5 Lineup Changes To Help New Jersey Devils Scoring

The New Jersey Devils are seeing some major defensive issues over the latest stretch. It doesn’t help that they have Jon Gillies and Akira Schmid, their fourth and sixth options in net. However, the excuses are beyond that. They’ve lost six games in a row and 10 of their last 13 since the New Year. In those games, they failed to score three goals in seven. If you take out the first four games of the year, where they scored exactly three goals in every game (not counting overtime), it’s now less than three goals in 7 of their last 9 games. In one of those games where they did score more than three, they allowed four goals in the third period to the Maple Leafs to blow a two-goal lead.

This team can’t put all of their excuses on the defensive side. Their offense isn’t scoring again, and it’s dragging the team down no matter what performance they get from the goalies. This is a team with a lot of talent up front. When Jack Hughes, Nico HIschier, Dawson Mercer, and Michael McLeod are your centers, things should work pretty smoothly. They are all incredible young centers that can distribute and score when needed.

Yet, the Devils are 21st in the league with 2.8 goals per game. That wouldn’t be terrible for the late 90s or early 2000s Devils who had the best goalie and defense combination in the league. For this year’s Devils team, especially when Dougie Hamilton is out of the lineup, it’s basically impossible to win games on a consistent basis.

However, the Devils could make some slight adjustments to get the scoring going. There is time to at least salvage some development out of this season. They aren’t making the playoffs and they will be deep in the lottery for the NHL Draft, but at least they can make some moves towards the positive.