Which New Jersey Devils players should be on their taxi squad?
The NHL and NHL Player’s Association came to an agreement Friday night to return to the ice. Things got a little hairy for a couple of weeks, but everything seems to be moving towards a January 13th start. There are a few extras in this year’s start thanks to the pandemic. The league will shorten the season to 56 games, eliminate all preseason games, and calls for what’s essentially a taxi squad.
What a taxi squad is would be a team of four to six players who won’t have any contact with the current team but will be practicing so they are ready to play at any time. This is especially important in hockey. This isn’t like football where they can separate players by position. Hockey players have to learn to play as a unit, with all five players holding an important role that works in sync with the rest of the team. That means a very contagious virus complicates things.
So, this taxi squad will always be available. To make the best of a taxi squad, the New Jersey Devils need to have players of many different skill sets. These players would be otherwise playing in the AHL, so don’t expect anyone like Nolan Foote or Alexander Holtz to sit out over playing in their respective full-season teams.
To get the most unbiased opinions on who might be on the roster to start, we will use Daily Faceoff’s version of the lines. That means that Jesper Boqvist, Michael McLeod, and Janne Kuokkanen are regulars on the roster. For argument’s sake, the extras will be Connor Carrick, Nick Merkley, and Brett Seney. That leaves five of the rest to build our taxi squad.
The Devils need to get a little bit of everything in just five players. How will they be able to do that? Should they load up on forwards, or should they try to make it as even as possible? Should they put all scorers on the taxi squad, or should they focus on two-way players who can fill most roles? There are a lot of questions with this squad. Building it will be fun.