New Jersey Devils: 5 Bold Statistical Predictions For 2021-22 Season
The New Jersey Devils are actually getting a little bit of hype going into the 2021-22 season. Some national analysts and advanced stats mavens are predicting the team are even going to fight for a playoff spot. Dougie Hamilton’s arrival along with a few savvy moves by GM Tom Fitzgerald have this team in a really good spot.
There is one stat the Devils are focused on this season; wins. However, to get to wins, other statistics have to follow. Goals will lead to wins, but goals also lead to assists. Goals also lead to +/-, although we don’t talk about that one anymore. The advanced stats are usually how we see what leads to goals. There are stats on stats to see how a team is really doing.
The New Jersey Devils will have much better statistics during the 2021-22 season.
Looking at the Devils, it could be very hard to predict who is going to do what. There are very specific lines, and the four lines could swap top minutes each and every night. Michael McLeod’s line was getting a lot of 5v5 minutes at times last season despite technically being the fourth line. The same thing could happen this year, but with Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes, and Dawson Mercer down the middle, there is an insane amount of skill in the middle of the ice.
This will lead to more points. The Devils scored 2.63 goals per game last season. They were around 20th in the league in most offensive statistical categories. It’s obvious the Devils hope they can take a step forward. They have the depth on offense and defense to put those stats up, and it starts on game one on Friday night.
1. Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier Hit 60 Points
Jack Hughes is expected to make the jump this season. Whether it’s Devils reporters or national NHL reporters, people think the 2019 first-overall pick is going to realize his potential before his contract expires this year. Does that mean 60 points? 70 points? Heck, maybe it means 80 points. Either way, it’s pretty consensus to think he’s going to have a good year.
Nico Hischier, on the other hand, isn’t getting the same hype. Hischier had a dreadful season last season. Not only did he get injured multiple times in fluke ways, but when he was on the ice, he wasn’t exactly a superstar. He’s in year five of the NHL, and the Devils are expecting more than a 43 point pace.
Hischier is finally going to take that next step this season. He’s got a line that likely won’t get sent into a blender barring an injury to Dawson Mercer. He gets to play with Pavel Zacha and Jesper Bratt from the beginning. Neither of them has had anything derail their offseason like an injury or contract dispute. This should be a great season for all three of them (more on that later).
The added linemates for Hughes and Hischier and the familiarity they have with others will help them both get to a minimum of 60 points. It will be a year of excitement for Devils fans thanks to this fact alone.
2. Mackenzie Blackwood .920+ save percentage
Mackenzie Blackwood is a player who desperately needs a bounce-back season. Literally, every offseason storyline about him is not good. The vaccine stuff is obvious, and the way he’s reacted to it is even worse, but that’s not the only thing surrounding him. Before the vaccine stuff came out, Blackwood was considered a bubble player for Team Canada. They need a goalie desperately, but more people seem to believe Carter Hart has a better chance of a bounce-back than Blackwood.
However, this is the first time that Blackwood has an actually good defense in front of him. They’ve always been statistically bad, and there are multiple times where he was left out to dry. Last season, Blackwood was also part of the problem. After he was diagnosed with COVID-19, he fell off the face of the Earth. That won’t happen this season.
Blackwood is going to face much fewer high-danger shots with this defense. He won’t see as many players out of position. There is added youth and speed on the roster, so players can make their way back to stop two-on-ones or breakaway chances. This will lead to more easy saves and a much better save percentage. He will break a .920 save percentage for the first time in his career.
3. Tomas Tatar easily gets to 20 goals
Tomas Tatar was the Devils biggest acquisition from the forward position. Well, maybe besides Dawson Mercer who is an addition to the team despite not being an addition to the franchise. Tatar chose the Devils this offseason after a pretty bad experience in his last season in Montreal.
Tatar only had 10 goals in 50 games last season, and he went on a cold street towards the end of the season. He went 12 games to end the season without a goal. This led to him getting benched for most of the postseason run to the Stanley Cup. That’s going to be a motivating factor, especially since this is his first year with the Devils.
Tatar was great for two years with Montreal. Sure, he was a little off last season, but he’s a goal scorer. They can be inconsistent at times. However, he scored 22 goals in 68 games just one season ago. Last season sucked for Tatar, but it’s not that far removed from when he was an awesome asset worthy of top-line minutes. He will be able to get back to that no matter what line he ends up on. Since the Devils kept Dawson Mercer on the roster, they have three very skilled centers who can focus on setting Tatar up for goals. This is a great situation for the team and for Tatar statistically.
4. Devils score north of 3.0 goals per game
A lot of this piece has talked about goal scoring, but the overall mentality of this team is going to lead to scoring chances. However, the team finally has players who can finish the job. Last season, the Devils couldn’t turn their high danger chances into goals. The Devils team had 530 high-danger chances, and he only had 71 high-danger goals. Their 18% high-danger shooting percentage was ninth-worst in the league.
The median is around 19%, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but the Devils were also struggling to get high-danger chances. Only two teams had fewer high-danger chances on the power play than the Devils. This season, with the additions of Dougie Hamilton, Tatar, a healthy Nico Hischier, and some of the young guns, the power play needs to be better.
The Devils aren’t as far away from three goals per game as one might think. They scored 145 goals last season. They needed to score 168 to make it happen. Yes, 18 goals is a ton, but think about how many goals got taken away because of dumb moves by teammates or someone missing a wide-open net.
The Devils will have more chances this season, and they have players who can finish them. That means they will eventually get to 3.0 goals per game.
5. Pavel Zacha leads in goals again
This is the boldest prediction. There are a lot of stats that are predicting a Pavel Zacha regression, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Zacha had a 16.5% shooting percentage, which is obviously unsustainable, but he only had 103 shots in 50 games. He is clearly getting into more scoring situations, and that will naturally lead to more shots.
This season, Zacha will spend more time with Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt. Those three were really good together, and hopefully, they have chemistry right off the bat. Lindy Ruff didn’t play them together much in the preseason, but it seemed like he had a lot of things to figure out, and that line already had something put together.
Zacha was given a chance to take back one of the center positions, but he ended up losing it to Dawson Mercer. It because clear pretty quickly he was best suited for being a winger. That’s not really a problem since the Devils have four centers and none of them are over the age of 23. That’s insane, and it allows Zacha to completely focus on becoming the best winger possible.
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The Devils won’t have a 30-goal scorer this season, but Zacha will be close. And they will have at least five 20-goal scorers, so it will make up for it. Zacha will be the guy who leads the pack with around 28, and it will give the Devils and the team’s fans a lot of excitement moving forward.