. He put up a 46.39 CF%, meaning he was giving up a lot more chances than his line put up. The good news is Butcher was at 50.50% when it comes to high-danger chance percentage at 5v5. No other full-time defenseman has a better number.
To compare, Subban is at 47.03%. He clearly needs help when it comes to both creating more quality chances and stopping the other team’s high-quality chances. Sure, Subban getting ice time against the other team’s best players didn’t help, but he just wasn’t good. That was a bigger impact. Butcher and Subban would be an interesting pairing.
The other one is more obvious, but it doesn’t’ seem to play out when people predict the Devils’ lines. The Devils sent a 5th-round draft pick to the Columbus Blue Jackets for Ryan Murray.
Murray is an interesting case since he had the least amount of minutes at 5v5 outside of his 12-game sophomore season last year. He was just injured all last season. When he was on the ice, he allowed a lot of chances, but very few high-danger chances. At 5v5, he allowed 416 total chances, but only allowed 54 high-danger chances.
That leaves him with just under 13% of the chances he allows are high-danger chances. Just to take a random good defenseman, Morgan Reilly was a little over 18%. It is not an exact science like other advanced stats, but it shows where Murray’s line is keeping his opponent.
Subban needs someone who can keep defensemen away from him. He was on the wrong side of way too many 2-on-1s. If the Devils pair him with Butcher, there’s a chance that can happen again. If he puts him with Murray, as long as he stays healthy, it’s likely he will see a lot less of those. Then, in his own zone, Murray would help push the shots closer to the blue line and away from the goalie. Sometimes the obvious pick is the right one. Murray is the correct pick.