5 New Jersey Devils Who Could Have 30-goal seasons next season

There’s a long shot the New Jersey Devils could have a 30-goal scorer.

The New Jersey Devils have struggled to score for close to a decade now. Since Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk left to go home, the Devils have been hard-pressed to get a marquee scoring star. Then, they traded for Taylor Hall and it seemed like that star was back in house. Then, this season happened, and the Devils were forced to trade away Hall for future pieces.

Now, there are only a few players who are even capable of scoring 20 goals on the team let alone pulling a 30-goal season. Of those currently on the roster, Kyle Palmieri, Andreas Johnsson, Nico Hischier, and Travis Zajac have scored 20 goals in the past. Of those, only Palmieri has hit the 30-goal plateau.

There is an issue with any Devils player hitting the 30-goal plateau. The NHL could possibly play a season that’s less than 82 games. For this article’s sake, let’s say these five players could finish the season on a “30-goal pace”. Nobody cares who can score 20 goals in a 60-game season. So, we’ll keep it to “30” for now and adjust as we see fit.

The Devils are expected to have some considerable skill on the top two lines. The top six has a lot of variables depending on who ends up playing there and what the young players end up doing. It also all depends on how Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes develop. If anyone is scoring 30 goals on the Devils this season, it’s because those two became two of the best distributors in the division.

So, who actually has a shot of playing with Hughes and Hischier, getting those opportunities to become scoring machines.