New Jersey Devils: Are We Freaking Out Too Much About Daily Lineups?

The New Jersey Devils started the game against the Philadelphia Flyers with Jimmy Vesey on the first line. He was paired with Nico Hischier and Pavel Zacha to play on the top line. It should be a good story. The Devils gave Vesey a professional tryout in training camp, and not only did he make the team, but he’s excelled in the lineup. He’s second on the team in hits while also scoring four goals, which is tied for fifth on the team.

However, nobody seemed to be happy with the “story”.

Some of the reactions might have been to the fact the Devils added Mason Geertsen to the lineup after showing not much of anything in his previous five games, but a lot of it had to do with the positioning of Vesey on the top line. On paper, the Devils are putting a PTO on the top line in a major matchup with one of their biggest rivals, but how much does it really matter?

Sports is all about big opinions pertaining to small details thanks to the advent of social media. Every day, we’re expected to have a huge opinion on something. Honestly, I don’t want to opine about that too much because that is the premise of Pucks and Pitchforks. We react to pretty much everything and formulate an opinion on it.

However, we all react to the daily lineups, myself included. Lindy Ruff isn’t the same as John Hynes as changing his lineups constantly, but he’s not exactly putting the same numbers out there every single night. The lineup changes by at least 20% seemingly every night. He’s kept Dawson Mercer with Andreas Johnsson and Jesper Bratt. Those three have been great together, and they should never break up.

However, the rest of the lineup is going to change constantly. Maybe when Jack Hughes returns, things will settle down a bit, but until that happens we’ll see a lot of different lineups. It’s possible we shouldn’t react as much to these lineups, but where’s the fun in that?